Are you feeling trapped beneath the weight of debt? We will walk through the emotional rollercoaster that debt often brings, including the worry, guilt, and shame. Join me as we dissect the effects of life's curveballs on our financial health, from personal money mistakes to unpredictable events such as job loss or health crises.
Discover effective strategies to combat debt with our comprehensive guide detailing ten methods to become debt-free. Set reminders for my detailed walkthrough of the guide on Instagram live sessions from November 10th to 15th.
Finally, listen to inspiring real-life stories of individuals who've successfully weathered financial storms, offering a beacon of hope. This is a conversation you don't want to miss, as we empower you to break free from the shackles of debt and pave your way towards financial stability!
Join the The Financial Moment community on: Instagram Facebook Website Email: info@thefinancialmoment.com
Grab this FREE guide with 10 easy tips to keep your budget on track!
Are you feeling trapped beneath the weight of debt? We will walk through the emotional rollercoaster that debt often brings, including the worry, guilt, and shame. Join me as we dissect the effects of life's curveballs on our financial health, from personal money mistakes to unpredictable events such as job loss or health crises.
Discover effective strategies to combat debt with our comprehensive guide detailing ten methods to become debt-free. Set reminders for my detailed walkthrough of the guide on Instagram live sessions from November 10th to 15th.
Finally, listen to inspiring real-life stories of individuals who've successfully weathered financial storms, offering a beacon of hope. This is a conversation you don't want to miss, as we empower you to break free from the shackles of debt and pave your way towards financial stability!
Join the The Financial Moment community on: Instagram Facebook Website Email: info@thefinancialmoment.com
Grab this FREE guide with 10 easy tips to keep your budget on track!
Hello everyone. My name is Carolyn. Welcome to the Saving for your First Home podcast. I am the CEO of the Financial Moment. We offer money coaching for those who are ready and willing to make financial changes in their lives. For the most of us, there comes a point in time where we think to ourselves it would be really nice to own property, but it sometimes can feel like a pipe dream and not very easily obtainable. So I created this podcast to give you all the information and tools you need to take the steps forward toward home ownership. Take it from me my husband and I started our lives together, working part-time jobs with a young child. Fast forward, through many hiccups and failures, we stepped our feet into our very first home. For us it was a pile of dirt, but eventually our family home was built on that dirt. Now we are in the midst of growing our investment property portfolio. I created the savings for your first home podcast to give you easy, actionable tools for you to do the same. If you have that same gut feeling that I did and want to create a life for yourself and your growing family, but don't know where to start, you are in the right place. Let's do this. Hello everyone, welcome back to the podcast. I'm Carolyn, your money coach.
Speaker 1:
So in the last three episodes we've kind of talked a lot about how one can find themselves in financial predicament and, honestly, really nobody is immune to this stuff. Right In episode 55, we talked about financial turbulence that can happen after a traumatic life event, right. So whether that is a natural disaster or a job loss or your health, or a divorce, or a loss of a loved one, all these things are kind of beyond your control and so they do have an impact on your financial situation. And then we talked about our own money, mistakes, things that you know we maybe didn't have our priorities set straight and we made decisions probably on the fly, probably because we just wanted something and didn't think about our future goals, and it kind of gets us into a financial mess as well. And then in episode 54, actually going back now, we talked about our credit score and the importance of protecting and maintaining your credit score, and sometimes these events, whether they're our fault or not, they can have an impact on our credit score. So if we put all this stuff together now and we're trying to build a solid financial foundation, what can we do? So what I thought we'd talk about today is how do we manage our debt, because, with all of those scenarios and circumstances and indicators, it really means that we have personal debt.
Speaker 1:
So, first off, I wanted to mention that I do have a guide that has 10 strategies on how you can actually pay off your debt. So if you head to thefinancialmomentcom backslash Debtrap, you can download this free guide and actually I am going to walk through this guide on my IG account. So, if you are a follower of the Financial Moment on Instagram, I'm going to be going live Friday, november the 10th, through to November the 15th, and we're going to walk through this guide in detail. So make sure you download the guide and then join me on Instagram live. I will put out a calendar of what times I'm going to be on, but it's going to be a fun event, so I hope that you guys can join me there and I may just give out some prizes if you show up live. Okay?
Speaker 1:
So unfortunately, if we are burdened with debt, it really can elicit a wide range of feelings and emotions, and this can be really overwhelming and distressing and it kind of prevents us from moving forward. So I thought let's talk about some of these emotions and feelings that come with having the burden of all this debt. Now, do you consider yourself a warrior? If you are, then having added debt can really amplify this. Right, because if you feel unsure about the amount of money that you have and the amount of money that you need, it really can amplify the sense of worry and anxiety and you're gonna start to feel uneasy about your own personal financial situation. Right, it brings on fear of not being able to meet your financial obligations, or maybe there's even a fear of the consequences of not being able to meet those obligations.
Speaker 1:
Now, I'm not proud of this situation, but it did happen to my husband and I many years ago. Money was pretty tight at the time and we found ourselves really just kind of getting by, right, so paying what we could and holding off on the things that we couldn't. And I remember the feeling of the phone ringing. Something as simple as just the telephone ringing really threw me and provided a lot of anxiety, because I knew on the other end of that phone, with some company calling me to tell me my payment was late or they're trying to collect or something, and it was very stressful at that time because we didn't know where that money was gonna come from and how we were going to get out of that particular situation, and just hearing the phone ring really brought on that anxiety and stress.
Speaker 1:
Now we all know what stress does to us. It can cause and manifest into our physical wellbeing Not being able to sleep and the headaches and the body aches. It really can tell a coutole on how you are physically, and when you're in a position like that as a parent, it even amplifies it even more because you don't want your kids to feel the stress that you're experiencing and so you have to put on this front and try and ensure that your kids are provided for. But in the meantime you're holding onto all of that stress inside and, like I've mentioned in the past, it really does lead to guilt, right, the guilty feeling of actually accumulating this debt. How did you get here? You know those are the questions that a lot of people say is how did I even get here? And sometimes it isn't our fault and we shouldn't blame ourselves, but human nature always comes back to telling us that. You know what. It's a result of your poor financial decisions. It's the result of your overspending and the constant blame and the guilt that you feel really weighs on your shoulders. And with that guilt can come shame right. They don't want other people to know that this is happening in their personal financial situation.
Speaker 1:
I sometimes compare financial wellness to physical wellness, and there's a lot of close ties, I think, between the two. If a person is overweight physically, you can see from the outside that they're overweight. But if you notice that they will likely not eat in excess amount in public or with friends, you know, maybe order the salad or they'll be more conservative with what they're eating when they're out with their friends, but behind closed doors, through the drive-thrus, that is when they are consuming the additional calorie because no one's going to see them. And the similar thing can happen with our finances, because it's so emotionally tied. If you're feeling down, you may go shopping. If you're feeling happy, you celebrate with going out. It's very tied to our emotions and so going into debt becomes something that is hidden. Nobody knows that you can't afford really to go out for that dinner, right? You're just putting out on a credit card and you're just moving on. When you get home and the bills are coming and the calls may be coming, that is the time when you actually realize that that choice was not the best one. But nobody outside understands or knows what you're going through, and so this is where the shame comes in, because they're embarrassed about your financial situation and it really can lead to a reluctance to seek for help and discuss your problems with other people. So I am so thankful for those of you that tune into this podcast and are trying to improve their financial situation by learning and improving your knowledge. So remember to download that guide, thefinancialmomentcom backslash debt trap, because I want you guys to have all the resources to be equipped to be able to break through this debt trap and live a life free of that stress and the anxiety and the burden that comes along with debt.
Speaker 1:
So I just wanted to share a couple of case studies, I guess, or examples of people real people and the experiences that they've gone through to reach financial stability. One of the persons that I've talked to in the past they were a single mother and really had a hard time because they experienced layoffs, they encountered all these unexpected financial challenges that came with that, and they were concerned about how they were going to not only provide for their kids and their future, but her own ability to retire because she had all this accumulated credit card debt, and on top of all of that, she also had an aging mother and had concerns because her mother didn't have the finances to honestly take care of herself as she got older, and so that financial burden was laid on her as well. I think we call that the sandwich generation, when you are caring for young children and aging parents both at the same time. Now wouldn't you agree that she should reach out for help? But all those things that we talked about prevented her from really seeking the help that she needed, and years went by. Years went by. I stress more than anything that you don't have to live under the burden of debt. Now, I'm not saying that I can just wave a magic wand and it all goes away all the problems, all the stress, all the anxiety, but anything can be done if you take baby steps. So one foot in front of the other will get us to the other side.
Speaker 1:
Now, another person that I talked to was in kind of a different situation. They were self-employed and found themselves, you know, doing fairly well in their business, and what happened was one of their clients that they were working with on this project decided that they weren't going to pay her invoice. And as you're going through a project or if you're self-employed, you know you are banking on the money that you're going to receive from the outcome of that project. It has to feed the business and, obviously, your own salary, and there's a lot of things riding on clients' payment. And what happened? Because this was quite the large project, it really set her back because I guess she just assumed that the money was coming and so then items and things were purchased on credit and debt started to piling up because she just assumed that the payout was coming and unfortunately it never came. And so again, this is kind of a situation where it's not really her fault, right, she did provide the service, she had a contract and the business just didn't hold up their end of it.
Speaker 1:
And the one thing that resonated with me when I was speaking to her is that she just couldn't find the resources to be able to figure out this situation. And you're so deep in it because you're angry about the client, you're angry that you're in this situation and even if you knew the theories that go along with how to actually get out of debt, actually executing them and moving forward is very hard, because you just can't see the end of the line, you can't see what the red path is, and so, again, this is where reaching out and asking for help and having someone that can verify clarity and verify how to step by step plan is so important, because you just can't see it beyond the clouds. So I share these examples just to show you that we're all real people with different scenarios, different circumstances that have led us into this debt trap. So what are the next steps? What can we do? Because we don't wanna live a life like this. We don't want to live a life with debt being a burden on our shoulders.
Speaker 1:
Well, I'm going to talk about all of that, number one through the guide and number two on IG Live over the next few days. So I hope you're gonna join me and make sure to tell me whether or not you listen to the podcast. I love meeting the listeners and so I'm excited about what the next few days hold for all of us. So your homework for now is to download the guide at thefinancialmomentcom backslashdebtrap and make the first step of moving outside of the burden that debt can cause. Take care, guys. Thank you for listening. We are committed to helping you place your very first steps into your new home. See you next time.