Recovery from financial rock bottom

My financial rock bottom Part 2

In my last blog My financial rock bottom, I shared my challenging experience with money. In this post I’ll share what steps I took to recover from my financial rock bottom.

It began with the decision to not live in such awful circumstances anymore. A great place to start but not enough to get me out of trouble. I needed a plan!

Where I started

The biggest issue I had to deal with at this stage was to not slide any further into debt. Then I had to reduce the debt while paying my regular expenses and putting money into a rainy day fund for future expenses.

Not so easy when interest is being charged on the money you owe. My only solution was to be brave and call my creditors and make a payment agreement that suited both parties. What I realised from this process is that creditors are usually very reasonable when you explain the situation and make a commitment to repay them. In the end it wasn’t as scary as I had anticipated and I managed to negotiate good interest terms.

My best option at the time was to close my business and find a job. I wasn’t sure what job I could get because the only jobs I’d ever done was cleaning and a brief stint at Coles. Not a lot to work with!

One day I walked past an ad for a nursing agency wanting people to help adults with quadriplegia This was a light bulb moment for me. I actually had the skills for this job but it had never occurred to me that the years of looking after my daughter were something I could be paid for.

To start I took that job as a carer, paid all the debts off and 6 years later I ended up as the manager of a disability service. This of course came with a significant pay increase, double in fact. (If you’d like to know the longer version, feel free to ask)

This is when I was able to start travelling. I had the skills to make money, save money and plan for bigger goals like overseas travel.

My mindset

Once I had started paying off the debts and had a little savings, I felt I should be on track now … right? Wrong! I was moving in the right direction and financially things were improving but for some reason I felt really depressed. It felt like anything enjoyable had been taken away from me. I remember sitting at the table one day, feeling really low and started questioning the reason behind it.

This is when I discovered something called mindset, money blocks and limited beliefs. As funny as that might sound, I really didn’t know anything about this. It wasn’t something my family had talked about. It has since become a passion of mine.

Why do we do what we do and how can we change it if we don’t like our outcomes? I continue to this day to work on my mindset and beliefs. At the end of the day, looking after your mindset is essential to everything we do in life.

Creating a financial plan

I never wanted to have empty bank accounts again. I never wanted to break out into a cold sweat whenever an electricity bill or car registration notice showed up again. For that I was going to need 2 things.

1. A financial plan. As I said before, I had tried budgeting but it didn’t make any difference in the long run. There was no plan for how I would stick to it and I never knew if I was on track or not. Thankfully I stumbled across a better system that help me plan for the present, short and long term and it is the one I still use 15 years later.

2. Support and encouragement. I needed someone to help me come up with some goals and then encourage and support me until I reached them. Enter a life coach (there was no spending planners yet) She helped me come up with 3 goals and then supported me on the many ups and downs I went through on my journey to reach them. Over time I developed better habits that made sticking to my plan part of my everyday life. I’m happy to say in the end I reached all 3 goals and many more since then.

Would you like achieve the same thing I did?

Are you ready to take charge of your future?

Are you ready to commit to a simple program that is designed to pay for itself and leave you in a better financial position than when you started?

My Money Masters program will help you do this!

For more details click here  

One of my favourite sayings is “If you keep doing what you’ve always done then you will keep getting what you’ve always gotten” This reminds me to keep pushing past my comfort zone and improving my skills so I can move to the next level I want to achieve in life. You can do this too!