Money Stress – If Not Now then When

Money stress, you know that feeling when you wake up and your first thought is ‘how am I going to pay the bills today?’

It’s not a good feeling…and in today’s environment of rising interest rates, it’s becoming more common.

And what makes matters worse, is money stress is something that will follow you around all day long.

In my experience, money stress is like a disease. It prevents you from doing the things you want to and starts to impact every aspect of your life, including your relationships.

It is a common statistic that money stress is one of the biggest causes of relationship breakdowns.

The Background

It reminds me of two powerful events that occurred in one week a few years back now. These two difficult experiences highlighted to me the importance of serving you to overcome your money stress and secure your financial future.

The first was a funeral for a dear friend’s father. He was 85 years old and had lived a full life.

The funeral was a real celebration…This man had lived his life dedicated to his faith and was a champion of the community.

There wasn’t a single person he had come into contact with that didn’t benefit from the experience.

Driving home after the wake it hit me that although he had lived a long life, it is still important to ensure that you are living life to the fullest.

And this was reinforced when my wife explained to me that she had heard that my best friend from school had been diagnosed with cancer only one month ago and the diagnosis was not positive.

Our conversation continued about how important it is to live your life and not take any day for granted.

I felt a renewed passion for ensuring I took every opportunity to do the things that make me happy and to serve my community, including you.

The tragedy of this story is that the very next morning I received a message from my friend’s older brother to advise me that he had passed away overnight.

A heart attack resulting from aggressive cancer took this man from his wife and two young children when he was only 46 years.

From these tragic circumstances comes an important lesson…

If Not Now then When

Life is short and there is no time to procrastinate.

If not now then when…

It is easy to say I will worry about my financial future later. Or that you can’t do anything about your financial future now because you have no spare money or time. The thing with later is that later never comes…

Putting something off until later is effectively saying you are not going to do it at all.

So the question to ask yourself is ‘How important is your future self?’

How important is it that you provide for your future self?

The reality of life is that you can’t work forever, certainly not in a paid employment role. And for business owners, the risk is even worse. Less than 5% of businesses are saleable or sell, which means for business owners you can’t rely on your business to be Plan A.

Which means you have a finite period of time to provide for your future self.

If Not Now then When…

Relieve Money Stress

Now you might be saying that it is fine for me to suggest you need to do something about your future self, but your immediate concern is right now…

And that is great, first, you need to take care of what is happening in your life right now.

By taking care of the immediate issue you will effectively be taking steps to manage your future self as well.

It’s about forming habits that support your financial future.

So what can you do?

Simply put, money stress is caused by spending more than you earn…

The solution, therefore, is you either earn more or spend less.

Sounds simple, but for most people, it is a lot harder than it sounds.

However, to make the process as painless as possible for you, I want to suggest that for the next week, you find three things that you could spend less on or avoid spending at all.

Think about your grocery spend, are there things that you could go without or don’t really need?

Your entertainment spending, could you save any money there? It could be as simple as one less coffee a day (if you have multiple coffees a day) or it could be one less dinner out or avoiding the fast food trap.

If you spend some time planning your week there will no doubt be a number of ways you can reduce your spending this week.

Once you have identified these three items, be sure to stick to your plan and save that money no matter how small or large the amount.

By the end of the week, you will feel a sense of achievement, and more importantly, your money stress will have subsided as well.

Now it may not be the complete solution to solving your money stress issues, but it is a start.

And managing money stress is about taking baby steps each day and week.

Your Future

Your future self depends on you taking action now.

If not now then when…

You don’t have the time to put off taking action right now.

Life is too short…just recall the experiences I mentioned earlier.

And you have things you want to do, experiences you want to gain, and people in your life that you want and need to provide for.

Imagine what your life could be like in one month, six months, a year, five years, or ten years when money is no longer a stress for you.

What would be different?

What would you be doing?

How would you be living your life?

If you can see the answers to these questions in your mind, you can make them a reality.

The catch is, you have to take action NOW.

Conclusion

The lesson I have learned from the tragic circumstances from a few years ago is that life needs to be lived, and there is no time for money stress.

Everything that can be done to ensure money is not what holds you back should be done now.

Overcome money stress and experience the life you desire.

If you would like me to assist you to get started, click on the link below to have a FREE Wealth Planning session with me. You can get started today, just click the link to schedule a time that works for you.