How To Keep Your Head While Dealing With A Financial Crisis

When you finally realize that you need to make some major changes to your spending and saving habits, it’s not the best feeling in the world. Suddenly, you’re seeing all the little missteps and bad decisions that led up to your financial disaster, and feeling the weight of all that stress bearing down on you. That wave of worries and stress factors you’re feeling isn’t the easiest thing to take in your stride, but in many cases, getting yourself out of a money rut depends on how well you’re able to deal with the stress of it all. If you’re staring down the barrel of a personal financial disaster, here’s a guide to keeping your head…

Quit Wasting Time

It’s pretty common for people to respond to stress and adversity by burying their head in the sand. Fearing for your financial security feels horrible, and if you ignore the money worries bearing down on you, that feeling disappears for a while. Yes, you may be getting a bit of satisfaction by wasting time and energy on procrastination. However, doing this can often make the problem much worse when you have to face it again. As hard as it may feel, stop procrastinating. Knuckle down and concentrate on the task at hand. If it’s truly overwhelming to you, get some rest so that you can get stuck into the problem with more focus later. We’ll go into more advice for doing this later...

Cut Yourself Off from Easy Spending

Until you have your personal finances completely under control, you may find it hard to understand where all your money is going. When your checking account seems to be hemorrhaging money from too many points to count, it can be extremely stressful and scary. One of the best responses to this issue is pinning down the most obvious leaks in your personal finances, and plugging them up. The most effective way of doing this, especially if you’re finding it hard to be disciplined with your money, is to cut yourself off from any tools you can use for easy, spur-of-the-moment spending. If you’re always reaching for the plastic when you know you shouldn’t, take your credit cards out of your wallet and put them somewhere out of sight. If you’re making one-click purchases on online stores way too much, delete your card numbers from those accounts. If you’ve found yourself in a full-blown disaster, you probably won’t be able to completely stop all the leaks, but there’ll certainly be at least some ways to slow them down.

Create a Plan

Once you’ve got your head in the game, and cut yourself off from as many avenues of easy spending as possible, the next thing you need to do is create a plan that will get you out of your rut. Perhaps you’re crumbling under the weight of your debt, and want to look into consolidation services. You can read more here about what these companies can offer you. Perhaps you’ve got some hefty and unexpected medical bills that you need to cover, or your retirement is catching up with you much faster than you’d planned for. You can read more about retirement planning here. Whatever your main issue is, you’re not going to get out of it without a plan in place, and the best way to start creating one is doing a lot of research on the problem. This will help you pin down your practical options for dealing with it, and the best way for you to space this out over time. The internet is bursting with advice for debt reduction, retirement, sudden job loss, and pretty much every other financial problem you can think of. Of course, everyone’s going to talk like they’re the expert, and it’s up to you to filter out all the good advice from the bad.

Take Some Tangible Action

You may have just come up with the best financial recovery plan every written, but it isn’t going to mean anything without action. Without that first bit of tangible action, your plan is only going to exist as an idea, completely void of substance. Aside from this, taking a tangible step in the right direction can be a massive stress reliever for people who are going crazy from the stress of their financial difficulties! If you’ve got a massive debt hanging over your head, one great tangible step could be selling some of your stuff on Craigslist, and putting your proceeds towards your outstanding debts. If retirement is approaching faster than you’d like, take the tangible step of getting on a retirement plan. Take a look at the plan you just created, figure out one tangible bit of action that you can make, and then do it. After that, you simply move onto the next step, and the next and the next. You’re not going to make all your money worries disappear overnight, but getting the wheels in motion is what repairing your finances is all about.

Talk It Out

Even when you’ve taken a step back and made a thorough assessment of your situation, all the different stress factors and payment deadlines can still cause a massive mental strain. This, in turn, will make it so much harder to get yourself back on track to financial stability. One of the best ways to get around this is talking to someone you trust; voicing your thoughts about the financial problems you’re facing, and your thoughts on how you can solve it, step by step. Obviously, you may not have anyone you’re comfortable discussing the ins and outs of your personal finances with. If this is the case, then the next effective way of “talking things out” is simply keeping a journal of your thoughts. Whenever you’re struggling with some obstacle in your plans, get a notebook out and try to brainstorm through it. Write down each thought you have about the issue, even those that contradict each other, followed by your logical responses, and then try to organize them into a tangible plan for moving forward. Even if you find yourself in the same position you started in, talking it out, in one way or another, can be another great way to take some of the stress out of the situation.

Never Hide Anything from your Partner

Don’t let financial problems strain your relationship. Money issues can stir up marital troubles faster than you’d imagine, and sadly, there have been countless otherwise healthy marriages that have ended all because of a dispute over shared finances. Obviously, you don’t want your relationship to be thrown on this particular pile, and the best way to avoid relationship problems tied up with money is through absolute honesty. Don’t hide anything, that means anything from your partner. If you make a mistake that’s going to impact your shared finances, put your cards on the table. Your partner will reciprocate with their end of the household’s finances, and you’ll avoid all kinds of high-stress situations that can drag out your money issues much longer than necessary. While we’re on the subject, if your partner spends over budget, or makes some kind of honest mistake, try not to get angry about it. Money is important, but not important enough to let it come between you and the ones you love.

Live Well

Paying closer attention to your health and lifestyle choices is one of the most effective ways you can deal with any kind of stress, whether it stems from money or anything else. Instead of getting your fill of unhealthy convenience foods, start planning your meals and packing them with all the nutrients you need. This will not only make you feel much better about your situation, but could also help you save money that you’d otherwise spend on eating out and quick junk-food stops! Track what you’re saving, and make a point to divert that leftover cash to your most pressing financial problems. On top of this, you should be making a point to get a decent amount of exercise every day, and aiming to sleep at least seven hours, if not the recommended eight. Because this isn’t the most practical tip in the world, a lot of people tend to wave it away when they’re trying to get out of a financial rut. However, we urge you to take it on board just as much as all the other advice. Nutrition has a major impact on the way the brain functions, and when you’re facing a personal finance disaster, you need every bit of energy for logical processing you can get.

Finding yourself in the midst of a personal financial disaster can be a horrible experience, but if you don’t take a proactive approach to it, the challenges you’re facing can quickly become completely overwhelming. Take this advice on board, and use it to formulate a roadmap out of your situation. No matter what your money issues are, this guide will help you fight through the stress and tackle those issues head on.