You Can Change Your Financial Situation
I felt hollow and empty inside… not like myself. I wandered to the kitchen for the third time in the past hour looking for something that would make me feel better. There wasn’t any food in the house that tasted good. There wasn’t any liquid in the house that could quench my thirst. No matter what I tried, no matter what I did, the feeling just wouldn’t go away.
I’d been pacing back and forth aimlessly… getting up from my desk multiple times an hour, where ordinarily I would simply sit and relax during the weekend. But not this time. You see, I was worried. I was worried about the 71 dollars we had to make it on for the next five days. For the third time that day, I thought about the meals we would need. The kids needed two more each day (dinner was covered). That would mean cereal, milk, bagels probably… maybe another loaf of bread to tide over lunches. They would also need hot dogs, hot dog buns, and a few more various items to have for lunch.
I took a mental reconnoiter of the prices associated with the items and realized that 71 dollars for five days weren’t going to be enough. I thought about it again… we had dinners and breakfasts already for my wife and me, so maybe that was something. But then there were lunches. Ordinarily, I would order out from a local deli or restaurant every other day during the week. I had quickly stopped ordering myself something as I watched the bank account drain, but I still persisted in ordering for my wife.
But that 71 dollars wasn’t going to last.
What happened if we had to make a trip to the ER, or what happened if someone needed some medicine? Or, heaven forbid, as we used paper plates often for the kids’ breakfasts and lunches, I had to buy more of them… they weren’t cheap either.
I sighed heavily again, got up from my desk, and drug myself to the kitchen. This time, I settled on a pitcher of Koolaid I had made earlier that day. The kids were enjoying the ice pops made from it. But for me, it was the only thing that I hadn’t recently partaken of. The normal array of beverages we had simply weren’t in the refrigerator anymore.
I sat back down at my desk and another thought hit me. If I have to go out today, and heaven forbid I’m in an accident in our only vehicle, and heaven forbid it’s a fatal accident, what am I going to tell my wife in the last moments? I pictured her arriving on the scene, somehow, and holding me in her arms. But instead of being able to say, “Honey, it’s going to be alright. God will provide. The family is secure. I love you and the kids more than life. Please kiss them for me.” I would have to face the truth. I’d have to tell her that she had 71 dollars total to last her for the next five days and from that moment “until.”
I started to cry, but caught myself as my youngest daughter bounced down the hallway on her way — for probably the tenth time that hour — to a bucket of water in our kitchen where three “grow toys” were submerged. She quickly looked at them and then stopped and hung over the divider facing my desk. She beamed with excitement and proclaimed that her butterfly was already larger and went on to detail the adventures it and several other of her toys were going to have once she (the butterfly) had finished growing. I listened intently and smiled, and for the first time that weekend, a happy thought crossed my mind: at least the kids don’t know. My wife had a hard and busy week and I was glad she didn’t know either.
But as my daughter disappeared back down the hallway, so did my happiness. My wife didn’t know, and my family was going to suffer. I was ashamed at my failure, as well I should be, at the position I had put us in. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t know how we were going to make it, or how we were going to recover financially. I allowed us to spend more every month than we made, and every paycheck was gone before it ever hit my hands.
I started going over the meal plan again in my head. Same conclusion: that 71 dollars weren’t going to do it… there just wasn’t anyway. And then, if I had forgotten an automatic payment somewhere, and it came through during the week, that would be the end. I would have to tell my wife. I would have to burden her again — for the eleventh or twelfth time in our marriage —with the knowledge that we had no money in the bank… that we had no money in savings… that we had nothing.
I can’t go on like this. I just need a break. I need a reprieve from this constant stress and worry.
I want to stop walking around like a dead man. Uninterested in what I see, hear and feel, and the interactions I have with others, I am consumed only by one thought: how do I make it? Never mind that we had plenty of money only a few months earlier and that I had allowed the overspending to continue. That, perhaps, was the worst rub of all. If I had felt then the way I feel now, I could have stopped it. Or would I have? This wasn’t the first time after all. Like I said earlier, this was number eleven or twelve.
What’s wrong with me?!
Now, before you stop reading and abandon all hope, fast forward three years to today. Having survived, here’s what I can tell you about that situation. It is possible to make it out, and it is possible to turn it all around. But to do it, you’re going to need to remember something a friend once told me. We had been hitting the gym for a month solid and I wasn’t seeing the weight loss I thought I should be. He looked me square in the eye and said:
“You didn’t get fat overnight.”
Likewise, I didn’t go broke overnight. It was a steady stream of bad choices and bad actions, over decades, which repeatedly set me back until I was long past “against” and was practically under the wall. So, as I hadn’t gotten fat overnight, neither had I gone broke accordingly. What it meant for me was it would take a long train of consistent, good decisions — uncomfortable or not — and consistent, positive actions to correct the years and years and years of bad ones. It will be a long haul.
Don’t bother looking for shortcuts, either. You’ll only further derail your progress. There is no such thing as “luck” in the broad sense. Luck is generated by an ever-increasing number of opportunities, all brought on by consistent, positive actions and choices towards a goal. And when it comes to finances, they have to be the right actions and choices, and, they have to happen all the time.
That’s OK though because you can be the better you. You can grow. You can learn from the past. So often we spend our time dwelling on the mistakes of the past and can easily become overwhelmed by them. Just like in the recalled story, it is easy to spend every drop of mental energy pouring over what brought you to ruin, with every mistake a neon billboard on the journey. But, here’s the secret: the past has nothing for you. Just because you’ve made bad decisions or made mistakes in the past does not mean you are required to do the same now, or that you’ll always be stuck in a pattern.
Be the better you. Don’t get stuck, just move forward. Consistent action towards change will get you there.
I chose this image because, to me, it symbolizes the process perfectly. The mountain range is the past. It is filled with trouble, treacherous choices, steep and winding climbs, and bad paths that kept me living paycheck to paycheck in guilt and agony. It took a lot of work, but when I crossed the summit, my world changed. And, now years passed the summit, I look back across the gloriously sun-filled, beautiful land, and it is obvious to me that my problem was finite.
If you’re in the place I described at the beginning of the article, know this: it is possible to make it out. Stay out of the past. Make better decisions (and do so consistently). Remember you can change.
Now go and be the better you.
