Favorite Good Cause

Where to begin? Everything is connected. If you’re reading these posts and trying to solve a problem, I would bet that you probably get to the end of a post on, say, budgeting, or cash flow, saying BUT that’s all great but I can’t do THIS because I can’t change THAT, whatever this and that may be. An example would be “I can’t reduce my budget because I can’t cover my expenses as it is,” or “I can’t improve my credit rating by paying on time because I have to pay the rent first,” or “I can’t use credit to cover a short term cash flow problem because I’m already maxed out and I can’t get any more credit.” Or my personal favorite, “If I could make more money and increase my income to cover the budget, I wouldn’t be reading this stupid blog to begin with.” Or how about “I would put the money into savings for retirement so that it could compound so magically if I had any money that wasn’t already allocated to keeping my rear end out of the fire.” In one of the early hell-years, I kept asking my dad how to get control of my money, and he always told me to make a budget. The problem was I was doing hourly work and I never knew exactly how much I was going to be making. I got stuck cold when he asked me to write down my income. I kept trying to tell him that if I knew how much I was going to be making, I wouldn’t have a problem. That was the problem.

The interconnectedness of things tends to stump people, even experts. Worse, experts, well meaning family members, people who aren’t trying to solve complete chaos problems, tend to look at you like you’re a complete moron. It doesn’t really help.

So you get to the end of a nice article or piece of advice thinking great, thanks, but I can’t put that to work for me because there are three elements there that are completely out of my control. And if you check back with the person who was giving what might have been really great advice, and they ask you if you did it, you have to say no, which can lead to the impression of being either stubborn or irresponsible…which tends to dry up the source of advice. Grrr!

So what do you do? The basic problem is that every factor depends on every other factor, and if you could fix one, you could fix them all, and you would be magically solvent.

Just begin. Begin anywhere and everywhere, and have some faith. There are things you can’t change all at once, but you can become aware of them and how they affect the bigger picture. You have to begin by knowing the connections and how they work.

This is the main reason I started the weekly projects section, a small task in the sidebar that can be done. I said start anywhere and everywhere, but refurbishing a financial house is hard work–it can be exhausting and overwhelming, so it helps to break it into small tasks. Focus on what you’ve accomplished and what you’ve learned. Focus on the progress. If you work on the big picture but accomplish one important task per week, you will be moving in the right direction. Patience and faith.

Awareness is the most important thing I can encourage. Sometimes we just don’t want to look because we know it’s bad. Look anyway. Get over the panic and face it. If you can’t fix the problem today, you can at least know what the problem is today, and if you keep pondering it and looking for solutions, you will eventually come up with one that works.

Financial stress comes from the connections between things–problems do not stay contained, they seep out into other areas of our finances, and not surprisingly into the rest of life. The one thing I have absolute faith in is time. It’s free. Small things add up, and over time they can add up to something really great. Patience and faith.