What To Do When You're In Financial Crisis

Brought to you by the every dollar app. Start budgeting for free today. When you are in crisis with your money, here's what you do. Take four steps back. You're too close and you're, you can't see the forest for the trees. Meaning you've got, you have a tree branch stuck in your nose and you can't see past it. And then the drama builds up in your head and you spin out. And when you spin out, you are of no value for critical thinking, because when you drop into lizard brain fight or flight mode, which is where our last caller was, that means you've slipped everything into the front side of your brain and there's no critical thinking skills there and cleaning up a financial mess ascertaining where the financial mess came from so that it doesn't come back is a critical thinking process. So it requires that you take a deep breath, take a cold shower, two steps back and start going, okay, I'm going to pretend someone hired me to talk to these people and these people happen to be me and I'm going to start walking that through, then the first thing you do is you make sure that the family has money for food, not restaurants, food, restaurants, aren't food. Restaurants are entertainment food and that the family has the lights and the water and the gas bill paid. The heat is on 99.9% of the situations. You have the money to do those two things. When you are warm and fed, your brain works better. You can calm down when you're warm and fed and you know that you are not going to be homeless because the next step is you pay the rent or the house payment on time or early, almost everyone has the money to do those three things. Then we start getting to transportation. So when the dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in the eighth grade, we took a class called civics and in civics, they taught you the difference between needs and wants. And the basics of life are food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and utilities. You take care of those things, food, shelter, clothing, you've got enough clothing, shut up, transportation and utilities. So the lights are on, the food is on the table. We have a car to go to work. We keep the income coming in. Now the rest of it is a monopoly game that we might be losing. Meet every dollar budgeters, Christie and Steve. They used to fight about money. I'm the spender. I'm definitely the saver. Now that they budget with every dollar, they're on the same page. Money is definitely one thing we do not ever fight about. Having the budget gave me the permission to spend knowing that the money is in each category. It just allowed us to work together better. Now that's what we call a win-win. Now we just have to pick pink colors. We can't help you with that. Every dollar, create your free account today. Now the rest of it is a monopoly game that we might be losing. But it's not life or death and we all have this little drama queen in our head that spins out and turns us into drama queens and we turn everything into life or death and it's not life or death, but we turn it into that. I do it, you do it. Well, and when you watch your car being repoed outside, like that's not fun, right? I mean, like, you know, there's reasons. When your mother-in-law is calling you, there's all these things happening, but, but still, okay. That's transportation. Yeah, right. But why was the car payment not paid when they make $150,000 a year? And you can't say for two years, this has been going on and I'm standing on the sidelines only griping about it. No, you get your hands in the mess. You reach up to your elbows in the mess and the two of you together, and it's not, I'm going to take over the bills. It's like he can't do this for whatever reason or won't do it by himself. And so we got to work together. Yes. And I'll just say what goes on in my head when I listened to her is, I mean, the compassion I got, I, you know, you get on them, which is great. And my, I'm like, oh gosh, is this everything? Okay. But, but I tell myself if the reverse called, which does happen. And there's a spouse calling and saying, I, I've been trying to do this. I can't, we don't have enough money here. I can't keep my head above water. You're like, well, where's your husband? Where's your wife? I don't know. She won't, she won't be engaged in it. We would yell at the spouse. That's not on the phone. Do you know what I'm saying? So to that point, both have to be involved, right? And so I think this whole idea of just, but it's not putting it all on one person, though, this is unfair to that person. The way you, it's not all on her and it's not all on him. That's right. And so, I mean, here's the thing. When the Ramseys went broke, I was 28 years old. Rachel was a brand new baby. When we filed bankruptcy, 100% of it was my fault. I was doing real estate deals that Sharon hadn't even seen. I wasn't hiding them from her. She's just like, whatever you want to do, honey. And I did. And I built a house of cards and it fell. And you know, from that day forward, she's been involved. And from that day at my request and demand command that she's involved so that we have two sets of eyes looking at everything, because we're not, I'm not going to do this by myself anymore. And we're not going to make huge mammoth decisions that affect our lives. And you can't stand on the sideline then and say, what'd you do? You dummy, you know? So now, I mean, it's a couple of dummies working together here. So we're going to figure this out. Right. So, uh, and so you've got to work together. You've got to come clean. You have to, then you, when you lay out your plan, you have to do it and you can't, there's, let me tell you no excuses before your car gets repoed. Before you are about to leave your husband and file bankruptcy, you don't go to the ballpark. They're not even on the same planet. Okay. Like there's cancer. We have to take care of the cancer patient. We can't make the ballpark. Sorry. You know, our life is, is imploding. Yeah, this is, this is you, you, you know, and you can't use that as a hide mechanism. Well, he works all the time. Bull crap. Come home, put on a pot of coffee and sit up till two in the morning, get this stuff together. Figure out where you is and that that's what you've got to do. And I'm not fussing at her. I'm just saying I am fussing at her a little bit, but the, but not right now. I was earlier, but the, uh, the thing is when you've got this stuff right in front of you, this is the way you handle it. You, you go right down from food and you, you take it apart. And as you click off these things, every time you, okay. I don't have to worry about food. One level of peace comes in and the angst and the anxiety and the freak out starts to leave. Okay. I don't have to worry about lights. Another level of peace comes in. I don't have to worry about being homeless. Another level of peace comes in. No repo man in my driveway. Another level of peace comes in and you get down to we're four months behind on a student loan, which they're going to do nothing. So what, okay. You get down to where the stuff that is really behind or is really, you know, if you do the right things first, by the time you get down to the other things, you, you, you know, it's almost laughable how much of you've gotten rid of 95% of your stress and you're in agreement and you're executing and paying the bills and we're doing it together. So no one should be doing this by themselves when you're married, period, especially in a crisis, especially in a crowd. And I would say, uh, you know, a crisis, like what they just, what she just explained is we usually say, you know, if one person wants to go and actually like log into the account, pay the bill, that's great. A crisis like that. I'd say both of you need to be sitting down on the computer. Yes. I mean, seriously, so that you know that it's done because when you know that it's done, it's not necessarily that I don't trust the other person. It's that when I know that it's done, I can sleep. That's right. Yes. And I don't have to be in drama queen mode. Well, in, in a case where there was. Lack of payment. And so that caused repercussions for a season. There is a building of trust, right? And then, and then a year later, if it's like, we are good, we've done this and done this and done this, and then this now we're, now we develop the plan together and someone can execute it. That's right. Right. But only after, after there's competency. Yes. Okay. Totally. So when we're, when we're teaching leadership, we teach people, you can delegate when there's competency and integrity. So they're not lying about it. And they actually know how to freaking do it. Yeah. Okay. And so it reminds me that all of this a little bit, when you were on Oprah back in the day, and there was a couple and you were like, you know, there was a money that wasn't, it was like a mishandling of money. He didn't know that they had $80,000 in debt that she had run. That's right. Right. And you said you need to apologize to her because you weren't present, you know, all that weren't involved, but it is, it's a, it's the, it's the mentality switch that both spouses have a level of responsibility. Now, if the other one doesn't keep their word and on and on and on, now we have a marital issue that we really have to face, um, which is true. Yeah. But until that point, both, yes, both have a say and both need to be sitting down and have a responsibility to do it. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.