Posts Tagged ‘savings’
I’m making a stand with wet hands!
It’s been six long months and my hands are cleaner than ever. Who would have thought I would make it this far?
I am referring to life without a dishwasher. Around mid-December, ours broke. My first reaction was sheer terror. I’m pretty sure I almost lost consciousness. Like many families struggling to make ends meet, I didn’t have any savings to buy another. The word credit kept flashing in my mind, but we were just managing what we had. I took a deep breath, pulled up my rubber gloves, and started washing.
It wasn’t so bad. “Not much more work then rinsing the dishes, loading and unloading the dishwasher”, I thought. Day 2! – It occurred to me that growing up we never had a dishwasher, we, gasp, washed and dried them – by hand. I then had a BFO (blinding flash of the obvious!). My gosh, we are raising a generation of kids who never have to wash dishes. Visions of power failures and piles of dirty dishes flashed by. I decided to start operation “Dishpan Kids”. I asked, in a way that made it sound incredibly exciting, “Who wants to learn how to wash dishes?”. It was fun. The family doing dishes together. What a concept.
I will admit, I had some setbacks. Entertaining guests poses some additional challenges (clean-up takes slighly longer than loading the dishwaher) and some surprises (during our last get-together, the guys did the dishes while the girls played cards…hmmmm…). A month or so after we began “Operation Dishpan Kids” I found out that the dishwasher actually was not broken. It’s something under the sink (that’s as intelligent as I get on that subject). It will probably take an hour and 20 bucks to fix. But you know what? I’m ok. I think I can go without. In fact, I kind of like it. I enjoy watching my family share in the responsibility and I have a really great two-level dish rack to dry my dishes on. 
I will often tell my clients, or anyone who will listen for that matter, that we are all one or two events away from bankruptcy. What do I mean by that? I mean that all it takes is one or two major events, such as an illness, a layoff or a divorce, to turn our financial world upside down. The reason is simple. We live too close to, or above, our means. As a result our credit is maxed out, our savings minimal, or worse, non-existent, and we have absolutely no breathing room. When a major event happens you quickly get behind to the point where catching up is a challenge. And that’s IF your situation improves. If it does not, you dig a deeper, darker hole.
The solution is so simple. Ok, I say that recognizing that once you are in trouble financially, it takes time, patience and hard work to get back on track. Generally speaking though, you need either savings or available credit to get you through the tough times. Obviously savings is best. But having unused credit can help bridge the gap if savings are unavailable. I do offer a word of caution – “if you are going to use credit, you need to be very, very organized and have a well thought out plan”. Otherwise, the risk is great that you will get in over your head.
If your credit is maxed and you have no savings, you need to start a debt reduction strategy immediately. Beginning a savings account while reducing your debt makes the most sense, as this will eliminate or reduce your dependency on your credit to get through those expenses that pop up both expectedly and unexpectedly. There are many options for reducing your debt, from establishing a budgeting plan, to refinancing, to offering creditors a settlement on the amount you owe. The following link will provide you with some information on specific services designed to help you reduce or eliminate your debt. http://www.haleytrustee.ca/solutions.php