03: Coping with Financial Anxiety in Times of Uncertainty
There is A LOT of noise right now regarding these very uncertain times when it comes to your money. It’s normal if you are experiencing an increase in financial anxiety. In today’s episode, I’m going to share with you how you can cope with your financial anxiety during a season where it can feel like you don’t have a lot of control. This episode was inspired by a recent live I did on Instagram in my private Instagram community @mindmoneycommunity.
In this episode, you’ll get:
A brief guided mindfulness exercise to quiet your mind and re-center to yourself
An overview of what financial anxiety is and how to cope in these uncertain times
Overviews on things you can do with your emergency funds, retirement, what to do if you are a freelancer or find yourself freelancing and if you cannot shelter in place during this uncertain time.
Resources Mentioned:
5 Ways to Start the Money Talk Freebie
Private Instagram Community @mindmoneycommunity
*Note, you will be asked questions before being accepted as a follower. On Monday I share money tips, Thursdays I go live, and Friday is a Fun/free for all!
Buy the Book The Financial Anxiety Solution
Clarify for Couples--Self-Paced Budgeting Workshop
Boundless--6 Month Group Coaching for Couples
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[00:00:00] Hey everyone. Before the episode gets started, I just wanted to share with you where the idea for this particular YouTube and Instagram Live came from, so I have a private Instagram community @MindMoneyCommunity, and last week I went live in there talking about how to cope during this uncertain time.
[00:00:21] And I just did a 10 minute live and I got a lot of good feedback about how reassuring it was and how helpful it was, and I wanted to make it available to you. So I had gone live on march 20th on Instagram and on YouTube. And the audio you're about to hear comes from that. And if you are interested in getting information like this before I blast it out to the wider, broader public, make sure to join my private Instagram community @MindMoneyCommunity.
[00:00:53] On Monday, I talk about money tips. Thursdays I go live, which is what this podcast was inspired by, and Friday we just, we have fun. I do a free for all where I post a fun question. Last week I posted Deep Dish, Chicago style or New York style pizza and we actually have quite a blast of people responding in there.
[00:01:14] But uh, yeah, I just wanted to give you guys a little background where the topic came from and why I felt it was important to share. And it came from my private community. Hi. So I am really, really excited to be here today and to. Be offering to you guys this kind of last minute. I don't know if it's a webinar, if it's a workshop, whatever you wanna call it, but I am, I'm really excited to be here today.
[00:01:41] So a little bit of housekeeping before we get started. I just wanna kind of give you guys an overview of the format. So the way that this is gonna work is you'll see my eyes kind of dart between a couple of places. One is Instagram and that's when I'm looking over here. And then one is YouTube when I'm looking up there, Instagram, the story will disappear after 24 hours. It'll be live on YouTube, and if you hear me reference YouTube or show notes, even if you are watching on Instagram, don't worry about it.
[00:02:10] It means you can hop over to YouTube after we're done and view it there. And when I say show notes, what I'm gonna be doing is actually taking the audio from this and turning it into a podcast episode. So I wanted to make sure. That I can make this as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.
[00:02:28] So that is why if you hear me say show notes or YouTube, that's what I'm talking about. So if I am talking about links or resources or anything like that, I'll have everything linked in show notes and on YouTube. Um, the other housekeeping thing that I wanted to let you guys know about is that I'm not going to be using any of the words that might be triggering right now. Um, and you guys all know what I'm talking about. I don't even have to say it. It's kind of like Voldemort, right? You guys know what I mean? And I had been feeling this way and I had been like wanting to not talk about it. Not because I was being avoidant or ignorant or anything like that.
[00:03:06] Like I'm practicing social or I like to call it physical distancing. Cause I think we're all really needing social connection right now. Um, but I've been practicing physical distancing since Saturday that was, you know, almost a week ago today, today's March 20th. Um, So I've been definitely following the rules, washing my hands, staying away, and also giving money to local businesses, whether it's in the form of donations or shopping from them, or buying gift certificates to try and keep things going.
[00:03:37] So the reason I'm not saying that word is, Um, because it's actually starting to become kind of a trigger and it's starting to almost become traumatic when we hear it. Our body's kind of in flight, flight or freeze. So by not saying it, you guys know what I'm talking about, but it will give your physiological self a moment to just chill because you won't have to worry of when is she gonna say the dreaded C word.
[00:04:01] Right? I won't be saying it. And I had that feeling for a while. And then my internet friend, um, And, uh, Sal was kind enough to share with me. It's called Toxic Collective Energy, when we're all talking about this really scary thing, this negative thing, and how it can kind of build a life in of, of itself.
[00:04:21] So that's why I won't be saying that word. So with that, we're gonna start with a little grounding exercise. Okay. I'm not a yoga teacher, I'm not a mindfulness expert, but that's kind of the beauty of practicing mindfulness and of doing things like this, is that you don't have to be perfect, no perfection needed.
[00:04:40] And all you need to be able to do is just listen. Just listen and, and maybe take a couple of breaths and we'll get started by just quieting down. Um, for me, often when I'm practicing mindfulness, I like to close my eyes. If that doesn't feel good for you or if you are walking or driving, please do not close your eyes.
[00:05:03] And I just like to kind of breathe and connect with the flow of my breath, of the ins and of the outs. And if you are listening to this and you can't see me, I'm sitting on an ottoman. And so I'm sitting a little bit cross-legged here so I can really kind of. Be supported and just taking a couple of breaths here to just let your mind calm down.
[00:05:26] Everybody's mind has been so armed lately and we've been, if we're not in a distracted state before, what had happened a few weeks ago, we certainly are now. So just noticing that your breath is still there, your heart rate is still there, starting to connect with the different sounds in the space. For me, I can hear the heat kicking gone.
[00:05:55] I can hear a door closing. I can hear the sound of my computer working, maybe notice the aromas in the air. And a lot of us who've been fortunate enough to be able to practice physical distancing have been spending a lot of time at our computer. So I would just invite you to stretch your neck. And so what I would love for you to do if you're able and willing, and again, all these things that I'm sharing are options.
[00:06:28] You do not have to do them. They just bring your right hand up and over onto your left temple, and then on an exhale you can just gently bring your right ear towards your right shoulder and you're not yanking on it or anything like that. It's just to add like a little bit of extra touch to add some stretch to that left side of your neck.
[00:06:52] And if you want more, I know you can't see my left arm, but if you extend your left arm down and then lift your fingertips up, you'll get a nice extra juicy stretch all the way down your neck and into your shoulder, which we could probably all use today. We all tend to hold some tension in our shoulders.
[00:07:09] And then on your next exhale, just letting that right hand drop down, bringing your head back to neutral. Rolling your shoulders up on an inhale towards your ears and dropping them on an exhale and just repeating on that other side. So again, bringing your left hand up, inviting your left fingertips to touch your right temple.
[00:07:30] Exhale, bringing your left temple towards your left ear and just stretching out the side of your neck. And again, inviting you if you would like to reach your right arm long and lift your fingertips up towards this healing, to kind of deepen that stretch. And then on an exhale, just bringing your head back up hand can come up and down.
[00:07:54] And we'll stay here for just a couple more moments before we get into things. I'd invite you just to bring your chin towards your chest and maybe rock it from side to side. I'm gonna talk it through before I do it because you guys won't be able to hear me. So just bring your chin towards your chest and allowing the back of your neck to stretch out, and you can continue to play around with that.
[00:08:17] You can bring, you know, your chin up and down from side to side. I don't want anything to feel pressured or stressed or tense, but just inviting the, the weight of gravity, the weight of your head to just stretch out your neck. And when you're done kind of rolling your neck around your head around a little bit, you can go ahead and stack it right back up.
[00:08:38] Take a nice big inhale and on an exhale you can just let your eyes come open if they had been closed. Kind of readjust to the room for me. What's been really helpful in these days is just looking outside, so I'm just gonna be outside for a second. Knowing that the sun came up today, that's been helpful for me to just remember and then just kind of bringing yourself back into the room.
[00:09:05] And I'm just so thankful that you were able to do that and to practice that with me and for me to share with you that it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be pretty, you just have to, to kind of try and, and see what happens. So now that we have kind of grounded ourselves, Let's get into into why we're here, which is coping with financial anxiety, right?
[00:09:29] So what is financial anxiety? Financial anxiety is anything that makes you think, feel, or behave in an anxious or reactive way towards your money, towards your relationship with your money, which right now we're probably all feeling a little bit of uncertainty, a little bit of feeling unnerved, a little bit of discomfort with our money and anxiety is normal, okay?
[00:09:56] It is a healthy coping response to being stressed out to some sort of stressor, right? So it could be anything from a new deadline at work. To starting at a new school, to driving a new vehicle, to making a new meal. Anything that is a stressor that is coming at you, we can respond with anxiety, and with anxiety, it's just our body's way of responding with fight, flight or freeze to that stressor. And it's healthy and it's normal because what it does is it tells our body that something is potentially dangerous and it helps our body to respond to it by shutting down our digestive system so we can fight or run, and then we can often feel adrenaline.
[00:10:44] So we might sometimes feel that tingling in our fingers for some people. They notice when they're anxious, they have a hard time talking or breathing like they feel some tightness or heaviness in their chest. For some people, it can manifest up in their head headaches or their jaw can get really tight, right?
[00:10:59] So it can kind of show up in all different ways, and anxiety is okay. When anxiety gets to be problematic is when it's chronic, meaning it's happening again and again. So, for example, a normal anxiety response would be if I was doing this live, I might feel a little bit anxious. I might be feeling a little anxious during this, so I might notice that my voice cracks or that my breath is a little bit shallow, or that my stomach is a little bit in knots.
[00:11:26] But once I'm done with this live, my anxiety should calm down because the stressor of being live is then over, right? So that's a healthy anxiety response. An unhealthy anxiety response is, when the anxious response is bigger than the stressor. So it is more reactive or stronger than the stressor that is coming at it.
[00:11:48] So for example, if I was so anxious after I ended this live, or if you're listening back after I finished wrapping up this podcast, that all day I was kind of replaying in my head, oh my gosh, I can't believe I said that thing. What if the people listening or watching God? I was stupid and my stomach continues to feel a knots and my body continues to feel anxious, that's when we run into a problem and that's when we have to work on dieting it down.
[00:12:13] And that's what I would love to talk to you guys about is how do we dial down financial anxiety when the financial anxiety right now seems pretty reasonable? Seems pretty reasonable to feel a little bit anxious about your money And, and if you guys are just popping on and you see me move around a lot, cuz I'm on like this really bouncy ottoman.
[00:12:34] So I just wanna make sure that I'm moving around and able to be comfortable throughout this. So, totally lost my train of thought, but I will come back to it so it makes sense to be financially anxious right now. But I'm also hoping that today can help you guys understand that you can dial it down because what helps with things, anxiety.
[00:12:51] There's a couple of things that help with anxiety. One is information. Right. So in the mental health world, we call this psychoeducation, getting information on what anxiety is, and in the personal finance space, it's learning a little bit about financial literacy, understanding the basics of your income and your and your expenses, understanding how to invest in retirement, understanding to spend less than you earn, right? Those are some of the basic tenants of personal finance that I think. Anybody can learn and understand. I don't think that money is like super, super math heavy. I think most of it we can do pretty easily and we can plug it into an online calculator for sure at worst case scenario.
[00:13:31] So I, when it comes to coping with financial anxiety, having a little bit of knowledge can be helpful. The other thing is in the traditional world of working with anxiety, we also wanna look at the thoughts. We wanna look at our feelings, we wanna look at our actions and how those might be playing into anxiety.
[00:13:50] So if you're having an anxious thought, it's going to impact the way that your body is feeling, and it's also going to impact the way that then you respond. And the same thing goes right now with our money. Right. So unfortunately I have seen some people respond to our current uncertain financial situation by acting out of fear and by acting out of anxiety.
[00:14:14] So what I mean by that is somebody had posted that when they saw the stock market drop, they started to get panicked, right? They started to feel fearful and anxious, so their feelings were anxiety, fear, and worry. The thought was, oh my gosh, I'm losing all my money, and the behavior was, I'm going to pull all my money out of the stock market so I don't lose anymore.
[00:14:36] Right. So that is an action that is taken out of financial anxiety and not out of a wise, calm response. So a wiser calm response to that particular thing is to learn about the markets and that there are ups and downs, which I will get into in a moment. But I just wanna get through this example. So when the feeling came up of I'm anxious, I'm scared, I'm worried and that thought was, I had better pull out all of my money. A way that you could cope with it would be to go, "okay, hang on. How true is it that pulling all my money out of the stock market is going to help?" And then getting a little bit of information, a little bit of knowledge about the situation, and then saying, "oh, it's actually pretty normal that the market goes up and the market goes down. If I stay the course. I will likely recuperate my money. I'm going to leave my money in the stock market," right? That would be a way of dialing down that financial anxiety to make wise financial choices. So how can you possibly make wise financial choices when there's so much noise coming in and coming out?
[00:15:39] You have to come back to what is good for you and what is right for you in this moment, and that you have created in terms of your financial picture. In general. So if you have a financial plan of not retiring for 30 years, guess what? Everything that's been happening over these past couple of weeks, and that will continue to happen over the next couple of months, doesn't impact you because you're not going to be touching that money for 30 years.
[00:16:03] So how can you stay on track for those next 30 years, right? Without responding in a reactive type of way, you can dial down that financial anxiety. And I did not make slides because who has time? Nobody had time this week. So I have some notes. So you'll see me looking down, and that's just to make sure that I hit the big bullet points of what I wanna cover with you guys.
[00:16:25] So one other thing when financial anxiety comes up is we tend to cope with it in one of two extremes or one of two sides of the pendulum, right? We tend to either overreact where we're constantly looking at our money, we're constantly refreshing our feeds, we're constantly trying to see what's going on, or we go to the other side and totally avoid, we procrastinate on things. We don't look at things. We don't wanna hear about things. And so both of those two sides can be really strong feelings that can lead to those. Not so great thoughts and can lead to those not so great behaviors. So we want to try and find the middle ground. How can we strike a balance between refreshing your feet every minute to see what's going on with the stock market and avoiding everything and hiding in a cake?
[00:17:14] There's gotta be a middle ground, and you have to be the person who decides what that middle ground is for you. All I can share is what has been working for me, knowing that it probably will change as time goes on and as we get more information and offer that as an example for you to kind of say, okay, well Lindsay tried that.
[00:17:32] Let me try my version of that. So for me, my version of coping with my financial anxiety is I have not looked at my retirement accounts once, since all of this stuff got started. Why? Because I know that's gonna throw my anxiety up, because when I see that number drop, I'm gonna see the red and the arrow pointing down that says You've lost money.
[00:17:53] Right? And it doesn't even say like, by the way, this is an unrealized loss, which I'll get to in a second. It says, Down loss, right? So when you log in and you see that red loss arrow, of course it's gonna spike some anxiety. But let me talk about what an unrealized loss is. An unrealized loss is when the market goes down, right?
[00:18:14] Loss, but you have not realized that loss or that loss has not happened to you because you have not cashed out of the market. You have not sold your shares in the stock market. So right now, because I'm not planning on retiring today or tomorrow, because I am not planning on using the money that is in my investment accounts within my retire, underneath me, retirement umbrellas that I have set up, it doesn't make sense for me to log in and to be triggered and anxious, so I am not looking at it. And that is a healthy distraction. That is not avoidance of putting my head in the sand, and that's what works for me. So that's an example of how I've been able to strike a balance between the two is knowing that I'm not purposefully avoiding my money. I'm just purposefully avoiding this one little segment of it that I know is gonna trigger some anxiety and some panic. So I'm avoiding that particular piece.
[00:19:08] Okay, so avoidance versus distraction I think is also really helpful when we're dealing with financial anxiety. So distraction is like a healthy coping skill. It's what people like to now call self-care, but it's doing anything that is time limited to take your mind off of a stressor, and that is the time limited. Example that I just gave is not looking at my retirement accounts. Avoidance on the other hand is chronic and it's not time limited, and it seems like it's really helpful, but in fact it's quite harmful because you're not actually dealing with something.
[00:19:45] So avoidance in our current financial situation might be not looking at how much money is coming in and how much money is going out, right? That might be avoidance because you're scared of what might be there. So instead of looking at how much money's coming in and how much go is going out, you're avoiding it, but all that is doing is probably contributing to some additional financial anxiety.
[00:20:08] So let's get into some of the things you can do during times of financial uncertainty to quiet your financial anxiety. So I mentioned earlier that having some information is really helpful. So some basic information that you're gonna need right now is how much money are you making and how much money are you spending?
[00:20:27] Right? How much are you bringing in and how much is going out? Are there things that you can do to increase your income. Are there things that you can do to decrease your spending to cope with this? Somewhat uncertain time, so this is a really good time to take a look at the subscription services that you're probably not using. It's a good time to maybe be a little bit more comfortable buying brands of food or toilet paper. You normally want it, right? There are some things we can do right then and there to kind of quiet it down. I've seen some people posting about calling their car insurance provider, "hey Eric, and saying, you know, I'm not driving anymore. Can we work on lowering my monthly payment?" Right. That's a great option. So these are just temporary things that we can do to kind of work on making sure that the amount of money we're spending is a little bit more stable.
[00:21:24] When I say cut subscriptions, I'm talking about cutting subscriptions that you are not using. So if you are using a subscription that is bringing you value and is bringing you joy and is helping to keep you sane, please by all means, keep that right. So I just restarted one of my workout streaming subscriptions last night because I needed to move my body and I obviously, can only go on so many walks.
[00:21:47] I am not a runner and I needed to do something else, and so I restarted a subscription right now. So it's not about like viciously slashing every single thing. It's about getting rid of the things that are not important to you at this snapshot in time. So that's one way to cope with financial anxieties. Know your ins, know your outs, and see if you can tweak some of the things that you're spending on so that you're spending in alignment with your values and for what you need right now.
[00:22:15] Okay, let's talk about emergency funds. So a sad statistic is that something around 70% of Americans have less than a thousand dollars available to them in liquid cash. Liquid cash is a fancy way of saying money in the bank that you could go get out today if you wanted to get out. So a lot of people right now are struggling because they are used to paying their bills and paying for things with the money that they are planning on coming in. And they don't have a cushion, they don't have an emergency fund.
[00:22:50] So now is a great time to bulk up that emergency fund because a lot of us, unfortunately because of the situation we are in, are spending less money, right? We're not able to go out to restaurants, we're not able to go out to movies. We are not able to go out and do a lot of activities that cost money. So now is a good time to take the money.
[00:23:09] That last month you might have been spending on entertainment and this month put it into an emergency fund and that should be used only in the event of an emergency. Right. We've seen states do this lately. A lot of states are declaring state of emergency, which means they can then tap into funds that are set aside only to be used in cases like this.
[00:23:29] Okay. So you need to be working on your own emergency fund right now. Liquid emergency funds, yes. What else? Oh, now is a really good time when it comes to coping with financial anxiety to be thinking about work and about transferable skills. And I can already hear you going, why the hell would I be thinking about work?
[00:23:53] The economy is tanking. We're gonna head into a bare market, a recession is coming, why do you want me to think about work? Well, because guess what? People still work. People still have jobs. We still have to contribute to the economy. I'd read that some delivery services, we're hiring up to 10,000 people right now because there's such a demand for people to deliver things, right?
[00:24:16] We know that. I'm guessing there's going to be an increased demand for, I feel like I have a sneeze coming on, and now that I've said that it won't happen. It's gonna drive me a little bit crazy. Anyway, I have a feeling there's gonna be an increased demand for children's activities, right? So all of these kids are stuck at home and the parents are like, "oh my gosh, I can only give you so much iPad time." I have a feeling there's gonna be a huge demand for something that that's either creative educational, that is physical for these kids to do. So one of my cousins had posted in a group chat like a picture of a, I'm gonna get this wrong, so just deal with it like the cutout of a hockey goal and like a hockey goalie so that the kids could shoot and practice.
[00:25:08] Making goals in hockey. Oh gosh. I know there's sports people out there that are like, that's wrong, but that's what I think it's called. Anyway, when I saw that, I was like, oh my gosh. That is such a perfect opportunity for somebody who maybe had been a hockey coach. For somebody who had been a karate teacher, for somebody who teaches music lessons, to bring it online and to be able to deliver it to parents and to charge for it, right?
[00:25:34] You don't have to charge an arm and a leg for this stuff, but I don't know about you. I don't have kids, but I have a dog and I would pay a lot of money right now for anything that. Held her attention longer than a frozen KONG because I get in like 45 good minutes of work before it's just a nightmare.
[00:25:51] So I can only imagine what it must be like with kids. So if you were in that kind of a space and you were doing freelance work, or maybe if you weren't doing that at all, but you have those skills, those are things that people would pay for. And if you come at me and you say, nobody has money for things, I don't believe you.
[00:26:09] And what you can do to kind of strike that balance is say, okay, I'm gonna take in 10 kids paid and then two kids I'll take in on a scholarship. Right? You can make that determination for yourself, but we all need money to make the world go round. And I can't believe I just said that out loud, but it has become abundantly clear to me.
[00:26:29] That when we stop spending, when I look out and I see the economy as like ground to a halt, it's because we're not out spending and exchanging money with one another. So back to career stuff. Now my feet are asleep. I knew this was gonna happen. So back to career stuff that was like kind of a tangent on freelancing and getting creative.
[00:26:51] Um, But I think it's a good time to take a look at your resume. Take a look at what skills you have available, think about what things might be marketable right now. Think about what things people might need right now and see what you can do there to contribute to your community and also to contribute to your household income right now. So those are some thoughts on things like freelancing and work when we're in a time of financial anxiety of like, what can you do? You can take a look at your skills and see who or what might meet them and the other thing I will say about freelancers and people in the gig economy. As I read a stat, I want to say it was on CNN or BBC, but it could have been somewhere else, but the freelancers and people in the gig economy make up to 35% of our nation's, I'm in the US ,income, so I don't think that people are just gonna say like, oh, screw the gig economy workers. That's a third of our workforce. So you are not going to be left behind. You know, I've been reading about these bills coming out to offer a little bit of relief when it comes to being mindful of your money.
[00:28:02] Right now we are actually, I'm seeing so much common humanity. I've seen landlords. Say, "pay me half of the rent or pay me in May, or pay what you can." I have seen local restaurants here since they can't do a lot of business. Traditionally. I have seen them band together and create boxed lunches for students and give them to them for free. Right. I've seen a ton of common humanity right now. So call up your energy provider. Call up your internet provider. Call up your current insurance provider and see what they're willing to do for you. They would rather have some money than no money and to have a little bit less money that you have to send out right now.
[00:28:43] If that's gonna quiet your financial anxiety, then that is what I would love for you to do. So that is a little bit more about the money management piece. Here's one other thing I wanna say about working. I'm incredibly fortunate to be able to work from home, right?
[00:29:00] So I'm a practicing therapist, I'm a financial therapist, but I'm allowed to practice via video. I have the luxury being able to do that. I know plenty of people don't. So I just, I want for you to be cognizant of those that you see out and about, rather than immediately jumping to conclusions and being like, "oh, what are they doing? They're putting us all at risk." It could very well be going to work. So don't be a jerk right now. Right? People need to stock our shelves. People need to make sure that our pharmacy or that our prescriptions are getting refilled. Obviously, our healthcare workers are working bananas like crazy right now.
[00:29:38] All of the delivery drivers, right, postal service, UPS FedEx, all that, all those folks are out there working so that we can be home and stay safe. And I don't want for you to shame other people. And if you're in that category where you do have to go out and work. That's fantastic. I'm so glad that you're able to go out there and work and thank you for doing that work and all this stuff about flattening the curve.
[00:30:04] It does account for people going out and moving, right? It's like one in eight or one or sixteen people can be out and about moving, but the rest of us need to stay home. So I just wanted to throw that out there cuz I've seen some people be a little bit harsh either towards themselves if they are in a position where they do have to leave their houses to go work.
[00:30:24] And I've also seen other people shame other people for leaving their houses. So just, I just wanted to throw that out there. I went through all of that really quickly. Questions and answers. Whew. I like started to get my sweat on with that one who has questions about financial anxiety or coping with it in an uncertain time.
[00:30:48] I would be happy to take questions. Somebody had emailed me ahead of time about questions, about freelancers. Those are my thoughts on that. I could also go, actually, let me dig into that one just a touch more, because that one, I had talked about a lot of the freelance stuff, but I also wanted to just kind of highlight.
[00:31:07] That for so many people, these good jobs, these stable jobs, we're now seeing the cracks in them. Right? So I used to work in psychiatric research at a very fancy schmancy university healthcare center that is probably quite stable. And they're all scrambling too, right? So what I, I'm not saying that to shame anybody. I'm just saying that, that this idea that there is one specific industry or one specific job that. Won't be impacted in some way, shape, or form by the shape of our economy just it isn't true. So rather than saying like, oh, I'm gonna stop freelancing, I'm gonna stop my entrepreneurship, this is time to really jump into it, because now we see that there is no such thing as a stable job.
[00:31:55] Some jobs may have more stability than others, but there are no jobs that aren't ever at risk of. Having hours cut or having people lose their job. So for those folks who are in that freelancing entrepreneur space, I just wanted to offer that to you guys as well, that like, it's okay, you're taking just as much risk as you would if you were clocking in and clocking out at like, I don't know. I was gonna say a real job, but my job's pretty real and I'm an entrepreneur, so I don't know. So these things, they happen, and again, this is not to increase your anxiety. If anything, it is for me to say to you, crystal clear, that if you are an entrepreneur, if you are a freelancer, you get the choice of betting on yourself versus betting on somebody else. And for me, I'm gonna bet on myself all the time I put in my notice at my traditional job. Hi everyone. You know who you are, my traditional group practice, and I'm leaving on March 31st.
[00:32:56] This timing certainly isn't super ideal. But I'm not staying, right. I have decided, I know this is what I am meant to do. I know that I am called to work with couples around their money issues and around their stressors, and to help them live stronger, more powerful lives by talking about money. I just do.
[00:33:17] I know that's what I'm good at and. That's what I'm gonna keep doing. Any specific questions about financial anxiety that I can help you guys answer? Oh, retirement. Somebody said, what if I am close to retirement, right?
[00:33:31] Cause I mentioned earlier this idea of being like 30 years or 20 years, or 10 years away from retirement. What if you are close to retirement right now? So what I would say, I am not a financial advisor. I will always put disclaimers up when I post this on YouTube. The disclaimers will be there, and when this is in my show notes, the disclaimers will be there.
[00:33:49] But what I would say is that this is why we have what they call diversified portfolios. That just means your money is in a variety of places, whether it's stocks, bonds, cash, et cetera. So as you're getting older, you should be rebalancing that portfolio so it's less stock heavy and heavier in your cash and bond options.
[00:34:12] So if you are nearing retirement, you should have already been rebalancing that portfolio to be less risky for these moments in the stock market that do happen. By the way, they happen all the time. They happen every 10 to 20 years, right? Bull market means market goes up. Bear market means market goes down.
[00:34:30] This has happened and it will continue to happen, and investors need to just ride the wave out. So if you are close to retirement, hopefully you've been rebalancing your portfolio, and if you have not, it's also okay. Because you are not going to pull all of your money out this year. The idea of retirement is that you're withdrawing about 4% every single year.
[00:34:53] So you're not going to go, okay, now I'm gonna take it all out and have nothing left. You're gonna take some out and then the money that is still in there will start to come back, right? We know that the stocks usually will start to kind of climb back up before our economy climbs back up. So we will see that happening and then our economy will come after it.
[00:35:14] So I can't predict the future of how long this will last, but I imagine if we look at history, it'll be somewhere in that one to four year range for us to kind of get back and then start creeping back up to be getting that money built up the way that it would have been investing invested. Ooh, wow. You know, sometimes I really surprise myself in how much I can talk anyway. I like to try and make sure that the shit that seems super scary is not scary. But that's the problem is that so many people in the personal finance space use jargon and shame, and then people are like, whoa, that's scary. I don't wanna do that. And then it, it isolates people from being able to engage with their money.
[00:36:00] Right. So that's, that's a whole nother thing. So other questions about financial anxiety that I can help you guys out with. So while you guys are brainstorming on questions, I want to make sure you guys know the work that I do.
[00:36:17] I wrote a book, it's called The Financial Anxiety Solution. You can get it anywhere on the innerwebs. You can get it on Amazon, you can go to IndieBound, Barnes and Noble, Target.com, type in the Financial Anxiety Solution, and you can buy my book. I don't make the price of my book, but when I last looked, it was on sale. It was originally $15.95, and the last time I looked it was $12.95. So you might be able to get a couple bucks. Off and when you buy my book and send me proof of purchase, I will send you a little video training on how to align your spending and saving with your values. I will put that in the show notes slash on YouTube it's at MindMoneyBalance.com/Podcast. And the reason it's there is MindMoneyBalance.com/Podcast is because yes, my podcast episodes are all there, but that's a gift I give to my podcast listeners so you can have that. The other thing is that I work with couples. Only through a group-based coaching program that I will be opening up in April, but if you wanna get your hands on something in the meantime, I had done a workshop back in January called Clarify for Couples, which is a two and a half plus hour workshop where I walk you through.
[00:37:38] Aligning your spending and saving with your values and then getting all your money automated. So I actually rerecorded it as standalone nodule so you can do it yourself. So that's now available on my website too. MindMoneyBalance.com/Clarify. All right. Eric has a question. Could you restate what you said about subscriptions?
[00:37:59] Yes, yes, I can. So what I had said about subscriptions is that right now, with this uncertainty in the market, it's important to make sure that what you are spending on only is things that you need. And when I say need, I am not talking just about food and shelter. I also need to move my body. I also need my mental health to be in a good space.
[00:38:26] So for me, I actually cut a bunch of subscriptions back in December, so I don't have a good, like right here and now answer. Back in December, I had gotten rid of, some software programs that I wasn't using, some subscriptions that weren't working for me, so I cut those.
[00:38:40] But I was saying that I just restarted a streaming service yesterday so that I, an exercise streaming service so I could move my body now that I'm in a new space. So it's not about cutting out every single thing, but it's just about kind of auditing what you're sending your money. On and making sure that the money you are spending right now really is good for your physical health, your mental health, making sure that is really making you happy and is in alignment with your values given where we are today.
[00:39:09] So I hope that helps answer your question. Yay. I am so excited that you guys were all able to show up today. So just to recap, if you popped on late, this is on YouTube as well, so there will be a link. And the nice thing about YouTube is that in the description box, I can put all of the links. Down of the things that I talked about, whether it's my book, whether it's the workshop, I also will be linking in there a a couple of things, a blog post to one of my friends, Anna Salam, she wrote about toxic collective energy, and that's why I'm not using this particular word in this livestream slash podcast.
[00:39:55] And I will also be putting in a link of financial resources. The New York Times has kind of collected all of the different places that you can call if you need financial assistance right now. So everything is kind of compiled there. And as I say that out loud, I might be looking for a different resource because they only let you access so many articles a month.
[00:40:17] But anyway, it, it, it has a nice collective of things like how, who to call, who to email. When it comes to making sure you have food, making sure that you can get your student loans deferred if you need them deferred for a little bit. It's got resources on that federal aid check plan. That is not what it is called, but that is the only thing that I can think of right now.
[00:40:38] So I will link that there as well. So you guys will have all of those resources. All right. I hope you guys are feeling a little less anxious about your financial situation. I, we will get through this. We will, as a society, as a culture, we have gotten through hardship before and we will get through hardship again.
[00:41:00] This has, maybe not this exact thing has happened, but similar things have happened that have turned our world's upside down. We've all experienced trauma, whether it's hyper-local or very global. And I'm not about to get into, well, I experienced this and you didn't. Or you didn't and I didn't. Because when we start comparing our traumas, we, we all lose.
[00:41:21] But we've all done hard shit and we've all come out on the other end. And that's just me sharing with you. That I trust in your resilience, and we will get through this together. All right, take good care of you guys. Thank you so, so much for hopping on and enjoy the weekend if you can try and make it a little bit different than the rest of your week.
[00:41:42] Bye. Thank you so much for tuning into that episode. I wanted to clarify a couple of the resources that I'd mentioned when I'd gone live. As you can imagine, when you're going live, not everything comes out exactly as you were hoping. So I wanted to clarify the New York Times resource that I had mentioned.
[00:41:59] I am going to put it in my show notes, but it's already being covered in a different. Compilation of Covid coping resources by my friend Erin Lowry, who wrote the Broke Millennial books. So she has put together this huge resource vault in Google that includes things like job openings, help with food, financial resources, financial relief, so the New York Times thing is in there, but a bunch of other resources are there as well.
[00:42:29] Additionally, there is a Google Doc that I have put in the show notes of 1500 different remote companies that are currently hiring. So if you are looking for work because of what's going on in our economy right now, I highly recommend that you check that out and all the other things that I mentioned, including how to buy my book, the Financial Anxiety Solution.
[00:42:50] How to join my self-paced budgeting workshop called Clarify for Couples, and how to get information on my six month group coaching for couples called Boundless is all in the show notes. Thank you so so much for tuning in and for letting me go a little bit off of what I had anticipated on sharing with you guys so I could address what was going on in here.
[00:43:11] And now I will see you guys right here. Next week. If you love this episode, take a screenshot and tag me on Instagram at Mind Money Balance with your favorite takeaway. I love seeing what resonates with my listeners and sharing it in my stories. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week right here.