Chapter 11 The Crisis Point

In a moment of crisis, a person’s value system often shifts. Crises are hard to go through, but typically people come out better on the other side. When I came clean to Mark about our debt, I put myself in a crisis moment. Let me remind you that we were in a money crisis for a long time, but we never took any action to fix it. I could have continued to ignore it even longer, but I had had enough and knew that I had to stop. After our conversation in the bedroom that night, we decided to put ourselves into crisis mode so that we could change our lives forever.

I was so sick and tired of being broke all the time and pretending I had it all together. I felt there was more to life than just buying things on credit cards, struggling to pay the bills, and then repeating the process all over again. I knew that there is more to life than spending money, but why is it so hard to do?

If you are currently making enough money to live on, but are continuing to use credit cards, you may not yet be at that point of crisis that will force you to make changes. But what if you lose your job and suddenly find yourself in crisis mode? What will you do then?

I hear from people every day that they had a sudden job loss and were left with no savings and no backup plan. That is a crisis I don’t want you to face. You don’t have to wait until a crisis hits that is out of your control. Take a look at your finances now, put yourself in crisis mode, and figure out how to fix what isn’t working. To avoid finding yourself in an uncontrollable situation caused by a terrible life event, plan ahead and create your own opportunity to figure out why you are spending and how to fix it.

How do you know if you are in a money crisis? If you answer yes to any of the questions below, you most likely are in a money crisis.

If you answered yes to any one of these, you have a problem. If you answered yes to two or more, you are in a money crisis. You now have a choice to make: Do you want to continue to live this way, or are you ready to make a change?

Start now and change your spending to reflect your values while you still have control, before you are forced to change later on. Ben Franklin said, “Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants.” Is your spending truly making you happy? Really, truly, deep down in your bones happy? My guess is no, because Spenders spend to fill a void, then once that high wears off they need to spend again. Spending like this will never make you happy, and a Chronic Spender will never spend in line with her values until she realizes this.

In order to make your spending a reflection of your values, you need to focus on creating a budget that reflects what you hold dear. If you really want your kids to go to college, then you should start saving and freeing up money in your monthly budget so you can make that a reality.

Ask yourself right now, what are you unwilling to give up at the expense of being in debt? Why is that? Are you so accustomed to living the way you want that you refuse to be uncomfortable for a brief time in your life? Do you refuse to give up some things because you don’t know how you will function without them? Remember, the sacrifice isn’t forever; it is temporary. But if you never start sacrificing your wants to your needs, this pattern just might follow you around for the rest of your life.

The things you are not willing to give up and change are the things keeping you from a true value switch. That mind-set and those things are holding you back from a stress-free and debt-free life.

As I went through this process myself, I realized there was a lot that I was unwilling to give up. The list included eating at restaurants, the freedom to buy what I want when I want it, clothing, impulse purchases, toys for my kids, and much more! I wish I could tell you that once I realized this I quickly changed my priorities. I didn’t. It was a long process to get to where I am, and it started with learning the B-word. Budget.

Budgets are something that every Spender runs from. The good news is that I found a few secrets for creating a successful budget for Spenders, and in the next chapter I’ll share them with you.