How to start again from nothing (financially and otherwise)

Starting again from nothing is something that we all have to do at some point. Sometimes its after a big purchase (such as a house or a car) and sometimes its after a breakup, or emergency in your life which you have to spend money on. It will probably leave you feeling raw, dejected and hurt.

So what can you do? Here are some steps which will help:

1- Assess your situation honestly, if you havent already, do a budget of your incomings and outgoings (more information earlier in the blog on this)

2- Figure out what you DO have, such as family, friends, cars, houses, anything, even the clothes on your back if thats all you have, or nothing! Be thankful for what you do have, you can be virtually guarranteed there are others worse off out there!

3- Dont be too proud to shop for clothes from charity shops, or to eat budget food. Often people who are rich do this! (How do you think they got rich??) Also if someone offers you help then you could do worse than let a friend help you. Just make sure you pay them back when times get better :)

4- Learn to appreciate the simple things in life, finding coins on the ground for example, or taking a nice long walk.

5- Forgive yourself for allowing yourself to be in this position, theres no shame to it, the quicker you stop feeling sorry for yourself the quicker you can be back on the road to financial freedom!

6- Keep your budget in order, and feel good when you are reaching small goals you set yourself, first ten pounds/dollars etc, each small step is 1 more step along the road!

7- Realise that you will get there one day, and learn from the mistakes you made to get into this position in the first place.

Goals- My thoughts on them

Goals-My thoughts on them

I like to think goals are part of a person’s make-up, a physical or spiritual part of them. I have had many goals in my life, and have achieved some of them, replaced them with new goals, or changed my mind about certain goals and forgotten about them because they were probably dumb thoughts of a teenager (being a travelling guitar player in Britain at 15 years old?? Ok, it may happen for some people, but as I got older I changed my mind) The point is, goals are very personal. Some of my achieved goals have been:

Find the love of my life, (my fiancé) J

Buy a house with a garage, driveway, 3 bedrooms and a back garden

Buy and restore a classic car (My purple panda parade)

Go on a holiday with my best buddy (Egypt in 2009)

Make money from Youtube ($63.00 so far!)

And a few other things which are a bit personal ;) Some of my goals I have still to achieve are:

Go to Austrailia (I had originally planned to emigrate to Austrailia, or at least spend a long time there working etc, but meeting the love of my life changed that )

Marry my fiancé (wedding is booked for August 2014)

Go to Florida USA (Hoping to do this for our honeymoon)

Go to New York City USA in winter

Go to Austria and Germany

Get a new (bigger) garage

Get new house windows

Have kids

Some of my achieved and on the list goals don’t require money to do, but you will notice that the vast majority of them do.

If I was to buy/do everything I want to do starting tomorrow, I would need somewhere in the region of £25000. If I managed to save £500 every month (which I am attempting to do) without spending any, which is very difficult, I would be able to do this in about 4 and a half years. But unfortunetly life doesn’t always work like that, sometimes you have to play the long game, and bide your time. This is very difficult to do, but recently I was talking with J Money who runs budgetsaresexy.com blog, (Its amazing, check it out!) and his advice on the question of the long game was basically to break all my goals up into chunks, and celebrate at markers along the way! It doesn’t have to be an expensive celebration, just maybe bake some cakes and have a little party, or go to the cinema or something, but breaking up the goals and celebrating markers along the way definitely will help things! So I wanted to pass that info along! But how do you guys “Play the long game”?