How do your friends manage their money?
Maybe you don’t know the answer to that question. A lot of people don’t want to talk about money concepts or spending habits with friends. I am not saying that we should be getting professional advice from unqualified people. However, gone are the days of community and true co-ops. Imagine if we all collaborated and disseminated information as a group, in town hall meetings, where collective efforts with many counselors we could reason out sound solutions. Okay, maybe I am jumping off a cliff with this one, but at least talking money concepts with friends should be a normal part of the conversation.
Instead, what I see too often is people one upping each other with big screens, vehicle purchases, and bigger mortgages. I once spoke with a wealthy wise man who started to lose friends because he was driving the same car for over ten years and it was starting to rust out. His friends began to think that he was off track financially and that his business was sliding. They started to exclude him from social affairs. Interestingly though, his friends were the ones with the financial challenges. So the wise man decided that he would go out and write a check for brand new fully loaded $60,000 car and wanted to see what the reaction of his friends would be.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, his friends started to pay more attention to him and they came back around. My point is, just because your friends have the latest and greatest, the new house, the new car, and on and on, does not mean they have financial security and vice versa. Believe me, I have had clients who live in million dollar houses.
If you don’t already know, I draft proposals to creditors and put together debt consolidation, debt management plans. We are a national company with over 60 offices. Every single one of our offices can tell you the same thing. Do not judge somebody’s financial health by the car they drive or the house they live in. I mean that in both ways. Items of large monetary value can be paid for so do not assume that someone has debt either. If someone is living in an in expensive house and driving an older car, they very well could be rock solid financially.
My point in all of this is; why don’t we talk to each other? Now of course you have to trust the person who you are talking to. In most cases our lives are too busy to build in depth relationships. But hey, if your “friend” looks down upon you after opening up and talking about your finances, did you really have a friend? I’ll let you answer that as it is a different topic in itself. I have had many people say to me that they are relieved to finally talk about their financial challenges and that because they have talked about it, they are more than ready to now do something about it. Even people that don’t have what we would call a financial challenge have thanked me for the conversation and insight as I too thank them for the conversation. To all people I say join the conversation. Start the conversation. Become financially aware.
There is more to life than debt and assets. Do a check-up, keep things in order, solve your debt, plan for the future. Then put that plan in the file cabinet and go live life. Check on it once a month to make sure you are staying on track and make adjustments as necessary. For my clients, we look for the root of the problem, solve that problem, and then put measures in place so the problem doesn’t come back. Debt is not the end of life. Deal with it as efficaciously as possible and then move on.
