If You Live in Financial Despair, There’s No Space for Hope

Our latest guest, ‪@jessicamoorhouse‬, had a great answer when Dave asked her how people can get ahead financially in this new high-cost-of-living environment.

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When people listen to all of this, they say, Great, I get on top of the mental challenges, the emotional challenges. But the bottom line is, I’m not making enough money relative to my costs. It’s basic arithmetic right now. Even if I do everything that Jessica’s teaching effectively, How do I build up my down payment fund? How do I handle this new high cost of living in this crazy housing market, etc.? What do you say to those people?

Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s a common story here often. But when you just start kind of going and spiraling and be like, well, everything’s impossible, then you get into this place of just despair. Like, what’s the point? And we never want to get into that place. It’s hard to get out. And it’s a very, a very strong emotion. And, when you are living in despair, there’s no space for hope, and that means if you don’t have hope, then there’s no motivation to take any kind of action. You’ve got to believe that even though things are maybe not where you want them to be now, baby steps will allow you to improve your situation.

A lot of people who are younger may not think that, and I totally get it. Cause I also felt the same thing when I was that age, but I will say that you have to focus on what can I control? What do I not have control over? And I have to just let go of and, sometimes you have to do head down eyes on your own paper and just do the work and give it a few years to see the progress you’ve made.

But if you just kind of throw your hands up and say, well, it’s impossible. I’ll never be a homeowner. Like, nothing’s worth it. Blah, blah, blah. And then you just keep doing what you’re doing, which maybe is overspending and you’re not paying attention to paying off your debts and you’re not putting anything into savings and investments. You’re going to be in the exact same space, if not a worse place in a few years, we want to do better. And so you’ve got to recognize, okay, what can I do? And it’s very slow at first. That’s the hardest part when you’re, you want to see instant results. It really isn’t until you get to a certain tipping point.

And for me, I’d say maybe it was after five or six years that I’m like, Oh, wow. Hello, that’s kind of crazy. Look at these things, compound, look at the progress. And then you can kind of, then, then you start believing things that people have been telling you for years ago. If you just do this, this, and this, you’re going to see over time, it’s going to be worth it, but you have to, again, going back to patients, you’ve got to be patient.