I Have No Money, Now What?

It was a Wednesday afternoon in mid July, back in the year 1986. John had an auto repair shop that was now running great after six years of working his business on a shoestring budget. He was always there for his customers, doing the best with the equipment he had and it was finally hitting home. On Monday John was in court about a complaint about his business. It seems that some people didn’t like how he did his work – not the work itself, the operation of his business location. If you needed a repair John would look at your car and fix it if you were referred by a friend. Many times he fixed the car and took whatever money the new customer could afford to pay. He wrote many people a bill but never was able to see them pay. He believed in the karma of life, what you do for others will come back to you.

With his way of doing business he always seemed to have worked to do. There seemed to be a never-ending line of work for him. Even though many times money was tight, he always seemed to have the money to pay his employees. Well this was a first. For months he dealt with the court because of complaints from city and other people in the business about how he was not really up to code on his business property. Now he had to pay fines and follow city codes for the way his property was maintained. This left him for the first time in six years with no money to make his payroll that Friday. I tell this story of an old friend of mine, John, who had never in his life faced the issue up till now of not having the money – not having money to the point he really did not know how he was going to pay.

Many people out there are facing money problems. When you are in the midst of those money problems, you feel it is the end of the world. The older we get, the more times it happens, the less we usually sweat about it. But the first time you ever face this issue and face it hard, it brings many strong men and woman to places they never before thought they would ever turn.

Not having enough money, is one of the toughest “lost” things we face in this world. It feels like we have been torn from the real world. If you ever watch or have worked for a boss who has lived this part of running a business, you get to see the real side of them, anger comes out. They head to the track to gamble, they buy lottery tickets. They do everything wrong at first. It’s when we hit the bottom and we have nowhere to look but up that we see we should have looked up to begin with.

I few years ago I was in this very money situation. Business was not bringing in the income needed to pay for equipment, to keep employees working a full week. I made a few wrong choices and ended up worse than my buddy John. I ended up with no home, no car, no job, no business. What should we do when facing no money?

A few weeks back I wrote about how I sold some things around the house to make an investment in Apple stock. It was like I took junk and turned it into $1,200. Since that time I have sold the stock at just under $400 a share and now that very stock is at selling at about $350 a share.

If you are without money you could sell some things that are not needed to find extra money. But be sure you know what your investments will be to make that money grow. You see most people will sell the items and use the money to pay off all the bills they owe, or take half of it and buy a new toy. That toy will make you happy for a while, but if you don’t first get your money problem fixed, soon you will be selling that toy at ½ what you paid for it to pay off other debts. If you don’t have a way to make your money grow properly, you could have made the investment in the stock like I did and think, “Oh, I’m all set. This stock is growing.” Then look at where that stock is today with the stock market crash the last few weeks only to find out you have a $250 value stock you paid $300 for.

We are always going to be facing money issues in our lives. I tell people to always build yourself a “what if” plan. This is not like they sell you on the insurance commercial but start by build up a back-up money plan just for those rainy days. If you have two months’ salary in an account you can reach in less than five days, then you will be able to be ready for tough times before they get here.

If you are facing tough money problems and looking for ideas to get you out, start by talking with a financial planner. Get some advice from someone who is not to closely related to you but an outside source to help you get yourself on a track that only builds for you. And remember my theory on this there: is no such thing as a money problem, there is only an idea problem.

John closed his business not to long after this happened, he sold tools in the shop to pay his employees, and gave up on his business, feeling disheartened over city regulations that were there as a standard in his city. He went on to create another company five years later and is still working but learned to live in the regulations of his industry. Thus John still has a success story in his life; he just had to learn what to take care of.

I’m Tim Gillette the Rocker Life Coach. It’s time for you to live the life you always wanted, to learn to love what you do and those you share life with, and be a RockStar in your world. Are you ready to take the step of working with a Life Coach to help you reach your full potential?