When Things Go Wrong
There’s not a lot that I can tell you with utter certainty, but here’s something I know for sure: things will go wrong.
When they do, and you’re looking for advice about what to do about it, it’s frustrating to find lists of things you should have done in the past, like “make sure you have adequate disability insurance” or “build an emergency fund”. All decent suggestions, but all things you need a time machine for.
I don’t have a time machine. Do you?
So here’s what to do when things go wrong and you find out you didn’t do all the “right things” back when they might have been possible:
Remember that you’ve done this before
My friend Chris Enns said this in a Because Money episode a long time ago. It was so long ago that I forget which episode it was, but I’ll never forget what he said, which was: you’ve done hard things before. Maybe not these same hard things, but something difficult, and you got through it. What could you use from the last time to help you through this time?
You are adaptable and resourceful. It might not feel like it right now, but you are, and you’ll get through this like you’ve gotten through everything else life has thrown at you.
You might not come through it unscathed…in fact, you probably won’t. Your goal isn’t to get back to the way things were, just to get through and build something new at the other end.
List what you have
When you can find a moment (or a couple of moments) of calm, with bandwidth to think, make an inventory of all the tools you have available to help you through this.
What’s going to be helpful to you during whatever hard time you’re going through might be different than what’s going to be helpful to me, but the most important thing about this exercise is that you have way more tools than just financial ones.
Broadly, you could group what you have under a couple of different categories: people, programs, and money.
People: Who do you know that can help? Who do your friends and family know? Who knows what you need to know right now? Who has the things you don’t have (wheels, strength, time, knowledge, connections)?
Programs: Does your municipality have programs designed for these circumstances? Are there charities and nonprofits serving your community in this particular way?
Money: Do you have savings? Insurance? (Make sure to check your employee benefit booklet if you have coverage through work, because there’s a lot of stuff in there that you might have skimmed over the first time you got it.) A line of credit? A mortgage that you can have your payments deferred on and the interest capitalized (yes, that’s a thing)?
Ask for help
A fatal flaw in our culture of self-reliance and independence is an absolute unwillingness to ask for or receive help. I know it, because I suffer from it too. I’ll do almost anything for someone else…but let someone else do something for me? Oof, that’s hard. I’m working on it.
This extends to programs too, by the way. Employment Insurance and social assistance programs, as demoralizing as those in power have made the process of applying for and receiving them, are there to be used if you can.
There’s no shame in it. And yet there are plenty of people who could receive it but don’t, because asking for that kind of help is a bridge too far.
Don’t be those people.
Do what you have to do
That’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it? Do what you have to do to get through this, and worry about everything else later.
I’ll leave you with something I said in six years ago, almost to the day, just after the world shut down to beat COVID and we thought our governments might prioritize people over profit (remember that?):
For most of us, there is no getting out of this unscathed. I don’t mean that in a doom and gloom sense, although I don’t want to minimize the fear some of us are feeling, particularly those who are feeling abandoned by their governments at the moment.
What I want all of us to let go of is the idea that we would have been just fine if only we had prepared better. If only we had paid more attention to our cash flow, or finally topped up that emergency fund, or rebalanced the portfolio, or whatever.
No one feels good about this and no one has their shit together, so let yourself drop that particular burden.
Yesterday is over and you’re starting from today. Just do what you can to take care of yourself and your neighbours. To get through, never mind get ahead.
There’s no magical personal finance cheat code that you can punch in the exact right order to get through [gestures] all this with your debt repayment plan intact or on track with your net worth goals. We’re all going to have to recalibrate.
Being affected financially or emotionally by a global pandemic and resulting economic (upheaval? Shitstorm? Your choice) isn’t a personal failure.
Don’t let anyone shame you into thinking otherwise.