Q. I know saving money is important, but what if there’s nothing left over to save?
A. I’ll let Suzanne Ahmed Leonora respond. She answers this question better than I ever could. When I got an email from her last week, I was so inspired, she gave me permission to share it with you.
Q: Does it make sense to keep putting cash in savings accounts which pay next to nothing?
A: Yes!!! Money you won’t need in the next 3-5 years should be in the market, where it can earn a lot more. But it’s important to set aside cash, even small amounts, on a regular basis. Even better if it’s in a higher yield online account like Ally or Capital One.
Here are 3 reasons why savings is smart, even when interest rates are rock-bottom.
Reason #1— Peace of Mind. Unexpected emergencies are inevitable. Your cat needs surgery. You need a root canal. Your kids need new shoes. Without ready cash, you’ll turn to plastic. But if those bills go unpaid, the sky-high interest will keep ratcheting up, wreaking havoc on your credit rating, not to mention your serenity.
Reason #2— Protection. Of course, if you have a brokerage account, you could always sell stock to cover your costs. But what if the market is tanking, forcing you to take a big loss? Or worse, your only recourse, other than debt, is to borrow from your retirement fund, incurring fines and penalties, ruining your plans to retire and endangering your future security.
Reason #3—Guilt-free Pleasures. Once travel restrictions are eased, you’d give anything for a week at a spa. There’s a pair of boots you’ve been coveting forever. On your next anniversary, you’d love to splurge on a romantic dinner at an upscale restaurant. These are often called guilty pleasures. But sufficient savings will erase any trace of guilt, leaving you with purely pleasurable experiences.
It’s true. Savings accounts may not make you wealthy. But they sure can increase your sense of well-being. And that, in itself, is worth a hell of a lot.
Are you continuing to save? Leave me a comment below.
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I just read that award-winning Maya Angelou, after publishing her 11th book, thought to herself: “Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody.”
Can you imagine Maya Angelo feeling like fraud!! But looking back, I think of all the courageous, confident, highly successful women I’ve interviewed who told me they still felt like a fraud long after their careers were flourishing.
Sadly, the imposter syndrome is epidemic among women, even the most successful ones. In Neuroscience, I found a possible explanation as to why. Despite their achievements, these women never rewired their old belief systems.
They didn’t prepare themselves mentally as they pushed themselves physically. Because they hadn’t changed their thoughts, their brains remained wired to see only the past.
Their low self-image hadn’t caught up with their incredible successes. Their old neuropathways still dictated their current perceptions.
The moral of this story: before you focus on changing your behavior, you must transform the causes of that behavior—your thoughts and beliefs.
What thoughts and behaviors could you begin to rewire for success? Leave me a comment below.
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Mark Twain once said: “The two most important days in life are the day you were born and the day you discover the reason why.”
I can’t think of a more productive way to use this time in quarantine—even as restrictions begin to lift—to ponder your purpose…to ask yourself: Why am I here on this planet at this time?
There’s immense power in having a clear and focused purpose, especially when you’re navigating turbulent seas.
No matter how frightened you are or how impossible it seems, a strong sense of mission turns ‘I want to’ into ‘I HAVE to.’
Purposes can range from the extremely ambitious (create world peace) to the seemingly trivial (spread joy). And your purpose may change as you change.
If you’re unsure of your purpose, here are 4 places to look.
1. In Past Pain
I’m not sure our life purpose has to come from pain (though mine did), but it’s a good place to start. What has been your most painful challenge in life?
2. In World Problems
Ask yourself: What is the one problem in the world that you yearn to see solved, and would be willing to spend the next 10 years of your life working on, talking about, and being part of the solution for?
3. In Childhood Play
As we look back at the tapestry of our lives, it’s easy to spot certain threads that show up in our youth and continually repeat, displaying an unwavering pattern holding clues to our purpose. What did you love to play as a kid?
4. In Secret Wishes
Once, someone asked me: “If you could have anyone’s job, whose would it be?” That was easy. Neil Diamond’s. I yearned to write my songs and sing them. OK, so I can’t carry a tune. But I’ve managed to write my songs (books) and sing (teach) them. If you could have anyone’s job, whose would it be?
I’d love to hear about your purpose. Leave me a comment below.
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That can feel scary. Indeed, uncertainty is frightening. But what if the current crises is not to be feared? What if we welcomed it as a much-needed wake-up call?
I’m reminded of a 2019 Ted Talk by Ashweetha Shetty. Though her subject was education, her words feel eerily prophetic.
“All of us are born into a reality we blindly accept,” she said, “until something awakens us and a new world opens up.”
I’m wondering if that’s what’s happening now. “Something” (Spirit. perhaps) is trying to awaken us to other possibilities—possibilities other than the reality we’ve “blindly accepted.”
What if we all used this time in isolation to imagine the new normal we’d love to create? What if we reimagine a future unlike the past?
Think about the life you crave, not the one you live. Consider the legacy you wish to leave. Allow your imagination to run wild, to dream audaciously. Make it fun, as if you’re a child playing make-believe.
Notice if your thoughts tell you it’s not practical or even plausible. Know that’s your brain defaulting to old neuropathways. Resist the urge to acquiesce.
Instead, trust this is your intended future yearning to emerge. Allow the ideas to sink into your psyche. Adopt them as your new story.
Repeat this story often (especially when tempted to tell your old one). Focus on it in meditation. Visualize it as you fall asleep.
Rest assured. This new story is not some grandiose tale told by your insecure Ego, but guidance from your loving Soul, urging you to step into your Greatness, shining your light in a world steeped in darkness.
Tell me about your new normal—the one you’d love to start living. Share in the comments below as if it’s already a reality.
I’ve been wracking my brain all week…wanting to find just the right words for these whacky times. Then a newsletter from Ellevest—an online women-centric financial firm—showed up with the perfect message.
I could not have said it any better.
Three Things I’m Telling Myself
By Sallie Krawcheck
What we’re going through is scary. On many levels.
As an investor, it’s been stomach-lurching. And so I keep reminding myself of three things:
We’ve recovered from every recession and depression. Some have been longer; some have been shorter. But we’ve recovered from every one of them since 1854, and the economy has continued to grow.
Time has been your friend. We’ve recovered from every “bear market” in history. Some have been longer; some have been shorter. But consider this: You could have invested in the stock market on any given day since the mid-1920s, and if you had stayed invested for 15 years, your chances of a positive return historically were 99%.
Stillness is your other friend. Remember the research that women are better investors than men? That’s because women more often do what so many professionals (Ellevest included) advise: Invest according to a plan — and then leave it alone.
Do you have an investment plan in place? Leave me a comment.
Ten years ago, a coach bluntly told me: “You’re too into doing, Barbara. You need time for just being.” I was depleted, burned out and knew she was right.
I cleared my calendar, eliminated all but the essentials and created space for self-reflection. My mantra was “I surrender and receive.”
I believe this is exactly what Covid-19 is calling us to do—Surrender and Receive. Surrender need not be passive but can be highly productive.
Believe me, I had no idea at the time that a whole new body of work was living inside me. By slowing down and tuning in, I “downloaded” what would become my next book, Sacred Success.
The “downloads” came as I asked myself a series of questions. I’m happy to share them with you. The first question most people ask themselves, when facing uncertainty, is ‘what should I do?’ Actually, that’s the last question to pose.
The first question to ask is: What do I need to let go of? Letting go, especially of what causes unhappiness or ceases to serve you, creates space for better to come. How do you know what needs to go? It’s probably that which you’re most afraid to release.
The next question to ask is: What do I want? This helped me get in touch with my deepest desires rather than the ‘shoulds’ and ‘ought’s” that I often gave into. I took a deep dive into my Soul’s wisdom by asking myself these 4 questions:
The final question to ask is: “What should I do next?” Follow the advice of artist Vincent Van Gogh: “If you hear a voice within you say, ‘you cannot paint’, by all means paint and the voice will be silenced.”
How are you using your time in quarantine?. Leave me a comment below.
Oh what challenging times we live in. I’ve been trying my best to remain at peace while the whole world is waging war on a deadly disease.
At first I felt I only had two choices. Be afraid…very, very afraid. Or stick my head in the sand and pretend all is well. Neither did the trick.
Then, I did something that made all the difference. Every morning, while making tea, I search for ‘spiritually uplifting perspectives on the Coronavirus.’ These messages—and there are plenty of them—calm my anxiety faster than any drug ever could!
I’d love to share one with you. I found the words both reassuring and thought provoking, reminding me that a better world awaits us all. Perhaps this will give you some peace as well.
“Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could.
Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality’, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture.
But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world.
And ready to fight for it.~~Arundhati Roy
Do you have any comforting quotes you’d like to share? Leave me a comment below.
In one of my books, I tell a story about a mountain climber who falls off a cliff, grabs hold of the ledge, and dangling in midair, desperately cries out, “Lord help me!”
The Lord answers: “I will help you. But first you have to let go of the ledge.”
I believe this is what we’re all being called—or in some cases, forced—to do: let go of the ledges that once kept us safe. And that’s scary as hell.
But I’m beginning to think this may be the whole point. Widespread global fear is triggering our own personal fears, especially ones we’ve long kept buried.
Our tendency is to avoid uncomfortable feelings, stuff them down. But these bottled up emotions must come up to be healed. Or they will forever hold us back, tethered to the past.
A new future is emerging. And we are being asked to take time to reflect and release dysfunctional emotions that are weighing us down.
My daughter, Melissa Siig’s experience mirrors what many of us are feeling. She found herself becoming increasingly irritable and unhappy, struggling to adjust to all the sudden changes. Then one day, she realized, “I had to shed my old skin to make way for the new.” Here’s what she shared on Facebook:
“Last week, I took a shower, went into my closet to get dressed, laid down on my closet floor and stayed there for two hours, curled up in the fetal position in the dark.
“I cried and mourned and let my grief pour out of me for what my family and I and the world had lost. I needed to release my life as it had been for 47 years to make way for acceptance of something new.
“I had to let go. I needed to be reborn. Like the butterfly breaking through its cocoon, I slowly emerged from my dark womb and made my way to my bed. I laid in bed another hour or two. My family worried about me, I worried about me.
“But eventually, having purged my old self, I reemerged, transformed. I wiped the tears from my eyes, went upstairs, poured myself a glass of wine, and played Clue with my family.”
What ledge do you need to let go of, what do you need to shed, to make way for the new? Leave me a comment below.
Last week, the market took the worst dive since 1987. Ahhhhh, yes, 1987. I remember that October day quite well. Black Monday they called it.
I’d been in the market for about a year. I knew nothing about investing, but I trusted my broker. However, when the market went into free-fall, I went into full blown panic.
I called my broker, insisted he sell everything. He begged me not to, insisting the market will go back up…it always does.
I didn’t listen. If I’d stayed put, like he instructed, I’d be a lot richer today.
Yet it was a priceless lesson.Ten years later, in 1997, almost to the day, the market crashed again. Only this time I didn’t see disaster. I saw a sale.
Fast forward to today. I’m not saying you should go on a buying spree. Though it is a sale. But I am imploring you not to sell everything in a panic. Investment decisions, based on emotions, rarely end well.
However, if your nervous system can’t stand the heat, don’t rush out of the kitchen or do anything rash. Take advice from my favorite financial writer, Jason Zweig,
“If you feel you can calm yourself only by ditching some stocks,” he wrote in last Fridays Wall Street Journal, “sell a fixed amount each month for the next year.” By taking small steps, and automating them, you take the emotion out of the decision.
And if you’re going to sell, sell the losers, he advised. “That will turn some of your losses into cash—and a write-off on your taxes.”
Or, instead of selling, “You could direct your dividends into cash, rather than more shares, for now.”
I’d love to hear how you’re reacting to this crazy market? Buying? Selling? Waiting and watching? Or frozen in fear? Leave me a comment below.
