How To Deal With Financial Uncertainty

There has been a fair bit of financial uncertainty of late in my life. Here are some of the things you can do to deal with financial uncertainty.

0:00 – Introduction
0:58 – Business income has grown lately, but things are unstable
1:39 – What can you do to live with financial uncertainty and get out of it?
2:20 – #1: Do What Needs To Be Done In The Short Term
4:32 – #2: Find Your Lead Indicators
5:55 – #3: Look At The Long Term Of This To Reduce Overwhelm
6:55 – #4: Map Out Your Worst Case Scenario
8:03 – #5: Cut Your Expenses Massively
8:32 – #6: Accept The Uncertainty
9:48 – #7: Find Time To Do The Things That Will Deliver Long Term Financial Certainty
12:16 – Financial Freedom Won’t Just Happen, You Need To Make It Happen

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Transcription:

Ryan 0:00
There’s been quite a fair bit of financial uncertainty in my life as of late everything from you know, a separation last year to moving into state to fluctuating business finances has kind of led my life into a very financial unstable point. And so that’s obviously had a lot of stress attached to it. But I’m working through that I’m creating certainty in my life. And so in this episode, I want to talk about some of the things that you can do if you’re living with financial uncertainty. So there’s a lot of the stuff that I’m doing in my life at the moment. And hopefully, this can help you. Hi, I’m Ryan from OnProperty, helping you achieve financial freedom, and life doesn’t always go to plan. I was previously financially free through my businesses at the age of 28, had a couple of good years there where I didn’t really need to work. But I am back on the grind now, as well paying off debt, trying to grow my income again and get back to that place of financial certainty, things have been going awesome. In terms of business income, you know, had really grown got it back to a really good place, I was able to move out of my parents, which I was living out to save money, I was able to rent a place, which is really good for my kids to have that stability, I had them about half the time. And so that was really good. But the exact month when I did that was one of my best worst business months on record. So all the work that I’ve been doing, it’s all still doing his job. But I was just like a really unfortunate month, so led to some significant financial instability in my life, which is kind of caused me to this point where I can share this video today. So what can you do to live with a financial instability, uncertainty in your life? So a lot of this is designed either to a like, except to your uncertainty and be okay with that, be try and work out how to, like manage that and stay solvent and say, you know, stay afloat during that period as well as Okay, how can we get out of that financial uncertainty into a place of certainty. And I’m sure we’re looking back on this video in the future, recognizing that I was at this point, and hopefully won’t be at this point in the future. So you get to follow along with that. And say that that is good, that is bad as you go on this journey. So the first thing is basically do what needs to be done in the short term. So for me, with the separation and with business changes, that happened last year, I ended up being in debt debt that I need to pay off. Now, I was doing well paying that off, obviously, having that bad month makes it harder. And so for me, doing what you need to in the short term, to just guaranteed that stability is something that I think is really important. So for me, that means at the moment, looking for other jobs. So everything from potentially doing, you know, some morning work at a cafe that I absolutely love to full time work in a marketing agency just to get that extra income coming in, I’m very lucky and that I have quite a passive business that if I was to leave my business and go into full time work, then my business would still earn a good amount of money, it wouldn’t be growing will probably be going slightly backwards. But I could earn two incomes for some time in order to pay off my debt and to just have that certainty around my life and provide that for my kids. So doing what you need to do short term, obviously working, I’ll continue to work in the business. So working a full time job and then doing this business in my spare time, you know will be will be hard, and will be I guess long term and sustainable. But then I can decide at that point, what I want to do in the future. So getting a job will help me to pay off my debt faster. There’s also I see it as a really exciting opportunity because my business is mostly passive. So I’m showing you for me to earn extra income, pay off my debt, start saving potentially for a house deposit or something like that, or just build up a buffer fund. And it’s an exciting opportunity to expand my skills and to grow as a marketer as well. So doing what you need to do now, I think is the first thing. But that’s not necessarily going to solve your financial uncertainty like me working in a cafe, where it’s sold my financial uncertainty, I got a high paying job, then yeah, I likely would. But short term, just getting that extra cash flow coming in so that you can continue to pay the bills. And basically buying yourself time in order to sort something out. Like a lot of this is about buy sell time, work something out that’s going to work more sustainably long term. And so that leads me to the second point, which is to find your lead indicators. So this comes from a book that someone shared with me, which is called the four Disciplines of Execution and it’s a business book, but it’s really important for personal life as well. It’s like okay, what actions

will lead to the results that you want. So what a lot of us do is that we focus on the results and we track the results and see how we’re going to the results whether that be paying off debt or you know, having financial stability or whatever it may be could be investing in property we we kind of track that but what we should do is take a further step back and say okay what actions actually cause those results and let’s track those actions so they’re called lead indicators so tracking those lead indicators is really important so for me in my business there’s a few things so my business produces results whether that be pageviews or leads for other companies or advertising revenue or whatever that’s the result but then what are the lead indicators or what are the actions i need to take to achieve that result so there’s marketing like creating content like this one i wrote a bunch of articles as well there’s email marketing there’s funnels there’s so many different things that i can do that are my lead indicators so understanding what your lead indicators are that are going to lead to that future financial success and financial stability is really important to understand what those are tracking your actions and then obviously you got to do those actions as well something that’s been really helpful to me which came from my girlfriend which was basically saying when things are really stressful is that they just look at the long term of this so look long term at your life like eventually you know you’re going to be debt will be paid off eventually that will be done eventually things will settle down you know so looking at the long term and saying okay in 10 years what’s this going to look like can really help to minimize that short term stress so rather than stressing about you know the saying you can’t see the forest for the trees when you’re just looking at the trees and looking at the right now it can be helpful to take a step back and look at the forest and say okay look it’s hard right now but i can see it’s not always going to be this hard and that is just like really reassuring to know that to know that okay it’s hard now and there’s some things that i need to do to fix this but if i can do those things and fix it it’s not always going to be this hard and so that’s just something that helps me to accept the financial uncertainty in my life another thing to help with that financial uncertainty and accepting it is to map out your worst case scenario and to say okay worst case like absolute worst case what what would we do and what is going to happen and that’s a really hard thing to do to say okay worst case if my businesses stopped making any money what would i do and so it’s like okay i would have to not rent a place anymore which means i’d moved back with my parents there’s something that’d be really hard which i would never want to get to this point it’s like okay i’m paying for private school for my kids but you know is there a school that i could potentially move into that’s cheaper or that is a state school and it’s like okay i don’t want to do that but worst case scenario if i had to do that then i could do that and then i could go get a job and then obviously you know do those sorts of things so everyone’s worst case scenario is going to look different but mapping out your worst case scenario and what you would do in that worst case scenario and how you would get by and just being prepared for that can be really helpful and then hopefully you don’t even get to that point but if you do you understand what you need to do so map out your worst case scenario cut your expenses massively that’s something that i’ve been doing lately and i need to do more i just did some finances for my business looking over some of the expenses that my business has and you know there was nothing i have huge business expenses anyway but there was some stuff there that i can cut that’s like a few $100 here a couple $100 there it’s like okay that is a nice to have but right now i don’t have to have it and you know i can repurchase it in the future if i need to i can change that in the future also i think really important is just to accept the uncertainty and just say okay things are uncertain right now i don’t know how things are gonna work out i can see long term that yeah they’re gonna work out but at the moment i don’t know life is uncertain but i’m okay with that and i’m okay with that uncertainty and so accepting that you’re okay with it taking it one day at a time and again it’s coming back to like finding your lead indicators and doing the things that need to be done so for me it’s like okay doing what needs to be done short term but then the step above that is like okay short term this is what i need to do and still in an uncertain place but i can see that this will you know keep me going for a while then it’s about finding your lead indicators or the actions you need to take and actually working hard to solve that problem long term and actually finding the time for those long term valuable things so often when life is uncertain and finances are uncertain things crop up is extremely overwhelming you know things that you didn’t expect happen at a crazy week last week with some things that popped up that i just didn’t expect and that freaked me out massively but i dealt with those issues okay and it wasn’t as bad as i thought it would be and i’m now more set up and more prepared for the future

but so those those crisises will come up but then it’s like okay what are the actions that you need to be taking and you need to find time for them so don’t just spend all of your time fighting the immediate fires that are happening brian now you need to actually find time to do the things that are valuable so for me there’s a lot of things that i need to do immediately in my business but there’s also things that are going to be long term successful for me so writing articles for certain websites those articles won’t make any money for three to six months and then that website’s going into the offseason so it’s kind of like nine to 12 months before those articles are going to mean making me money but in nine to 12 months i’ll i’ll need that money and want that money and that will give me financial certainty in nine to 12 months time so it’s like okay i need to find time in my life and in my schedule to do those things that are going to have a longer term payoff but that are going to deliver me that long term financial security and that financial certainty so yeah i guess it all just comes down to accepting that things are uncertain really assessing the situation assessing your worst case scenarios in a situation and then saying okay what do i need to do short term to buy myself time so that i can do the actions that i need to do that’s going to lead to the long term results so that’s the way that i’m looking at it is okay do what i need to do short term that gives me time and while i’m doing that short term and also on top of that doing what needs to be done long term in order to deliver me that long term certainty and that long term security so this has been interesting life goes through ups and downs which i’ve definitely learned lately you know for a while there my life was just like on an upward trajectory everything was going good achieve financial freedom was just like living in that bliss and then it’s like you know sometimes life just does that to you or sometimes you do that to yourself in life and so you know things don’t always go to plan and sometimes even when you’ve done really well for yourself in the past you find yourself in a financially uncertain position and so that’s where i find myself at the moment i am working my ass off to get myself out of that and i hope to do another video in the near future talking about how i was able to solve my financial uncertainty and how i’m now in a financially certain place so i wish you the best with whatever it is that you’re struggling with i wish you the absolute best with your financial future and your dreams they’re not going to happen by themselves i think that’s one of the big things with finances i was talking with simon will talking about you know when you go to uni or you go to school it kind of just happens you know you kind of on this path you can just go to attend your lectures you got a hand in your assignment go to the test and chances are if you know you’re studying you do think you’re going to pass and at the end of it you’re going to end up with a degree but with personal finances there is there is no path there’s no one leading you down that eventually you’re going to end up being financially free it’s something that you need to consciously do every single day every single week every single month to actually move you closer towards financial freedom so you know being conscious of that is really important whether you’re in a financially unstable position or if you are financially stable than actually taking advantage of that financial stability that you’re at right now making some sacrifices to set yourself up for the future so you never have to go through financial uncertainty so yeah then you have some tips that you have some advice i’m going to link up to a video that i did which is kind of around this topic which is the best business advice i received that i didn’t take and so i’ll link out to that video go ahead and check it out otherwise until next time stay positive