The Benefits of Financial Adversity

Posted On 30 March 2020

Last updated on April 10th, 2024

Nobody likes adversity. Financial adversity can be especially tough. Unfortunately, 2020 has been a year that a lot of people have had financial adversity thrust upon them. I have found that adversity in my life has been a blessing. You may be wondering, “How the hell is adversity a blessing?”

It’s a lot like exercising. When we start a new exercise program, we have great expectations. We expect that we will feel better, we will lose weight, and it will be awesome! After we start exercising, we feel like we’ve been hit by a truck and yet no weight has been lost. It sucks! If we stick with the program, we will become a healthier person and the activities that used to cause pain do not hurt (as much!).

Our Financial Adversity

Let me tell about the personal financial crisis that my wife and I went through back in 2005-2006. I switched from being a satellite dish installer to a car salesman at a dealership. They let me go just before the 30-day mark because I was “not working out.” The odd part was that me and my trainer were in the #1 spot for sales that month. The firing surprised my trainer as well.

What followed was a string of temp jobs, fast food, yard sales, basically anything to earn money. Finances were so tight that we couldn’t even afford ink for our printer! I could only apply to jobs I could email my resume. These were shitty times. Then, in the midst of all that we found out that my wife was pregnant with our third child!

The Big Offer

My in-laws offered us the opportunity to move to British Columbia, Canada, and after much deliberation (and nothing working out in Idaho) we moved to Canada in 2006. Well, my wife and kids were able to move as they were Canadian citizens. Me? I was only able to be a visitor in Canada. I could only stay for a limited time and had to go back to the Idaho to deal with our house.

When we put our house on the market, there were only 3 houses in that price range. Over the months while our house was on the market we watched in horror as the number of houses for sale in that price range exceeded 200! When we finally did sell the house, we were only one month away from the foreclosure date, but we sold it! After selling the house, paying off a car with a blown engine, and taking care of a few other things, I was technically homeless.

Homeless!

After selling the house, I was not able to return to Canada as a visitor as I did not have a place to return to in the US. I was invited to visit my wife’s grandmother in Arizona. On the way to Arizona, the pickup I was driving caught on fire! A passing motorist pulled over and helped me put the fire out. It was a small fire and the truck was not damaged, so I kept driving to Arizona.

I had a nice visit in Arizona. Then, the week before Christmas I drove up to Blaine, Washington, where my father-in-law met me and brought me across the border so I could be with my family. I got across the border and was finally back together with my family – and just in time for Christmas!

Settling In Canada

In Canada we were renting an apartment and we didn’t have a vehicle. I had no credit and was not able to work in Canada. My father-in-law applied for me to get a work permit, but he was denied! I then applied for permanent residency. Slowly, our situation did improve. It took over two years from when we originally moved to Canada for me to get permanent residency, which finally allowed to work in Canada!

When I got my permanent residency, I was only planning on staying in Canada for a few years. As the years passed, and the country grew on me, I decided to apply for citizenship. In 2017, I became a Canadian citizen. I tell you this story to let you know I have been through adversity, and the tough times have made me and my wife tougher.

Resources Run Out

I have written posts about carrying emergency cash and having an emergency fund to help you weather the storms of life. These both work like financial shock absorbers. There are times, though, when shock absorbers don’t help because the car is completely off the road.

The type of adversity I am writing about here is the type when your resources have been exhausted. The time when the money is gone, and the phone calls start. We’ve been there. I’m here to tell you that we made it out of that situation. You can do it, too!

Adversity Breaks You

In order for a muscle to grow stronger it must suffer tiny tears. Similarly, the human mind has to suffer (and sometimes your eyes shed some tears as well!) in order to grow stronger. When we are going through adversity we often ask ourselves the proverbial questions, What the fuck!?!” “Why?” and “Why us?” At the time, I didn’t know why. (You probably won’t know why either.) I have come to understand that the reason for adversity in our life is so we can learn and grow. We had more challenges here in Canada and we got through those as well.

Like Og Mandino wrote in his book, The Greatest Salesman In The World, “This too, shall pass.” It did pass! Each and every one of us need to make the decision to not only survive this crisis that the world is experiencing in 2020 – we need to decide to learn from it as well.

Adversity & Rose-Colored Glasses

Adversity rips the Rose-colored glasses right off your face, stomps on the glasses, and destroys them – never to be worn again! This does not mean that life will be all doom and gloom. It simply means that we don’t see the world as just a happy place where credit is cheap and easy, money rolls in every month, and markets always go up.

I have learned to look at the numbers. Do the numbers add up? Is it really a good financial decision, or is it something that just sounds sexy? We need to be able to figure it out for ourselves.

Something I do is I ask myself, “Who said that?” and “Why did they say it?” Do they have something to gain from what they say? Are they making shit up just to sound good? What do other people have to say about the topic. Does it make sense? I like to compare and contrast information.

We must Learn

There is lots of information online about finances and there are lots and lots of books about finances. Over the years I have read a lot of books and attended seminars on the topic of personal finance. I don’t know everything about finances, but then, no one knows everything. I have learned to think outside the box and look at life differently.

They say that experience is the best education. Learning from other people’s experience is even better. When we learn from others, we can gain the the information that took months or years to learn and perfect, and we can learn it in hours or days!

Turn Off the Noise

We live in an age of information overload! The excess of information can become noise to us. We must learn how to filter the information and limit this “noise” in our lives. Even if it as all good information, when there is too much all at the same time, it becomes noise.

The trick is stopping the noise in our own head. The best way I found to do this is to change the words that I use. We stopped saying, “I can’t afford that.” and we started saying, “That’s not in the budget right now.” The change is small, yet it changes the mindset.

As the challenging financial times in Idaho got worse, my wife would frequently look at our empty bank account. This negative information would get her depressed and frustrated. I told her not to look at the account as often. In order for us to move forward we had to focus on what we could do to earn money instead of looking at what little we had at the time.

Adversity Toughens

As we make our way through adversity, we find that we are tougher and that we are also able to handle more than we thought we could before the adversity. We may even learn that we are able to do more with less!

As we overcome the adversities in our life, what were once scary unknowns to us are now uncomfortable knowns. It is like being afraid of the dark as a child (I was). Now, the dark does not scare me. I am cautious in the dark, yet I do not panic anymore!

I believe that people who have gone through adversity and learned from it come out the other side a better individual. Similar to the way that gold must be refined by fire, we must be refined by adversity.

Adversity Encourages Growth

Albert Einstein said, “The significant problems we face in life cannot be solved with the same level of thinking on which they were created.” Right now is the perfect time to start learning about personal finances, or to take the steps to improve our own personal finances. I am constantly looking for ways to improve my life, and the life of my family. You are invited to join us on this journey through life.

Let’s all look for the benefits of financial adversity when they come our way and use it to our advantage. We can take an attitude of gratitude by choosing to look at what we already have in our life. Let’s look to the good deals out there that will come from this. And don’t forget that we will become better through all of this.