Episode 570: I Lost My Job and Can't Pay My Bills. What do I do?

Question, I feel very overwhelmed with bill collectors calling every day.

I lost my job.

Oh, try not to feel bad about myself, but I have to answer my phone to get a job, but then it's bill collectors, help, okay? First of all, I always get a twinge when I read a question like this, but I do want to let the listening audience know I already helped this person, okay? I helped this person and then I saved their question because I wanted to go ahead and answer it for you, okay? she's doing better now she's got a new job but on first submission when I saw that question you know I look at this and I say okay here's somebody who they're either in financial crisis or they're very close to financial crisis and the thing about financial crisis is it's a quick slippery slope from financial crisis to mental crisis and so if I can help somebody avoid staying or being in crisis I'm getting into crisis or staying in crisis for too long, then that's what I'm going to do.

So normally I don't answer these until we're live.

But in this case, I responded right away.

And this is what I wrote there.

I'm going to read it to you because I want to get what I told her, okay? Couple things.

She wrote more than this.

I just plucked out some of it because I don't wanna give details, okay? Couple things.

There's a lot of feel in what you wrote.

Try to look at your finances from a business standpoint.

If there's a debt... like your ex that can wait a bit, even if you feel bad, you might consider lowering the priority of paying it back.

In retrospect, that's a lot of big words that basically says, don't pay people right now if you can't afford it and you need to pay more important things, right? So I gave, so I wrote my initial write back.

I said, I gave two situations.

One is if you can pay all your bills, right now, even though it hurts, you can pay them.

And then the other one is if you don't have enough to pay your bills.

And so basically what I told her, if you can pay all your bills, is start to build up a small savings so that you don't have to go back into debt when life happens again, okay? And so you pay minimums, you pay the minimums on all your debts so you get your savings up.

You still make sure you feed yourself, you cover your four walls, right? You cover your four walls, you cover your housing, your utilities, your transportation, your basic food, all right? Depending on your job, maybe some basic clothing, okay? But you cover those first.

And then from that, if you can pay your bills with the rest of it, pay the minimums on them and build up a savings with whatever you can.

And I know sometimes it feels tedious and it takes forever when you don't have a whole lot of money, but you would be surprised at how much you can save up quickly if you really, really put your oomph into it.

You know, there's a stat out there that says most Americans right now cannot afford a $400 emergency without going into debt.

And I know a lot of people poo-poo the Dave Ramsey $1,000 starter fund, but I still tell people if you're super low income, get $500 in savings.

It will pad so many, surprises and emergencies in your future life.

And if you have a little bit more, get a thousand dollar savings account so that you can have some.

So when the tires bust or when the hot water heater goes or when or when your kids come home, your kids come home from school.