Who says that you have to go without really having a good time this Spring? If you are done with your bankruptcy life and are trying to make good habits, it’s important to make sure that you’ve changed your entire financial worldview. That’s just the way that it has to be — you don’t want to go back into the same life you had. The chance of you slipping back into bad habits is just very high. You need to instead think about the type of life that you really want to lead. It’s easy to tell yourself that you’re a failure and you deserve to be unhappy. But is this really the case? Not at all. You can break out of your negativity and launch yourself into a new season of prosperity.
Springtime is a great item to clean out your finances. That’s right, we said it — you need to clean them out. You need to get away from the bills and everything else. Start saving more than you have in the past. When we tell people to raise their percentage of savings, a lot of resistance comes up. People will tell us that they just can’t save anything, and that they are pretty much stuck going through the motions. That’s not the case at all. You have it in you to break out and seize the day. You have to realize that buying junk food or subscribing to things that you don’t use is only hurting you more in the long run.
Also, are you trying to go through all of these changes on your own? If you feel like you’ve just been spinning your wheels, it’s high time that you start looking at trying to get things together.
The first thing that you need to do is look at your budget against. We know, we know — it’s always about the budget with us. That’s because if you don’t know what’s going in and out of your house, you will not be able to do anything else. Far too often people think that they’re on track, only to find that they really aren’t. This can be really frustrating, but it honestly doesn’t have to be this way. You can focus on what needs to get handled and let the rest go.
If you’re spending money on things that you don’t need, you might want to cut back. There’s no point in going with something that isn’t going to serve your needs in the long run.
Don’t go it alone, either — get a supportive group of people around you. You are going to need to change a lot of about your life in order to make this work. Don’t go with people that are convinced that they have to tear you down in order to feel good about themselves. That’s a recipe for disaster, no matter which way you look at it.
Some people say that you should rush back into building your credit, but what’s the real rush? After all, lenders are going to want to see that you can handle the rest of your life without having to declare bankruptcy again. If you were bad with credit cards before, start the process slowly. Getting a secured credit card can often mean that you have much more chance to start out slowly. After all, you are using your own money to get the ball rolling. If you default, then that money isn’t returned to you — it’s used to pay down your expenses.
Keep all of this in mind for a smooth transition into a debt free life. Remember that bankruptcy doesn’t have to define you. It can only attack you if you allow it do so. Think of it as a tool that you are grateful to have, because it opened the door to a brand new life!