As regular readers know, my mother-in-law passed away last Friday morning. While C and I are both doing fine, there are a million little things we need to take care of right now. The time has to come from somewhere, and in my case, that means no time to write quality posts for my readers here. Thankfully, I have some amazing blogger friends who instantly stepped up when I asked for help. So for the next week or more, you will be seeing some wonderful guest posts on Tuesday and Thursdays. (I’ll still do the Saturday round-up and the Sunday Evening Post.) I again want to thank all of my blogging friends who volunteered to help out. I appreciate you all so very much.

The first guest post is from AverageJoe. AverageJoe writes at TheFreeFinancialAdvisor on financial planning, investing, and life. His mom thinks this is a real job, so visit him there and comment often. If you wouldn’t classify yourself as a “reader”, he’s also the host of the Worst of the Free Financial Advisor Podcast, which is produced almost-weekly and includes appearances by a roundtable of financial bloggers.

 

My Year Without Money

In my case, he should have said five.

I’ll make the next part short. At the end of my first year I met a wealthy couple fromJapan. I felt incredibly lucky when they agreed to move many services over to my direction. This huge client was going to bring in massive revenue. Each service came with a twelve month money-back guarantee. They had to go back toJapanfor six months. When they returned, they cancelled everything. I still get angry when I think about it. I learned many lessons, most of which have nothing to do with this story and will be the subject of another blog post.

 

Ouch

I’d been wronged, but what had been the path from my personal financial pit was suddenly the last nail in my coffin. I now owed the parent company that my firm worked through a whopping $35,000 that they’d returned to the client. I’d used it all to pay off and cancel my credit cards.

My spouse was still in school at the time, pursuing her degree. We’d just had twins. Now I had no money and few options:

– I could take on another job during the day, but that would slow my $35,000 repayment.

– I was advised by some friends to break it off with the company I now owed. I could take my business somewhere else and stick them with the bill. Although it’s a big corporation and they wouldn’t have missed the cash, I don’t work that way. I’d lost the money. I had to pay it back. I wouldn’t sleep if I didn’t.

So, we embarked on a year without much money.

 

Here’s what I learned:

– Creditors don’t give a damn what’s going on in your life. After several weeks, as you’d expect, the phone started ringing. Initially I told them my story. I should not have wasted my breath. The calls went from friendly to insulting as they realized that there wasn’t a way they could get money from me.

I stay away from debt still because I hate being in that position. I don’t like being called names by someone whom I owed. When I owe them, I can’t really kick back, and I like to kick.

– Negotiate. Although it’s tough to negotiate with people when you can offer absolutely nothing, I did score some wins. The biggest? With a mentor’s help, the company I owed agreed to a repayment plan, so that I’d get enough money to pay my rent and a few groceries. People around me (including the mentor) said that this move was unheard of. It was a Fortune 100 company making an exception to several rules to help one little guy.

I’m still grateful to that firm. I also know that they wouldn’t have done anything if I hadn’t asked.

– Learn to sale shop. We’d borrow the paper from my in-laws, cut out coupons and shop at the lowest priced supermarket on double-coupon day. We also discovered our local farmer’s market. I’ve since found out that all farmers’ markets aren’t low priced, but luckily the one down the road from us offered incredible values.

– Appreciate what you have. It’s amazing how resourceful you become when you have nothing. Instead of a great meal out, we’d actually have meat in the spaghetti sauce for our big meal.

To this day, I’d almost always rather eat at home than at a restaurant. My friends make fun of me because I’m the guy who gets on tripadvisor.com to find a good local restaurant if I’m stuck on the road. Most of them don’t care where they eat. If I can’t be at home, I want it to feel like I’m at somebody’s home.

– Ask for help. I’m not big on handouts. I don’t like giving them and will almost never ask for one. But, we also have gotten plenty of trash gifts during the holidays from family members that I couldn’t afford to accept. If you were going to get us a gift during our bad time, I wanted to make sure it was one we could use.

We asked specifically for clothing and store gift cards. Everyone pitched in and gave us exactly those things for Christmas, because we politely asked. We made them homemade crafts and baked goods. The funny part? Nobody knew the difference. Everyone around us liked the home-made flavor of our gifts, and my kids were too young to miss toys.

– Although I couldn’t work days, I could work nights and weekends. I leaned on my college experience as a wedding disc jockey and helped a guy out on Saturday nights. It brought in a couple hundred dollars a month more, which I used for gas. (I think if gas prices were then what they are now, I’d have been sunk.)

All of these collectively built a new muscle: the fun of living without. We no longer cared about cable television, expensive clothing or big trips. We knew the hand we were dealt and we learned to live with it. This served us well in the following years when my practice not only bounced back but flourished. I was lucky to sell it at the age of 41 for a great sum of money.