How to Fix Your Finances in a Crisis (2024)

You’re in the middle of a nightmare desperately hoping that in a second you’ll wake up. But despite every hope and prayer that what is happening can’t possibly be real; it is.

It’s a painful feeling to have the world around you playing merry hell with your life. It’s even worse when it begins to bleed, if not cripple your finances.

Have you ever been in a situation where the longer you left it, the worse it got?

The longer you wait to fix your finances in a crisis, the worse it gets. I’ve suffered more than my fair share of life disasters in the last decade, so I know.

And, as it gets worse, your health suffers from the stress.

It’s inevitable and painful.

As your stress and anxiety levels rise, you start to feel stuck, paralysed on how to get out. You know you need to take action to fix your finances, but you just don’t know where to start. Your mind clouds over and all of a sudden, you begin to feel overwhelmed by your finances.

Dealing with finances in a crisis

It doesn’t matter what the word crisis means to you. You could be contending with ill health. Maybe you’ve lost your job. Perhaps you’ve lost a loved one, you’re experiencing a divorce, struggling with a failing business or dealing with debt. It could be anything!

Crisis means different things to different people at different times in their lives.

But a crisis is never good and always feels like a nightmare.

Often there is very little we can do to control them. It makes the nightmare seem all the worse when we have no control to stop the madness. Sometimes we just have to ride out the storm.

Accepting that is easier said than done sometimes, isn’t it?

It’s incredibly frustrating when the crisis is thrust upon you or caused by things entirely out of your control.

And, when it starts to affect your finances or has the potential to impact your finances, the stress and anxiety you suffer make the situation much harder to cope with.

Financial pressure can turn a crisis into a nightmare.

If you’ve ever been through something of a crisis, you’ll know what I mean!

I’ve been backed up against that wall before. In fact, some of life’s curveballs have seen me face down in the gutter more times than I would have liked.

Having been there several times, I learned the sooner you take action, the easier it is to get back on top of your life.

That stress, that anxiety and fear you feel about your finances during a crisis is normal. The basic tenant of human needs is the desire to feel safe. We all strive to have peace and serenity, not just in our lives but also with our finances.

Imagine facing a crisis when you were financially safe.

Imagine all the problems you could possibly face in life.

Every single one would be a damn sight easier to deal with if you didn’t have to worry about money, right?

The added layer of worry for your finances makes pretty much every situation painfully worse.

And, here’s the thing…

…removing that worry makes any crisis more manageable.

There is a fix for the worry and the stress.

Through all the trials, tribulations and sh*t storms I’ve faced during a hellish period of my life, I’ve discovered the key to fixing your finances and coming out the other end.

I’ve discovered the secret to reducing stress and anxiety and regaining control of your bank balance all at once.

And yes, I’m going to share it with you.

I’m not only going to tell you how to fix your finances in a crisis but how to reduce, if not eradicate the stress.

In fact…

This fix works even if you’re not facing a crisis!

When I figured this out and took action, I repaid $5,000 of debt in just six weeks. Over the next three years, I paid off well over $150,000 of debt to become debt-free.

By taking these same steps, you can do it too!

How would it feel to have got through your sh*tty situation and managed to sort your finances out along the way?

I can imagine you’d say it would feel pretty amazing, right?

But, from experience, it goes beyond that. It’s freeing.

I was in a hole of debt that reached beyond several hundred thousand dollars.

I can’t even begin to describe how amazing it felt to pay off the last of my debts after being in a hole that big!

And then, a year later, I find myself buying my own home with my partner.

I’m living proof that you can get out of a financial mess and into the world you dream of using simple, common-sense financial principles.

It took one simple step to help me fix my finances, and you can do it too.

All of this was achieved by taking a simple step that put me back in control of my finances, quickly and easily. It triggered an amazingly positive snowball effect on my life, my health and my finances.

I have no doubt that you can experience this too!

Don’t get me wrong, it took some hard work and dedication at times. It wasn’t always easy. But the simple step that made it possible to fix my finances also made stress, worry and anxiety around my finances disappear almost overnight.

The stress melted away and all of sudden I had focus and energy.

The paralysis of feeling stuck melted away. All of a sudden, I could see what I needed to do to fix my finances. That insight enthused me with the energy to make that happen.

More importantly, the exhilarating feeling I experienced after getting out my terrible situation was worth every bit of patience, dedication and hard work required to get there.

So what was this miraculous step that helped me fixes up my finances during my crisis?

It was a budget plan.

But not any old budget plan…

You may latch on to the fact that I just told you I started a budget. And I did. The critical element is “the plan” that this type of budget gives you.

This is where the budget plan that I use differs from your standard monthly budget.

Keep reading, and I’ll tell you how…

Fix your finances with a plan: a budgeting plan

The budget plan you need to be using is a cash flow budget plan. You can get a copy of my template by clicking here.

It’s easy to use yet very powerful.

It sets out your finances in this budget spreadsheet, giving you a clear plan for your finances for the future.

Having a clear plan helps you dump all that stress, worry and anxiety that grips you with your finances. And that worry only exists because you don’t know where you are up to with your finances.

Unlike a monthly budget plan, this budget tracks your income and spending weekly. I found that using a monthly budget dooms you to failure.

You won’t struggle to stick to this budget

Most people struggle to stick their budgets, particularly in the beginning. And, you don’t want to realise how badly you’ve been struggling when you’ve been overspending for the last four weeks.

A weekly budget plan keeps you on track as you check in with your finances more often. That means you can correct your course faster when you overspend in the previous week.

You’ll hit your financial goals faster and with less effort

You’re more likely to stick to your budget, but the best result is that you’ll inevitably reach your financial goals much faster.

This budget spreadsheet links each and every week to one another, just like a cash flow forecast. That means that any changes you make to expenses, for example, this week will update all the figures in the future. By doing this, you can make simple changes to small expenses to hit your crucial financial goal in the future.

Want to pay off that $2000 credit card bill by the end of the year?

Easy!

You’ll quickly and easily see a way to get there by tweaking out that $5 cup of coffee you grab every morning on the way to work.

You’re going to have your eyes opened to the crazy little expenses you never realised were burning a hole in your pocket.

It’s often the tiny little expenses that burn a hole in your pocket. The $5 a day coffee. The $10 you spend buying lunch at work. They’re so small and incidental that they fly under our radar and they slip into the fabric of our daily lives.

Identifying these expenses and then cutting them out made the biggest difference to my ability to get out of debt so fast. And, because many of them I could cut out immediately, it had a massive and immediate impact.

But, it’s the plan that makes the difference.

And, whilst there a whole host of benefits that this budget spreadsheet template will bring to you, there is no greater benefit than it providing you with a plan.

Having a clear plan mapping out your financial future enables you to take away the worry of the unknown and focus on making decisions and taking action about how to turn your situation around.

Because you can tweak the budget spreadsheet so quickly to see what simple changes make to the future, you’ll know what you need to do to get to where you want to be.

That may be cutting out expenses. It may be raising your income. It could even be a combination of the two. But, you’ll know exactly how much and by when!

Once that’s clear, you’ve just got to aim for the goal and go for it.

Once you’ve ditched the stress and anxiety, I promise, running for the goal is so much easier and more gratifying. And, it gets even better once you start seeing the positive progress you’re making each week!

If you want to fix your finances using this budget spreadsheet, pick up a copy of your budget template here, then I strongly recommend you go read this post to and follow these 8 simple things for budgeting success.

And, if you need any help, just ask me your questions below in the comments!