#So ingrained in who you’ve become that sometimes it’s hard to distinguish…

[saturnsorbits]

Thinking about sleeping with Gojo because it’s the only way either of you can be close to Geto anymore…

[qqueenofhades]

Could you expand a bit on the "death of expertise"? It's something I think about A LOT as an artist, because there are so many problems with people who think it isn't a real job, and the severe undercutting of prices that happens because people think hobbyists and professionals are the same. At the same time, I also really want people to feel free to be able to make art if they want, with no gatekeeping or elitism, and I usually spin myself in circles mentally thinking about it. So.

I have been secretly hoping someone would ask this question, nonny. Bless you. I have a lot (a LOT) of thoughts on this topic, which I will try to keep somewhat concise and presented in a semi-organized fashion, but yes.

I can mostly speak about this in regard to academia, especially the bad, bad, BAD takes in my field (history) that have dominated the news in recent weeks and which constitute most of the recent posts on my blog. (I know, I know, Old Man Yells At Cloud when attempting to educate the internet on actual history, but I gotta do SOMETHING.) But this isn’t a new phenemenon, and is linked to the avalanche of “fake news” that we’ve all heard about and experienced in the last few years, especially in the run-up and then after the election of You Know Who, who has made fake news his personal brand (if not in the way he thinks). It also has to do with the way Americans persistently misunderstand the concept of free speech as “I should be able to say whatever I want and nobody can correct or criticize me,” which ties into the poisonous extreme-libertarian ethos of “I can do what I want with no regard for others and nobody can correct me,” which has seeped its way into the American mainstream and is basically the center of the modern Republican party. (Basically: all for me, all the time, and caring about others is a weak liberal pussy thing to do.)

This, however, is not just an issue of partisan politics, because the left is just as guilty, even if its efforts take a different shape. One of the reason I got so utterly exasperated with strident online leftists, especially around primary season and the hardcore breed of Bernie Bros, is just that they don’t do anything except shout loud and incorrect information on the internet (and then transmogrify that into a twisted ideology of moral purity which makes a sin out of actually voting for a flawed candidate, even if the alternative is Donald Goddamn Trump). I can’t count how many people from both sides of the right/left divide get their political information from like-minded people on social media, and never bother to experience or verify or venture outside their comforting bubbles that will only provide them with “facts” that they already know. Social media has done a lot of good things, sure, but it’s also made it unprecedently easy to just say whatever insane bullshit you want, have it go viral, and then have you treated as an authority on the topic or someone whose voice “has to be included” out of some absurd principle of both-siderism. This is also a tenet of the mainstream corporate media: “both sides” have to be included, to create the illusion of “objectivity,” and to keep the largest number of paying subscribers happy. (Yes, of course this has deep, deep roots in the collapse of late-stage capitalism.) Even if one side is absolutely batshit crazy, the rules of this distorted social contract stipulate that their proposals and their flaws have to be treated as equal with the others, and if you point out that they are batshit crazy, you have to qualify with some criticism of the other side.

This is where you get white people posting “Neo-Nazis and Black Lives Matter are the same!!!1” on facebook. They are a) often racist, let’s be real, and b) have been force-fed a constant narrative where Both Sides Are Equally Bad. Even if one is a historical system of violent oppression that has made a good go at total racial and ethnic genocide and rests on hatred, and the other is the response to not just that but the centuries of systemic and small-scale racism that has been built up every day, the white people of the world insist on treating them as morally equivalent (related to a superior notion that Violence is Always Bad, which.... uh... have you even seen constant and overwhelming state-sponsored violence the West dishes out? But it’s only bad when the other side does it. Especially if those people can be at all labeled “fanatics.”)

I have complained many, many times, and will probably complain many times more, about how hard it is to deconstruct people’s absolutely ingrained ideas of history and the past. History is a very fragile thing; it’s really only equivalent to the length of a human lifespan, and sometimes not even that. It’s what people want to remember and what is convenient for them to remember, which is why we still have some living Holocaust survivors and yet a growing movement of Holocaust denial, among other extremist conspiracy theories (9/11, Sandy Hook, chemtrails, flat-earthing, etc etc). There is likewise no organized effort to teach honest history in Western public schools, not least since the West likes its self-appointed role as guardians of freedom and liberty and democracy in the world and doesn’t really want anyone digging into all that messy slavery and genocide and imperialism and colonialism business. As a result, you have deliberately under- or un-educated citizens, who have had a couple of courses on American/British/etc history in grade school focusing on the greatest-hit reel, and all from an overwhelmingly triumphalist white perspective. You have to like history, from what you get out of it in public school, to want to go on to study it as a career, while knowing that there are few jobs available, universities are cutting or shuttering humanities departments, and you’ll never make much money. There is... not a whole lot of outside incentive there.

I’ve written before about how the humanities are always the first targeted, and the first defunded, and the first to be labeled as “worthless degrees,” because a) they are less valuable to late-stage capitalism and its emphasis on Material Production, and b) they often focus on teaching students the critical thinking skills that critique and challenge that dominant system. There’s a reason that there is a stereotype of artists as social revolutionaries: they have often taken a look around, gone, “Hey, what the hell is this?” and tried to do something about it, because the creative and free-thinking impulse helps to cultivate the tools necessary to question what has become received and dominant wisdom. Of course, that can then be taken too far into the “I’ll create my own reality and reject absolutely everything that doesn’t fit that narrative,” and we end up at something like the current death of expertise.

This year is particularly fertile for these kinds of misinformation efforts: a plague without a vaccine or a known cure, an election year in a turbulently polarized country, race unrest in a deeply racist country spreading to other racist countries around the world and the challenging of a particularly important system (white supremacy), etc etc. People are scared and defensive and reactive, and in that case, they’re especially less motivated to challenge or want to encounter information that scares them. They need their pre-set beliefs to comfort them or provide steadiness in a rocky and uncertain world, and (thanks once again to social media) it’s easy to launch blistering ad hominem attacks on people who disagree with you, who are categorized as a faceless evil mass and who you will never have to meet or negotiate with in real life. This is the environment in which all the world’s distinguished scientists, who have spent decades studying infectious diseases, have to fight for airtime and authority (and often lose) over random conspiracy theorists who make a YouTube video. The public has been trained to see them as “both the same” and then accept which side they like the best, regardless of actual factual or real-world qualifications. They just assume the maniac on YouTube is just as trustworthy as the scientists with PhDs from real universities.

Obviously, academia is racist, elitist, classist, sexist, on and on. Most human institutions are. But training people to see all academics as the enemy is not the answer. You’ve seen the Online Left (tm) also do this constantly, where they attack “the establishment” for never talking about anything, or academics for supposedly erasing and covering up all of non-white history, while apparently never bothering to open a book or familiarize themselves with a single piece of research that actual historians are working on. You may have noticed that historians have been leading the charge against the “don’t erase history!!!1″ defenders of racist monuments, and explaining in stinging detail exactly why this is neither preserving history or being truthful about it. Tumblr likes to confuse the mechanism that has created the history and the people who are studying and analyzing that history, and lump them together as one mass of Evil And Lying To You. Academics are here because we want to critically examine the world and tell you things about it that our nonsense system has required years and years of effort, thousands of dollars in tuition, and other gatekeeping barriers to learn. You can just ask one of us. We’re here, we usually love to talk, and we’re a lot cheaper. I think that’s pretty cool.

As a historian, I have been trained in a certain skill set: finding, reading, analyzing, using, and criticizing primary sources, ditto for secondary sources, academic form and style, technical skills like languages, paleography, presentation, familiarity with the professional mechanisms for reviewing and sharing work (journals, conferences, peer review, etc), and how to assemble this all into an extended piece of work and to use it in conversation with other historians. That means my expertise in history outweighs some rando who rolls up with an unsourced or misleading Twitter thread. If a professor has been handed a carefully crafted essay and then a piece of paper scribbled with crayon, she is not obliged to treat them as essentially the same or having the same critical weight, even if the essay has flaws. One has made an effort to follow the rules of the game, and the other is... well, I did read a few like that when teaching undergraduates. They did not get the same grade.

This also means that my expertise is not universal. I might know something about adjacent subjects that I’ve also studied, like political science or English or whatever, but someone who is a career academic with a degree directly in that field will know more than me. I should listen to them, even if I should retain my independent ability and critical thinking skillset. And I definitely should not be listened to over people whose field of expertise is in a completely different realm. Take the recent rocket launch, for example. I’m guessing that nobody thought some bum who walked in off the street to Kennedy Space Center should be listened to in preference of the actual scientists with degrees and experience at NASA and knowledge of math and orbital mechanics and whatever else you need to get a rocket into orbit. I definitely can’t speak on that and I wouldn’t do it anyway, so it’s frustrating to see it happen with history. Everybody “knows” things about history that inevitably turn out to be wildly wrong, and seem to assume that they can do the same kind of job or state their conclusions with just as much authority. (Nobody seems to listen to the scientists on global warming or coronavirus either, because their information is actively inconvenient for our entrenched way of life and people don’t want to change.) Once again, my point here is not to be a snobbish elitist looking down at The Little People, but to remark that if there’s someone in a field who has, you know, actually studied that subject and is speaking from that place of authority, maybe we can do better than “well, I saw a YouTube video and liked it better, so there.” (Americans hate authority and don’t trust smart people, which  is a related problem and goes back far beyond Trump, but there you are.)

As for art: it’s funny how people devalue it constantly until they need it to survive. Ask anyone how they spent their time in lockdown. Did they listen to music? Did they watch movies or TV? Did they read a book? Did they look at photography or pictures? Did they try to learn a skill, like drawing or writing or painting, and realize it was hard? Did they have a preference for the art that was better, more professionally produced, had more awareness of the rules of its craft, and therefore was more enjoyable to consume? If anyone wants to tell anyone that art is worthless, I invite you to challenge them on the spot to go without all of the above items during the (inevitable, at this rate) second coronavirus lockdown. No music. No films. No books. Not even a video or a meme or anything else that has been made for fun, for creativity, or anything outside the basic demands of Compensated Economic Production. It’s then that you’ll discover that, just as with the underpaid essential workers who suffered the most, we know these jobs need to get done. We just still don’t want to pay anyone fairly for doing them, due to our twisted late-capitalist idea of “value.”

Anyway, since this has gotten long enough and I should probably wrap up: as you say, the difference between “professional” and “hobbyist” has been almost completely erased, so that people think the opinion of one is as good as the other, or in your case, that the hobbyist should present their work for free or refuse to be seen as a professional entitled to fair compensation for their skill. That has larger and more insidious effects in a global marketplace of ideas that has been almost entirely reduced to who can say their opinion the loudest to the largest group of people. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but at least I can try to point it out and to avoid being part of it, and to recognize where I need to speak and where I need to shut up. My job, and that of every single white person in America right now, is to shut up and let black people (and Native people, and Latinx people, and Muslim people, and etc...) tell me what it’s really like to live here with that identity. I have obviously done a ton of research on the subject and consider myself reasonably educated, but here’s the thing: my expertise still doesn’t outweigh theirs, no matter what degrees they have or don’t have. I then am required to boost their ideas, views, experiences, and needs, rather than writing them over or erasing them, and to try to explain to people how the roots of these ideas interlock and interact where I can. That is -- hopefully -- putting my history expertise to use in a good way to support what they’re saying, rather than silence it. I try, at any rate, and I am constantly conscious of learning to do better.

I hope that was helpful for you. Thanks for letting me talk about it.

[hope-for-olicity]

Crushing the romance stigma once and for all Romance novel sales tally in the billions of dollars every year. (That's right: billions. With a "b".) And still, literary critics and other various bookish snobs continue to malign the genre, loudly and with great disdain. Why is that? If you ask these folks, they'll tell you romance novels are nothing but badly written trash. So, y'all have read a bunch of romance novels before forming that opinion, I assume? ​Oh, no, they'll say, noses tipped heavenward. They don't read romance (with all the contempt in the world placed on the word "romance"). Huh. Now I'm confused. Why would people be so openly hostile to a genre they've never read? I think I can tell you why.​The romance stigma and genre misconceptions are so deeply ingrained in us as a society that we have trouble overlooking them, even with glaring examples to the contrary. Heck, even bestselling romance authors like Nicholas Sparks hesitate to admit they write romance. Mr. Sparks insists that he writes “love stories”. On his website, Sparks lays out the difference between “love stories” and romance as follows: “It’s equivalent to the difference between a "legal thriller" and a "techno-thriller." In that instance, both novels include many of the same elements: suspense, good and bad forces pitted against each other, scenes that build to a major plot point, etc. But aside from the obvious, those novels are in different sub-genres and the sub-genres have different requirements. For instance, legal thrillers generally have a court room scene on center stage, techno-thrillers use the world or a city as their setting. Legal thrillers explore the nuances of law, techno-thrillers explore the nuances of scientific or military conflict. ​ The same situation applies with romance novels and love stories. Though both have romantic elements, the sub-genres have different requirements. Love stories must use universal characters and settings. Romance novels are not bound by this requirement and characters can be rich, famous, or people who lived centuries ago, and the settings can be exotic. Love stories can differ in theme, romance novels have a general theme—‘the taming of a man.’ And finally, romance novels usually have happy endings while love stories are not bound by this requirement. Love stories usually end tragically or, at best, on a bittersweet note.” I’m sorry, no disrespect intended, but if you’ve written a story in which the romantic relationship between two characters is the focus, you’ve written a romance novel, Mr. Sparks. The rest is just splitting hairs and can probably be construed as you protesting a bit too much. Throwing in a depressing ending doesn’t completely excuse you from the genre. Sorry. So, let’s take a look at the most common romance complaints and see if there’s actually anything to them: Romance novels are badly written I don’t know if y’all picked up on the implied “all” in that sentence, but I sure did. I don’t know of any genre outside of romance where people feel comfortable saying “all” of it is badly written. Are there some stinkers in the bunch? Absolutely. But I’ve also read plenty of stinkers in the sci fi, horror and mystery genres. I suppose my response to critics who say romance novels are badly written would be: have you read all romance novels? No? Well…there you go. And further...if they’re so badly written, why are they selling so well? Romance novels are formulaic I suppose this might depend on how broadly you define “formula”. For example: 1 person + 1 person = love and happiness Is that how a formula is defined? Because if that’s the definition, it could be argued that romance novels are formulaic. It is a somewhat unspoken “rule” that romance novels end with a HEA (happily ever after). But in my opinion, there’s A LOT that can happen in the middle of that particular formula, and there’s about a gazillion ways that particular equation can be worked out. I’ve read romance novels about everyday people with typical problems, and I’ve read romance novels about vampires and witches and angels. All the lovely variations in which the “formula” can be worked out and twisted about sure can make for some entertaining reading. Romance novels are predictable Again with the implied “all”. Sigh. I’m pretty hard to surprise. I knew that Darth Vadar was Luke’s father well before Luke did. I knew that one of the dead people Haley Joel Osment was seeing was Bruce Willis way before Bruce Willis knew. I knew what was going on at The Red Wedding well before Talisa took that knife to the gut. But I can honestly say that more than a few romance authors have managed to throw me for a loop with their plot gymnastics. (I’m looking at you, J.A. Redmerski!) So, are there some predictable romances out there? Sure. Can it be argued that the HEA is predictable? Absolutely. But to those still arguing this point, I have to ask: is your enjoyment of a book dependent on your inability to predict the story’s ultimate direction? Even if you know where the story will end up, can you not just enjoy the ebb and flow of the story, the writer’s word choices, the snap of the dialog and crackling chemistry between characters? If not...well, that’s kind of sad! Why bother reading at all if that’s the case?     There’s no plot; it’s all just about sex This is another one of those all-inclusive statements that should just be ignored. Are there some romance novels that are all about sex? Sure. And there are plenty of others that are intricately plotted (author Tarryn Fisher comes immediately to mind here) and meticulously researched. Beyond that, there’s even an entire subcategory of sweet and clean romances (even some Amish romances) that don’t contain any sex at all. Lesson to be learned here: As a rule, “all” and “never” statements are crap. “Real” writers don’t write romance Who gets to define what a “real” writer is? Was there some kind of specially appointed task force for this that I wasn’t aware of? As it turns out, writing is an art. So, just like any other art form, opinions on what is “good” and what is “real” will tend to vary greatly. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and there are no wrong answers. And just for the record, Jane Austen wrote romance novels. Anyone care to tell her—and her legions of rabid fans—that she wasn’t a real writer? No? Didn’t think so. Romance novels are unrealistic The “unrealistic” criticism usually exists in a couple of different forms: 1. The heroes and heroines are all perfect looking It’s true that as a society, we like pretty stuff. For that reason, you will find an abundance of pretty, seemingly perfect people in romance novels (especially on the covers). But, you’ll also find plenty of people who don’t fit into a perfect Barbie-and-Ken mold. I’ve read romances about a paraplegic hero, a heroine with CP, and a heroine so unattractive the hero is uncomfortable around her until he gets to know and love her.   2. HEAs don’t happen in real life You know who doesn’t believe in HEAs? Unhappy people. It’s true that no one is happy all the time, but to assume that no one ever gets a HEA is insane. There’s plenty of happiness out there for those who are willing to reach for it. And on a less philosophical note, I think romance readers generally understand that “HEA” is just a phrase. No one assumes that the main couple in the story continued to live out their lives without ever having another care in the world. The HEA is just where the story ends. Romance novels are just “bodice rippers” This one stems from a trend in the 70s and 80s that had innocent virgins (mostly in historical novels) on book covers being accosted by burly, half-dressed dudes (often Fabio) who were pretty much forcing themselves on them. Much like clothing and hairstyles, romance novel trends have also changed quite a bit since the 70s and 80s. For anyone who believes that all romance novels are “bodice rippers”, I encourage you to change out of your velour leisure suit, shut off your 8-track player and lava lamp, and venture to your local bookstore’s romance section. You’re in for a big surprise.   Romance novels promote abusive relationships I’ll let you in on a little secret, folks. (Come closer…wouldn’t want this one getting out to just anyone) Women sometimes fantasize about being overpowered by a man. It’s a pretty standard fantasy, actually. Some dude (who looks like Thor or Wolverine) overcomes all of her good-girl protests and better judgement with nothing more than the raw animal power of his overwhelming manly hotness. No consequences, no one gets hurt. Does reading about such a fantasy make women prone to asking their husband/partner/lover to abuse and overpower them on a regular basis? No more so than reading To Kill a Mockingbird makes people prone to becoming lawyers, or reading The Bourne Identity makes people prone to amnesia. Typically, readers are capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality. Critics who spew drivel about romance novels promoting abuse against women seem to think otherwise, though. And further, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve read a lot of romance novels. A. Lot. The portion of those novels that featured a man overpowering a woman amounts to maybe 2% of the total. It’s hardly fair to assume that all romance novels—or even a majority of romance novels, for that matter--promote that kind of relationship.   It’s just “mommy porn”       Sorry, but it’s just not statistically possible that all of the billions of dollars’ worth of romances sold each year were read by mommies. Women and men (yes, men read romance, too) of all ages enjoy romances. This statement is just a desperate attempt by critics to shame readers into buying the types of books theythink everyone should be reading. It’s like trying to convince people they should be watching PBS all the time. PBS is a great channel, but sometimes, you need a little HBO. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just an egocentric bully trying to promote his/her own agenda. Romance novels are silly fluff     I’m not going to argue that romance novels are doing their part to cure cancer or end world hunger. (And truthfully, neither are any novels) Some romances are about light subject matter, and others cover much deeper topics such as the grief of losing a spouse, kidnapping and child abuse, murder and even survival in a post-apocalyptic world. And those are just a few examples of the not-so-silly-fluffy topics you can find in romance novels today. There’s plenty more where those came from. Long-story-short, it would appear that nothing is wrong with the romance genre that isn’t also a problem for any other genre, other than what ignorant critics think of it. So, what can romance lovers do to help crush the romance stigma once and for all? Well, the first step is to admit, out loud and to anyone who asks, that you love romance novels. No more sheepishness. No more hiding your romance novels in speculative fiction dust jackets. No more refusing to let anyone see your Amazon browsing history or your Kindle’s contents. Be PROUD of what you read. The second step is to promote the books you read that help crush these myths. That’s what we’ll be doing here at Romance Rehab. What about all of you proud romance readers out there? What other romance misconceptions piss you off? Let’s talk.

[talabib]

Become Financially Secure

Seeking advice on how to be financially secure can be stressful; there is a glut of financial gurus telling you how you can follow a few simple steps and become a millionaire.

Most of this advice is hogwash, but some of it isn’t. This post present a simple and straightforward plan based on advice from distinguished financial experts. If you follow his plan, you’ll stand a greater chance of getting your finances in order and becoming financially secure – that is, reaching financial fitness – something we all dream of.

Your financial security is an illusion, and it’s time for you to take action.

Would you say you’re financially comfortable? Many of us feel secure enough in our finances, even though we all could use a few extra dollars. You probably have a job, and perhaps a car and house, and financial difficulties therefore seem far, far away.

But no matter how secure you may feel at this moment, financial insecurity may be closer than you think.

Imagine you suddenly lose your job: What would you do? Would you be able to pay your bills? Unlikely. Financial security is often more illusory than we think.

Take Sarah, for example. After her marriage she and her husband calculated their joint annual income to be over $75,000, and they had only a few debt obligations between the two of them. Feeling comfortable with their earnings and their debt, they proceeded to take out a large mortgage on their house. But that’s okay, right? They could afford it. Or could they?

One day Sarah discovered that she was losing her $45,000-per-year job. Suddenly, they faced foreclosure on the house.   

As in Sarah’s case, sudden financial setbacks can put us quickly in dire straits. What can we do? One way to avoid unpleasant surprises is by taking action before it’s too late. Change things now.

It’s easy not to feel this sense of urgency, to think instead that you can simply carry on until things turn sour, and then change. But this is totally irresponsible. Financial difficulties sometimes creep up on you, and before you know it, you’re in trouble.

It’s like the proverbial frog in the pot of water: As the water slowly heats up, the frog doesn’t realize that it’s being boiled alive and will let itself die.

This is what is happening to you right now. Your financial security could be slowly collapsing around you, and you have no idea. It’s time to make a change.

Debt is treated like a fact of life, but we need to recognize its constraints and dangers.

In our modern world, we are constantly encouraged to go out and buy stuff – a house, a car, a huge TV, you name it. And how exactly are we supposed to pay for all these things that we simply must have? With credit, of course.

Debt today is so ingrained in our lifestyle that it’s hard to imagine living without it. You probably have a decent amount of debt yourself, whether in the form of student loans, a mortgage, credit card debt or car payments.

In fact, debt is so embedded in our society that most people feel okay with having debt on a rental property, credit cards and student loans.

Though debt seems to be ever-present, it is absolutely not the path to financial happiness, and instead leads straight to financial difficulty.

Take one of the most common forms of debt: the credit card. Credit cards, which feel essentially like free money, give users incredible spending power. In the long run, however, they can hurt our financial strength.

In fact, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute, 69 percent of people who file for bankruptcy say it was caused by their credit card debt.

Interestingly, while many people use debt to create the appearance of wealth, genuinely wealthy people tend to avoid debt entirely.

In fact, 75 percent of people on the Forbes 400 list said the best way to build wealth is to become and stay debt-free. And some of the most successful companies, from Walgreen's and Cisco to Harley-Davidson, are run completely debt-free.

If these companies and individuals are able to find success without the burden of debt, then can’t we do the same?

Step one on the path to financial fitness involves creating an emergency starter fund.

So far, we’ve established one way not to establish financial security: trying to spend our way to success using credit. So what can we do?

You’ll need to start by creating a step-by-step plan that charts the route to financial fitness. Although you know you need to change the way you approach your finances, you must also realize that you can’t change everything at once. Instead, you should do yourself the favor of proceeding slowly, one small step at a time.

Just think: if you had to eat an elephant, you wouldn’t even think to try and do it all at once. You would start maybe with a foot per day, moving eventually to the trunk, then the body, eating bit by bit.

You want to take the same approach with your finances. If you try to attack different areas all at once – for example, your mortgage, credit card and 401k – then you’ll dilute your efforts and, ultimately, fail. So, go slow and take small bites.

But where do you start? The first step on your Total Money Makeover is to grow a starter emergency fund, a $1,000 chunk set aside in case of a rainy day.

In fact, Money Magazine estimates that 78 percent of us will experience a major negative life event, such as an unexpected pregnancy or car problem, in any given ten-year period. You’ll want to be prepared for when this happens.

And while $1,000 won’t cover that much, it’s nevertheless a useful start and will reduce the likelihood of having to go into debt.

But remember: this fund is only for emergencies, and if you have to take anything from it, you should replace it as soon as possible.

Steps two and three: Start paying off your debts one at a time and, when you’re ready, grow your emergency starter fund.

Once you have your emergency starter fund set up, you’re on your way to turning your finances around. Now it’s time to get your debts sorted out.

Step two of the Total Money Makeover is to create a debt snowball.

Everyone knows that if you start rolling a small snowball along the ground, it will, in no time at all, turn into a veritable snow boulder. The same thing happens when you pay off your debts. Here’s how:

Start by listing all your debts in order of size, from your tiny phone bill to your massive mortgage. Then it’s time to get serious about paying them off, starting with the smallest. As the small debts start to disappear, you’ll get inspired to tackle those bigger, trickier debts.

After you’ve started rolling your debt snowball, it’s time to turn your attention back to your emergency fund.

The goal of step three is to grow your emergency fund so that it could cover your expenses for a three to six month period.

Of course, everyone has different spending needs, so this number isn’t fixed. However, it often ranges from $5,000 to $25,000. To make things more concrete, if your family earns $3,000 per month, aim to save $10,000 or even more.  

Now let’s say you succeeded and have a bigger emergency fund. You’ll find that this gives you the confidence to continue on the path toward financial freedom. If, as you pay off your debts, you have to use some – or even all – of your savings and retirement funds, you’ll have an emergency fund that’ll cover you for half a year. That allows you to get on with your life securely and confidently.

Step four: Invest 15 percent of your income in mutual funds to provide for yourself in retirement.

Everyone has big worries about the financial situation they’ll face after retirement. We ask ourselves: Will we have enough money to live comfortably in our golden years?

In order to overcome such fears, we turn to step four of the Total Money Makeover: A dignified and secure retirement will require you to invest 15 percent of your income.

Although this might seem like a lot, there are a number of reasons why it’s worth setting aside that kind of money.

For starters, old age simply wouldn’t be any fun if you had to rely on others to maintain a comfortable living. This is especially true if you are hoping to live off government pension plans. By the time you reach retirement age, the chances of our inept government providing for a dignified life are negligible.

It can be tempting to put aside less for retirement so that you can focus on things like your children’s college fund or quickly paying down the mortgage. But your kids’ degrees won't feed you after you retire, and too many senior citizens live in a paid-for house with no disposable income.

Once you have committed to putting away 15 percent of your income, where exactly should you invest it? For the best returns, use mutual funds.

Throughout history, the stock market averages just below 12 percent in returns. Mutual funds take advantage of this trend, and thus make for an excellent choice for long-term investment. One tip is to select funds that have a solid track record of winning for more than five years, ideally for over ten. Make sure to diversify your investments across various funds to ensure profitability.

Here’s a another good rule to follow: allocate 25 percent to growth and income (or blue chip) funds, 25 percent to growth (or equity) funds, 25 percent to international funds and the final 25 percent to aggressive funds, i.e., ones that are riskier but can give higher returns.

Step five: if you want your kid to go to college, plan for them to get there debt-free.

Nearly every parent dreams of sending their child to college, and many parents are prepared to let themselves and their children go into debt to fund this dream.

But as we’ve already discussed, debt is to be avoided at all costs. Funding college with debt should not be considered a tenable option.

A college loan will hamper your child for a long, long time. The current generation of students has earned the nickname “generation debt” with good reason – they graduate from college with an average of $25,000 to $27,000 in debt, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

So how should you pay for college? One way, of course, is to win a scholarship, or to simply save up enough in cash to foot the bill.

Yet, there is another way: using an Education Savings Account (ESA) and funding it in a growth-stock mutual fund.

If you were to invest $2,000 a year in a prepaid tuition plan, from the birth of your child until their eighteenth birthday, you would end up with $72,000 worth of tuition. However, if you instead used an ESA funded by mutual funds (which average 12 percent), you’d have $126,000 to spend on education and living expenses.

And as long as you use this account to pay education expenses, the money is tax-free. But, even with this option, you must ask yourself whether a college degree is the right thing to invest in for your child.

In his book Emotional Intelligence, about successful people, Daniel Goleman states that only 15 percent of success can be attributed to training and education. The remaining 85 percent is attributed to attitude, perseverance, diligence and vision.

These latter qualities will take you much further in life than some piece of paper with the words “degree” scrawled on it. So does your kid need to go to college? If getting there means going into debt, then certainly not.

Step six is becoming debt-free by paying off the biggest loan of them all: your mortgage.

So how long have you been paying off your mortgage? Often, they take decades to finally pay off.

Step six of the Total Money Makeover is about paying it off as soon as possible. For most people, this is the final hurdle on their path to financial fitness, and paying it off will leave them absolutely debt-free.

However, there are many pitfalls that can prevent you from finishing off your mortgage. It’s your job to avoid them.

For example, you’ll hear it suggested that you should borrow money against your home, taking advantage of low interest rates and investing your money in the stock market.

But this is terrible advice. Imagine, hypothetically, that you borrow $100,000 against your home at  8-percent interest and invest it in stocks with 12-percent return. In this scenario, you stand to make $12,000 in profit. After paying the interest on your mortgage, in this case $8,000, you’d have a healthy $4,000 left over. Not so bad.

But that doesn’t take into consideration all the taxes and fees that go hand in hand with playing the stock market. In the end, you’re left with around $1,000. Hardly worth it for such a huge risk.

Another misconception is that it’s possible to take out a 30-year mortgage with the promise to pay it back in 15 years. But you will inevitably run into expenses that take you off course – high heating bills, dog vaccinations, sick children and so on.

And if they aren’t compelled by law to do so, virtually no one ever makes the extra payments necessary to pay off a loan that quickly.

However, it’s often better to simply take a shorter mortgage out anyway. In comparison to a 30-year mortgage at 7 percent, a 15-year mortgage will earn you a savings of $150,000 over the course  of the mortgage. Think about what you could do with that kind of money.

Step seven: follow your plan and spend (and give away) your money if you have it.

At this point, you’re right on the brink of financial fitness. You’re on the last leg of your journey, with just one final step to go.

Once you are debt-free and have begun to save for your future, it’s time to start building up your wealth.

Surround yourself with experts, people like tax advisors, CPAs, estate-planning attorneys, etc., who can offer you sound advice on what you need to do with your money.  

And no matter what, stick to your plan. As you grow older, you’ll find yourself more inclined to react to small changes in the market, especially if you fear a downturn is looming. But don’t fret! These small blips are nothing compared to the market’s trend of long-term growth.

Finally, understand that financial fitness doesn’t mean living like a Scrooge. Have fun with your money when you can.

Fun is a crucial element of the Total Money Makeover. Should anyone wear a $30,000 watch? Drive a $50,000 car? Or live in a $700,000 home? Absolutely. But only if they can actually afford them.

You have to learn to spend your money only on what you can afford, and forget the rest. When the right opportunity presents itself, you should also be prepared to give your money away. Giving money away is just as fun as spending it, and possibly even more rewarding. It feels good being generous – but you need to have before you can give.

At last, you’ve completed your journey to financial freedom. Now it’s time to enjoy it, living in comfort, happiness and security.

For most people, financial security is little more than a comforting illusion. However, you can turn your financial situation around by following seven “baby steps” that put you on the path to a debt-free and financially successful life.

 Action plan: Learn to live your own life.

You probably have some friends who appear to be pretty well off. Yet, a lot of people appear to be doing better than they actually are. Debt allows for this illusion, but it will eventually crumble beneath them. So don’t measure yourself against your peers.

[gosetmind]

How to distract your thoughts [AND calm your mind]

Everyone has pleasant thoughts or emotional experiences, but there are also some thoughts and emotions that can only make people frustrated or nervous.

When we are nervous, our minds often seem to think about the millions of things at the same time, and the last thing we want is a mess. Therefore, it is important to be able to take a little time to calm down, to be able to see a thing from a holistic perspective, and then learn to put it down.

Here are a few ways to distract your thoughts. We'll first explore why people are entangled in certain thoughts or emotions, and then give you advice on how to solve the problem.

Focus on your current affairs

  Thinking sometimes wanders away from the "backstage" of the brain, so focus it immediately on one of your current thoughts, and realize that there is often more than one thought in the brain - and some of the thinking in the back of the brain is less noticed by the brain. You can say to yourself, "That's how I feel right now.""Or "I'm thinking about it now" so that your mind will focus and you don't continue to wander away. But usually when you really focus on a thought, you can quickly put it down because the brain thoroughly scanned it.

When you appreciate a picture of peace, your brain is easy to calm down and let go of some thoughts, but don't think hard about what you're going to forget.

Look at your thoughts and understand how your thoughts and feelings control you

When we look at some of our thoughts, it's not hard to see that a thought actually has two sides - themes and processes. The process is the activity in which you think or experience emotion.

Sometimes the brain's thought process has no subject, and the brain is in an irrational and wild state of consciousness. This is because when a person feels physical pain, the brain feels afraid. It activates protective mechanisms, and uses an idea to appease or distract itself. If you look at your brain in a way that looks at the machine, you'll find that the brain is simply just casually grasping an idea as the subject of one's own thinking.

The idea of having a theme is often more obvious, and you may feel angry, worried, or feel other things about what you think, which is often repeated many times and is tightly centered around a topic.

Being kind to yourself, gives your brain a positive hint that it's good to let go of unpleasant thoughts.

Realize that self-blame is useless

If you blame yourself for the subject matter of certain thoughts, the problem becomes even more difficult. For example, you may be wondering how much you hate someone and immediately feel guilty or angry about your thoughts.

In fact, letting go doesn't mean you're going to distinguish right from wrong, it's not about you tell right from wrong. Don't feel that frustration, worry, hatred and anger are wrong, and don't feel that these emotions shouldn't exist and shouldn't affect us, otherwise, once you start blaming yourself, more problems will arise. There will be a root in your mind. The deep cause-and-effect process is built and will become more difficult to control in the future.

Accepting your thoughts and emotions is the first step in letting them go, and self-blame is often the beginning of more problems. Self-blame makes your brain impose a series of unrelated thoughts and emotions on you. Keep in mind that all the tools I use to manipulate come from the brain, so the brain manipulates the body much more than we think. Some parts of the brain sometimes sink. Obsessed with things that cannot be self-indulgent, and thus indulge our desires, so that we are enslaved by desires. In general, the driving force behind all our thoughts and emotions is desire. 

Think about how you're related to these thoughts and emotions

The mind runs by habit, so even when you think you've forgotten a thought or emotion, they still bounce back. It's time to make up your mind to let go again. Not only to stop this series of thoughts from resurgent, but also to prevent them from entangled in newly formed thoughts or emotions.

The difficulty lies in the central problem: we must radically alienated the brain from thought themes and processes about thoughts or emotions. If we realize that this thought theme and process is not good for our lives today, then the problem can be solved. However, we do not want to ignore the themes and processes of some thoughts and don't think they're going to increase our stress because we want to figure out what this thought means (that is, when we have anger, anxiety, and so on, we want to figure out who we're thinking about, where we have it, what it means, and why we think about it).

This desire to "find out" is even stronger than the desire to put it down, in which case it becomes more difficult to put it down when it is overcome by another stronger desire. If you're just tangled up because you want to tangle, you'll be in a paradoxical situation if you don't pay attention (on the one hand, you want to put it down. On the other hand, you want to figure out what your thoughts and emotions mean). At this point, although the brain is suspected of getting out of control, in fact, your brain is still in control of the mind, so you can use this self-struggle to distract yourself. In the face of the powerful thinking of "I want to figure it out", you have to say to yourself, "Okay, it's time to put it down" all the way to your heart. The desire to put down is stronger than the desire to continue to tangle.

Another problem is that emotions are often seen as part of the self. We are usually reluctant to admit that it is we who sometimes make us feel pain and sorrow. It has long been taught that "all" emotions are precious and part of who we are. But what we don't know is that there are emotions that don't cause tension, but.There are also emotions that cause tension. The explanation is clear: you need to spend enough time looking at your thoughts and emotions without any self-blame, and then decide whether they are worth cherishing or better to put them down.

Thoughts distraction in practice

  If you have a thought around a topic that you want to forget about, try these experiments:

1. Try not to think of a polar bear, or more surprisingly, a coffee-drinking purple flamingo with dots. The experiment is very old, but it can effectively demonstrate the power of thinking. And as a result of this experiment, the harder you try not to think about polar bears, the more you struggle with polar bears' thoughts. As with the sign of an unpleasant thought, you need to tighten your nerves when you do so, and the subject you want to forget is the subject of your best efforts. So the harder you try to avoid polar bears, the more distinctive the polar bear's image becomes.

2. It's like you want to put down a pen.

To put down this pen, you must first take it.

You keep thinking about putting down the pen, you have to hold it all the time.

Logically, if you still hold the pen, but keep the thought of "put it down" in your heart, you can't put it down.

The more you focus on "I'm going to put this pen down," the more you can't put it down.

Don't deliberately struggle with certain thoughts and emotions so you can let go

The above-mentioned truth also applies in thinking. The more desperate we try to put aside a thought, the more we will focus on that thought and the more tension and stress we will put on the brain. The more we respond to the protective effects of an attack, and the more we can't let go. To break out of this vicious circle, learn to relax. Release your hand, the pen will fall off on its own; relax your brain, and unpleasant thoughts will disappear automatically. If you've tried desperately to forget one thing before, this reaction to self-struggle and self-protection may already be ingrained in your brain, and you'll need a little time to break the inertia.

That's what the brain is all about. When we are entangled in thoughts and emotions and desperately trying to destroy them, they are relying on no place to go and firmly stay in our minds. Only when we relax can we really distract our thoughts and put it down.

Techniques to deal with thoughts and emotions

There are many ways to deal with recurring annoying thoughts and emotions, and here are some examples for you to refer to:

1. Is there a book, a movie, or something you've seen or done so many times that you're tired of it? If so, think of those ideas as movies until you get tired of them, so you can easily put them down.

2. If you can't put it down, manipulate it. Play it back in your head, twist it, change it, and eventually you'll find that you're the one who's leading it. Although a softer idea replaces an unpleasant one is only a temporary one, it is also effective. Forget when you twist an idea to an acceptable level.It's easier.

3. Clear measurement standard. There are two benefits to a clear measurement: one is that you can detect it quickly when something unpleasant happens, and the other is that it can provide you with a way out of negative thoughts and emotions.

4. If you're entangled in an emotion, ask yourself, "Is it good for me," or "Is it helping me," or "I don't want that emotion." If you find this emotion to be of little benefit, then realizing it can support you overcome it, get rid of it, and regain your self-confidence.

5. Practice meditation. Meditation can help you focus on your current affairs, which can help you move away from the controls that haunt your thoughts and emotions.

6. Imagination. If you're a busy person, imagination will work for you. Here's an example:

Imagine a beautiful, empty, flower-filled wilderness or other pleasant scenery. Explore inside and enjoy the blue sky and fresh air. Then imagine a city uprooted in this wilderness, with tall buildings, streets and cars everywhere. Now, let the city disappear and return to the empty, beautiful wilderness.

The picture you imagine has the following meaning: the field represents our brain. It turned out to be empty as well as calm. But rising cities are like the thoughts and emotions we force to add. With the passage of time, we slowly adapted to the city's noisy existence and forget the once foot of the wilderness, but that piece of calm never left. And when you put those thoughts and emotions down, the high-rise buildings on the field disappeared, and the calm and serene wilderness came back. You know, unpleasant thoughts and emotions are just tall buildings built on calm fields, and you can destroy them at any time and embrace the land of happiness and serenity. Accept your negative thoughts and feelings and let go.

How can i calm my mind

  To calm the impetuous mind, you don't necessarily need to do long-term body-building events to cultivate, master some tips about emotions, soothing impetuousness is a very simple thing.

1. Comfort Object

Winnicott has proposed a concept called "transitional object", which represents the transitional object, often a blanket, an old dress, a soft doll, or some repetitive action, the real transition object refers to something between the mother and the external object.

The transitional object exists in the transition phase of the baby from the perception that he or she is the one with the mother with the perception that he or she is separated from the mother.

Transition object is the mother's substitute, often with the mother's soft, touching, intimate characteristics, can help the baby to fight anxiety, loneliness, is the carrier of the baby's sense of security and dependence.

So when we feel impetuous, we can choose to stroke some soft dolls, which can help us experience the feeling of peace of mind, soothe our impetuous mood, as if back to the mother's warm embrace.

In addition, when touching soft things, our body secretes endocrine and oxytocin. These hormones are hormones that make people feel calm and content.

We also secrete these hormones when we embrace the people we like.

If you want to fight impetuousness, you have to grasp the characteristics of what we like about softness.

2. Cold

People's mood will be affected by the weather. On cloudy days, many people will feel unhappy. On sunny days, many people will feel happy. This phenomenon may be related to the amount of sunlight caused by the body secreted pineal hormones difference.

In addition to the short weather will affect people's mood, there are also continuous seasons can also affect people's mood, psychologically known as seasonal psychological disorders.

In late spring and early summer people are more likely to develop mania until the end of autumn, and in late autumn and early winter people are more likely to develop depressive emotions until the end of late spring and early summer.

Seasonal psychological disorders are often related to physiological rhythm disorders and endocrine disorders that occur with seasonal changes.

This can be artificially manipulated, for example, in a cold winter, order a glass of iced drink will make our hearts feel cold.

When we feel impetuous, we can try to drink some cold drinks, or take a bath to change our physiological feelings, and then change the impetuous psychological feelings.

3. Sort things out

Impulsiveness is divided into two situations. The first is impetuous mood, which relates to the cycle of emotions; the second is impetuous because of specific things. These two kinds of impetuousness cannot be solved in the same way.

When we feel impetuous because of something specific, such as debt, it makes a person impetuous, we cannot escape the problem, but to sort things out, especially in an interesting way.

Debt only gives one person a part of the trouble, and the other trouble comes from the fact that he doesn't know as much about it as he thought he did, and he doesn't know the details of his specific debt.

Therefore, the person can try to draw the date of the debt, the amount, the repayment plan, as well as his every consumption situation.

In doing so, he would be very interested in his bills and would have a sense of identity with them.

This method can also be used for other specific things, and the specific things can be sorted out in an interesting and detailed manner.

4. Immersive experience

Impetuousness is a mentality that doesn't want to know things, it's like a white bear in the white bear effect, it's a compulsive concept.

When we deal with impetuousness, we can choose between two methods.

The first is to do some mechanical action.

For example, staring at your own clothes, and then constantly meditated on the heart of this dress is good-looking, or keep playing with their fingers, so that we can concentrate, naturally indulge in things, also remove impetuousness.

The second way is not to do mechanical action, but to do activities that will allow us to experience an immersive, such as playing games, listening to music, etc.

Try choosing songs with light rhythms, or you can choose songs with soothing rhythms that often change people's moods, whether high or low, to help calm your mind.

Conclusion

Practice makes perfect. If you practice more, the more negative thoughts and emotions will be distracted. Remember, inner thoughts and emotions are like the weather, they come and go, like clouds and snow, and you are the day.

It's helpful to know your brain, you just have to relax and take a little time to take a good look at your thinking activities and how they react to the outside world. You want a scientist who observes new species to be as meticulous about the brain's habits.

If you need, you should talk to a psychological consultant and don't worry about looking for help because it is good for your mental health.

It's easy to indulge in pleasant emotions, but these emotions come and go, and we can't expect to have them forever, but you can use them as a measure to identify your thoughts and emotions and calm yourself down.

[antemortem-rp-blog]

WELCOME, Ness !! You’ve been accepted for the role of Faye Chamberlain. We’re so excited to have you join the ante mortem family. Please look over the checklist and make sure to send in your account within 48 hours. We look forward to seeing you on our dash.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name / Alias: Ness.

Age: twenty.

Pronouns: she/her.

Timezone: GMT.

Anything Else?: just that I want to worship the ground you walk on for making this roleplay.

IN CHARACTER

Desired Character: Faye Chamberlain.

Why?:  I’m gonna preface this by saying the second I stumbled this roleplay I screeched. I love every single show incorporated in the plot and I’m in awe at how you’ve managed to merge all the shows and the characters so seamlessly. I actually don’t even know where to begin expressing my love for Faye. Honestly I hadn’t heard of TSC until about 2 years after it aired. My main reason for watching it was because I had a character with a Phoebe FC at the time and I kept stumbling upon gifs from the show. I remember watching the very first episode and I’m not gonna lie at first I hated Faye with a passion. But as the season progressed, my adoration for her blossomed. With her mischievous nature and offhanded one-liners, she easily became one of my favorite characters. Faye is such an intriguing character in the sense that there’s so much more to her beneath the steely glareand sharp tongue—she’s not the one-dimensional bitch character we’ve seen portrayed so many times. There are so many layers and complexities to her with so much potential for development to the point where I simply couldn’t dream of applying for anyone else. It would be an honour to undertake Faye’s role and bring her character back to life.

Character Pronouns: she/her.

Sexuality & Ships: Bisexual. I’d be absolutely honored to plot with anyone in regards to ships whether it be as a friendship, a romantic setting, pure unadulterated hatred or anything else in-between. I’m a huge advocate for ships based on chemistry. I never want to rule out any ships because from my experience it’s always the ships I don’t expect that I have the fondest memories of.

Occupation: After dropping out of college, Faye is focusing on herself and trying to get back into a positive headspace before even thinking about enrolling again. Although her mother supports her financially, Faye works as a nanny a few days a week. She has a soft spot for kids and she’s a child at heart so I can easily see her keeping the kids entertained with her exuberant nature.

Headcanons:

Faye has always been someone who fails to be described in few words. She is the definition of a free spirit—she’s super adventurous and audacious but also soooo reckless to the point where you’d think she constantly has a death wish. She has a mindset of ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’. This is the main excuse for her reckless behavior because the repercussions of her actions never cross her mind. She’s one of those people who would do literally anything for someone she cares about and wouldn’t give it a second thought. Even if it meant running into a burning building with a survival rate of 0%, she would do it.  And when everyone is saying ‘Faye no’, her brain would be screaming ‘FAYE YES’.

What most people fail to notice is that Faye has a softness within her, a brokenness that does not prevail outwardly—one she deals with alone. Consequently, she is possibly one of the most guarded people you could find on the planet. There is a void in her heart, one filled with pain, grief, and trauma. It is a void so profound it that remains with her every single day of her life, no matter how much she would prefer to disregard it. She views emotions as a form of weakness and has developed an ability to mask her feelings so nobody can look past the facade and see how truly broken she is. She’s a walking contradiction: a girl who feels everything so intensely so she pretends not to have any feelings at all. It’s her defence mechanism. Peel back those layers, however, and you’ll find a scared, insecure little girl who wants nothing but to feel loved. Not that she would ever admit it, though.

Faye and her grandfather shared a bond like no other. Both a father figure and best friend rolled into one, he played a vital role in his granddaughter’s life and Faye loved him dearly. Some of her fondest childhood memories were spent at her grandfather’s lake house. But Pine Lake was also the setting of two traumatic events Faye can only dream of permanently eradicating from the crevices of her mind. The first being her near drowning incident. And the second was gazing into the darkened eyes of her grandfather in that very same spot. She often finds herself awakening in the middle of the night, screaming, reliving the memories in her subconscious. To the extent where it’s a rare occurrence for her not wake up to nightmares stricken by these memories.

Powerlessness is one of her greatest fears. When the circle was bound, Faye was left to her own devices which landed her in multiple life-threatening situations where she was left defenceless. So, she decided to take matters into her own hands by learning how to protect herself. She enrolled in martial arts and self-defence classes so she’d be able to hold her own in a fight without her magic.

Although she isn’t psychic per say, I see Faye having some kind of precognitive ability. On more than one occasion, she has made jokes or assumptions that have turned out to be true. For instance when she had her suspicions about Jake when he returned to Chance Falls and that Eva was lying about Lee skipping town. She also guessed that John Blackwell was really evil, and that the curse on the Conant and Blake families wasn’t real. Long before Faye discovered her magic, I can imagine her blurting out random things and making predictions which ended up really freaking people out, including herself. But at the time, she blamed it on intuition or a simple coincidence.

‘Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive’ sums Faye up. All of the events throughout her life; all of the trauma and heartache, has hardened her and made her resilient. She has learned the true value of independence and how the only person she can truly rely on in any situation is herself. Pair that with her determination and her magical abilities. She’s a force to be reckoned with and is one of the last people you’d want as an enemy.

Para Sample:

The last few days had been torturous for Faye. Nothing could have prepared her for her grandfather’s passing. It was a concept she couldn’t seem to comprehend—her grandfather was dead. Just like that. The person she had known since she was born was gone and she would never see him again. There were so many things she didn’t have the chance to tell him—things she will never be able to tell him. She would give anything to see him again, even for a fleeting moment. Just so she could say goodbye.

Sleep had become a foreign notion. The vivid memory of seeing her grandfather’s body still remained deeply ingrained in Faye’s subconscious thoughts. No matter how hard she tried, the girl just couldn’t seem to forget. Images of that night never faltered to flash in her mind, over and over again, on a seemingly never-ending loop. She would awaken in the middle of the night so many times—to the point where she could no longer she remember what it felt like to have a full night’s sleep. Sometimes she would even reach a point where she could no longer distinguish her dreams from reality. She felt broken—beyond broken. All Faye could feel was the numbness swarming around her heart and the unbearable guilt whenever she remembered she lost the chance to tell her grandfather just how much she loved him before his death. The smile on her face had long since faded and she just wanted to forget. Forget about being a witch. Forget about all of the drama in Chance Falls. Forget everything. She didn’t just want to—she had to. It hurt too much. But, much to her dismay, it was easier said than done.

Now even the image of her grandfather’s face was slowly erasing itself from her mind, as if he was gradually becoming nothing but a distant memory. Sunken eyes and a tear-stained face had seemed to become permanent features of Faye Chamberlain. Everything was taking its toll on her and it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep herself together. She had grown weary of all the apologetic glances and supposed words of ‘comfort’. With each passing day, more and more texts and phone calls from her friends and family went unanswered. For a girl who spent a fair chunk of her life glued to her phone, it was completely out of character. But she didn’t even have the energy to care anymore. She had shut herself off entirely from the world, even from her own mother. Probably one of the most baffling things was that Faye never saw her mother grieve. It was as if she was entirely devoid of emotion. As if she didn’t even care about Faye’s grandfather at all. All she could feel was this overwhelming sensation of rage towards her mother that only seemed to heighten as the days went by. She was the reason her grandfather rarely ventured away from his home to Chance Falls. The reason Faye and her grandfather’s relationship suffered throughout her teenage years. And Faye would never forgive her mother for that.

Her fingertips drummed on the porcelain of the bathtub to the beat of the music that was playing faintly in the background. Though she wasn’t really listening, certainly not amidst the seemingly never-ending array of thoughts that were circulating around her mind. She descended into the water, feeling the warm liquid cling to every inch of her skin. Faye’s throat felt dry and chest felt heavy, as if boulders had been squeezed through the small little bronchial tubes and straight into her lungs. A shiver travelled down her spine and she felt her breath catching in the back of her throat. Breathe, she told herself. But it was easier said than done. It was something so simple yet so difficult—but it felt as if she couldn’t quite remember how. Faye finally emitted a tremulous breath as she diverted her gaze to the ceiling. All she could feel was the dull, nauseating ache resonating in her chest and the quickened thrum of her throat. So, she screwed her eyes shut.

Then the memories came flooding back.

A bolt of lightning crackled across the blackened sky and the sound thunder boomed through the air. Sky-fallen trickles were plummeting downward relentlessly and the wind battered through the late autumn air. The brunette’s entire frame was drenched, the coldness seeping through her clothes onto her skin. But Faye hardly took any notice. The weather was the last thing on her mind.

Panic ripped through her as she scrambled towards Cassie. Her chest had tightened until it felt as if she wasn’t even breathing—which she was, rather laboriously, in fact. Her feet skidded to a halt as she reached the edge of the wooden dock. And that’s when she saw him. Her grandpa. At that very moment, Faye could have sworn she felt her heart disintegrating into tiny fragments. She remained entirely motionless as her mind attempted to process the sight that beheld her.  

“That’s my grandpa,” she rasped out, the words not quite registering in her mind. She felt her legs collapsing beneath her body and instantly clung onto Cassie in an attempt to stabilise herself. “No” was the only word she could muster the inner strength to say. “No, no, no—” she repeated as her normally pleasant demeanor gradually altered and her face crumbled, consuming nothing else but heartbreak. Faye could hear her own voice crack as every wall of composure collapsed and tears began cascading down her cheeks. Her breath hitched and her entire body convulsed as a sequence of sobs wracked through her frame. She inhaled deeply, attempting to regain her composure to some extent, but only seemed to fail. She screwed her eyes shut as she remained enveloped in Cassie’s embrace.

Faye’s eyes snapped open, her vision blurred by the fogginess of the water surrounding her. She shot upwards almost instantly,  gasping for air, as her hands clutched the edges of the bathtub. Her forehead crinkled in desperation and she strained her eyes, frantically analysing her surroundings. A breathy exhale fell from her lips just then. Her hazel orbs lifted upward for a few moments and she pursed her lips into a line, as the liquid clinging to her eyelashes began to glide along her skin. “I love you, grandpa,” she muttered in a barely audible tone. Those few words brought her an instant sense of relief, knowing that in a world that can be so bleak and cruel, she could find solace in speaking to her grandfather. But that still didn’t change the harsh reality that he was gone and was never coming back.

Now all Faye had left was an unbearable ache in her chest, tearing her to shreds every single time her thoughts lingered on her grandfather. She would have to learn how to live in a world without him by her side—a world without him there to hold her afloat.

Anything Else?: I threw together a pinterest board HERE and I have an old account HERE I’ve repurposed over the years for an original character who is very reminiscent of Faye personality-wise.

[phooll123]

TALENT MANAGEMENT

Dual-Career Couples Are Forcing Firms to Rethink Talent Management

MAY 15, 2018

Jennifer Petriglieri, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, asks company leaders to consider whether they really need to relocate their high-potential employees or make them travel so much. She says moving around is particularly hard on dual-career couples. And if workers can’t set boundaries around mobility and flexibility, she argues, firms lose out on talent. Petriglieri is the author of the HBR article “Talent Management and the Dual-Career Couple.”

Play

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Headset

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael.

To me, it seems ridiculous to tell someone they need to move across the country or to a new country in just a month. I mean, you might have kids in school, a spouse who needs to find a job, a house you need to sell, and new housing you need to find. Who are these people expect us to drop everything and jump for a new role?

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: And so, I think those people are us, Sarah, quite frankly, and I think it comes from two sources.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That’s our guest, Jennifer Petriglieri.

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: So, one is really ingrained expectations — we might call them unconscious expectations — of what we as sociologists call the ideal worker, always available, can move at the drop of a hat, is 100% dedicated, and has the support crew at home who can take care of everything.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: She says the other expectation is the fact that sometimes someone very suddenly leaves a role; and because business must go on, someone else needs to suddenly fill it. Making this kind of move so quickly would be tough for anyone, but if you have a spouse who has their own demanding career, it can be near impossible.

Jen is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, and she’s the author of the HBR article “Talent Management and the Dual-Career Couple.”

She’s here to talk about why companies shouldn’t make employees choose between their careers and their spouses.

Well, Jen, thank you so much for talking with us today.

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks, Sarah.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, let’s just start with the overarching problem with traditional talent strategies. How do they fall short here?

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: Well, really the core of the problem is the logic they’re based on. So, the design logic of today’s time management programs were set in place 20, 30 years ago in an era of what I call “unbounded talent.” Now, what I mean by this is in those days, talent tended to have spouses who were what we might refer to as “trailing spouses.” So, they had people who took up all of the family commitments for them so they could dedicate themselves pretty much 100% to work. They could travel at the drop of a hat, they could move and relocate to relatively frequently, and they were essentially almost primarily committed to work.

At the same time, if we think back to that era, there was no technology than to support remote working or flexible working. That logic has completely changed, but the design of talent management is still rooted in that original logic. So, now if we think about most talent is what I call “bounded talent.” You know, very few of us have that support crew at home backing us up. Many of us are in dual-career couples where we’re managing logistics and challenges between us, and at the same time we have these amazing enabling technologies that could help us not need to be onsite all the time 24/7.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Tell me a little bit more about that challenge of the sort of — the demands of a physical location, like having to be in a particular place at a particular time.

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: Yeah, so a lot of organizations are still based on this idea of facetime, how we show a commitment and show our dedication is by showing up physically in the office and also showing up physically in different offices. So, if I need to do a piece of work, the assumption is I probably have to go to that location to do it. So, there’s this real idea of physical presence, even though we know, and I know you’ve had podcasts about this before, that if we work remotely, we are often actually more productive. So, it flies in the face of the evidence, and yet that logic of physical presence is still very much underpinning most of our talent management strategies.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, in your work you have, you’ve kind of distinguished between two kinds of challenges. One is the mobility challenge; one is the flexibility challenge. Tell me a little bit about how you came to think of it as two separate challenges.

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: Yeah, so really the thinking came from two places. One is talking to many HR leaders and leaders of talent management programs and looking at the challenges they face, managing talent. And the other is talking to the talented people themselves and looking at the personal challenges they face. And really there’s a mirroring between them.

So, if we look at the mobility challenge first, more and more HR leaders are coming to me and saying, you know, well, we have these great opportunities to move locations, to do secondments, to spend some time abroad. People just aren’t as willing to take them anymore or they have more challenges in taking them. They can’t just go at the drop of a hat. And I heard time and time again organizations who would offer one of their talented people what looked like a plum role only to have it knocked back and say, well, the time’s not right for me now, or, I can’t leave tomorrow to that great opportunity.

At the same time when I spoke to talented people themselves in dual career couples, they would say, we want to move. It’s not that I want to be stuck in one location, and I realize that to become a senior leader, I must be mobile, but I cannot just be mobile at the whim of the organization. It needs to be a more planful move, particularly when we’re trying to manage two careers between us. It is possible to both find relocations and do them together or both gone secondments, etc. But it just requires more planning. And what’s very interesting if you look at the data is that when there is more planning behind it and when both people get good moves together, those relocations are more likely to work. So, it’s not just a constraint that we need more time. We know that they’re more successful when we give them more time. So, that’s the mobility side.

The flexibility side is a little bit more different. So, if we think of mobility, that is maybe once every six months, once a year, even once every three years for big rotation or travel. Flexibility is more of a day-to-day issue. And it’s really this issue that if both partners in a couple are working, there are still a lot of household tasks that needs to get done. You know, if the kids are sick, who takes them? If there’s some elder care that needs to be handled, who does that? There are things that happen in our daily lives in the week that need to get handled, and the question is, who has responsibility for those now? Now, in an ideal world, if organizations were using all the tools we have available for flex working, for telecommuting, that wouldn’t be so much of an issue; but right now what I heard time and time again from HR leaders and the talent themselves was, we have these policies, but if you make use of them, you’re stigmatized and you’re seen as not committed to the organization, not dedicated to your career, and therefore you’re punished for using them. So, it’s not that organizations don’t have the solutions. It’s that in curtailing people from using them, they’re creating this flexibility challenge, which quite frankly doesn’t need to be there.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, tell us about a couple you talked to who found themselves in that situation. How did they handle it?

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: So, the first example I want to give you is a couple who were actually based in Boston, where you are Sarah.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Oh!

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: Yeah. And he was in tech, and she was in pharmaceutical sales, actually. If you know the pharmaceutical sales world, it’s, it’s fairly fast moving, and opportunities come up relatively frequently, and people really trying to climb the ladder quite quickly. And she was offered a golden opportunity down in Florida, OK? And it was exactly one of those situations: You’re your high potential. We know you’re raising up the ladder quickly. You know, someone’s gone to a competitor. This amazing opportunity to lead one of the bigger sales teams. Can you take it?And, of course, the way it’s sold is all in the benefits: This is because we believe in you. You’re going to be great in this role. We really trust you. It’s a fantastic opportunity to move into senior management, you know, but by the way, please pack up and leave in the next month.

You know, of course, in that situation, like any of us, it’s a little bit of a rabbit-in-the-headlights situation. On the one hand, it is a great opportunity; let’s not deny it. And you can also see that by not taking it, this is going to be a black mark against you. At the same time, her husband’s working in tech. His company has no outpost there. Florida is not really known for the tech industry either. And so, when they went back and talked about it, you know, on the one hand, it was extremely difficult because she has this great opportunity, but he really can’t match it.

But what it did do interestingly for the couple was start them thinking about mobility and thinking about, OK, well, maybe this option might not be very good, but what else is there out there? And so, what it did in the couple of spot they’re thinking. And what actually happened in that couple is they did move but not for that option. And so, what they actually ended up doing was moving to the west coast, and she got a similar option at a competitor, you know, and the, the job offer she’d gotten in her organization gave her the confidence that wow, I am ready for this role, so I’m going to apply to a competitor. And that was for him back to the head office of his organization. And so, of course, what her organization did by giving her that now-or-never opportunity was lose a key talent and lose one to the competitor and not to a parallel role, but to a more senior role. And I think this story shows that it’s not that they weren’t mobile, right, and it’s not that she wasn’t ambitious; it was that by giving her that really tight deadline, and it’s kind of Florida do or die, they lost a key talent.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, that’s interesting to me because you had some other examples, too, in the article of people where this sort of opportunity comes up, and what ends up happening is that eventually the talented person leaves and joins a competitor. Is that a common reaction to this kind of thing?

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: It is actually quite common for many organizations. Of course, there are some organizations who are a little bit more savvy about this, and oftentimes what might happen is that same situation and the person says, OK, you know, I just really cannot take that now; I’m not interested. Now, organizations at that point, they’re one of three ways. Either one strike and you’re out, and the person very often leaves, and they lose the talented. And then there are two of ways organizations go. Some organizations try to find a workaround, and this is great, and so there’s lots of different ways for this, depending on the type of roles. It might be a commuter-leader role where you spend two or three days on that site and the other two or three days on the home site. It might be some kind of combination of job swap or secondments or some way to sort of manage that transition. It might also be the third way: OK, we realize this isn’t, this opportunity isn’t right for you, but we, we still really want to keep you and value your talent, so what might be the right option? And at that point sit down and really try and map out the other mobility options. So, those tend to be the three paths.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Yes. So, let’s talk a little bit more than about what companies might do better because I doubt that they want to be sort of shooing their best people away to the competition, right? So, I’m wondering how common is it to have a kind of two-way conversation between the talented person we’re talking about, the kind of protagonist, their manager, or maybe a three-way conversation that brings in HR. Do you see companies where there is this kind of transparent dialogue going on?

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: Yeah, and I also think is quite idiosyncratic. So, it’s not true to say X company does it and Y company doesn’t. It tends to be very dependent on the relationship between the talented person and the manager and also quite frankly, how much HR is willing to get involved. And I think this is really from both sides. I think for the talented people, especially if they’ve seen peers face this one-or-two-strikes-and-you’re-out, it can be quite frightening to have those conversations in organizations and to really set those expectations and say, you know, I’m committed to my career. I want to be mobile. That these are my boundaries. And it’s particularly difficult for talent who are, who are a little bit younger. Because if you think of our career cycles, when we start our career, we are relatively unbounded. Most of us have pretty much no commitments at home.

We can travel at the drop of a hat. We are willing to make those moves. And then there comes a day when that changes for whatever reason. Maybe it’s, you know, we partner with someone who also has a career, and we’re committed to living in the same city. Maybe we have a child and we we have more commitments there, or maybe it’s different commitments, elder commitments, etc. And not transition from being unbounded to bounded talent can feel quite frightening because up until now I’ve pretty much said yes to my manager, and suddenly I need to start saying no, and that can be very frightening to have those conversations.

So, I think part of it is from the talent person, and I think part of it is from the manager, HR. And here we see different problems. Sometimes for some managers who were of the older generation who were unbounded talent, who maybe had a stay-at-home partner, part of it is it’s hard for them to just get it, right. They’ve never been in that situation themselves, so it’s hard for them to put themselves in the shoes and understand there might be constraints. So, why would they start those conversations? And I think then from HR, there can be some reticence around approaching too many personal aspects and asking them about personal things. So, I think the issues can come from all angles.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: It sounds like one of the challenges here is that managers and HR are reluctant to ask about people’s personal lives. Um, in some cases they might even feel like it’s not even legal to like ask about those kinds of plans, right? So, how can people have these difficult conversations that are so awkward and kind of have them in a way that’s ultimately helpful and not kind of a creepy, like poking around like, so, what does your spouse do?

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: Yeah, it’s hard, and I think we have thought impression of these conversations if we look at these relationships in a very decontextualized way. You know, if you don’t know your manager at all, that is a creepy conversation to have. But most people have a decent relationship with their manager. I think then the starting point for the conversation is from the, the area of, you know, hopes and aspirations and constraints. And it’s that very few of us now can go anywhere and do anything. So, you know, what are the kinds of constraints you have? Are there places you would love to go and work in? Are there others that are totally off the map for you? Is there some ways we can engage in more flexible working and what is helpful for you?

So, very recently, um, I was actually talking to an, an alumnus of INSEAD, and they were trying to increase flexible working in their organizations and really take away the stigma and start to talk to people about what they need. And the way they did it was to target, um, high- profile men who were popular and recognized as, as very good in business and start working with them and encouraging them to use flexible working. And then it kind of cascaded out. And it was like, OK, this guy’s doing it who’s very popular, well respected in the organization. Then it’s OK for me to have that conversation with my manager, etc. So, I think part of it is about the norms, but I think part of it is not approaching it from what does your spouse do but more approaching it from, what are the kinds of constraints, what would make your life easier to work with, and are there any places you want to go because I think the danger is we think of this issue as one of constraints, and but it’s not just about constraints; there are some real opportunities in having people with partners and spouses who are also talent and that is from this location aspect, as I said before, the main reason relocations fail is because the spouse or partner is unhappy.

Now, if you’ve got two people relocating together with great jobs, the likelihood for your organization, yours goes well, is extremely high, so there’s an opportunity you just don’t get with people who have a trailing spouse. That’s a huge advantage for the organization. Equally with flexible working. Now, it’s healthy, might be helpful for some people to go home at a reasonable hour, spend a few hours with their family, and then log back in and make some calls later in the evening. That may actually be a helpful thing for the organization. So, I also think we need to get out of this thinking that it’s a bad thing we need to manage, um, and thinking how can this thing play in our favor in organizations?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: And let’s talk a little bit then about what the company should be doing for the spouse, because it seems like if that’s the person who really can make or break an overseas assignment, for example, what is the appropriate role for a company to take with a employee’s spouse?

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: So, let’s just talk about what organizations do now to start with. So, organizations range, and one of the talented people I spoke to summed this up brilliantly when she said her organization, which was a big multinational, there was a lot of resources but very little support. And I thought that was a fantastic way of summing it up because many organizations think, and in some ways do offer a lot. They offer relocation programs, connections to people. But when she said there’s a lack of support, what she was meaning was there was very little thought into her couple’s personal situation. And for her, her husband was also an executive who needed relocating. And of course, the resources offered were tailored to a stay-at-home spouse. And so, they were all around cultural integration and finding a place in the community and maybe volunteer roles, which were totally inappropriate for what his needs were.

So, I think a part of it is, is getting more personalized in that support. And a part of it, again, is just changing the assumption that the support is not necessarily for a trailing spouse; in many cases now, the support is for an equally talented and in some cases even more high-potential person than you know, the employee that you’re dealing with.

And so, there are some novel ways that organizations are dealing with this. Particularly when we look at those hub locations where there’s lots of organizations based like Dubai, like Boston, like San Francisco, like Geneva, like London — these places where there’s lots of organizations based, organizations or clubbing together and looking at how they can fill their own vacancies locally on the ground with people who are moving and following a spouse’s career. And this is a great solution for organizations because they can almost sort of trade the CVs of spouses and see how together as a group they can solve this issue.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: I’m also wondering, like, what’s on the flip side, what is realistic in terms of setting boundaries? So, is it realistic to say, you know, I really like living in the city I live in. I really don’t ever want to move. I have roots here. I have family here. Can you still have a very successful career setting that kind of limit or saying, you know, I, maybe it’s not mobility. Maybe it’s flexibility, maybe it’s, you know, I never want to travel at the drop of a hat. I just don’t want to do it or don’t want to travel at all. Can you do that and still get ahead, or is that just unrealistic?

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: I think having some boundaries, it’s realistic, but I think having very rigid boundaries honestly is unrealistic. For example, let’s say you join a big multinational. To say that you want to get to the top that you never want to leave your city, it’s just not going to happen. I mean, you know, let’s be honest. OK, maybe you happen to live in the city of the headquarters, but even then you would be expected to at least some time, you know, in the field if you like, on other locations. Likewise, with flexibility. We may have a, you know, a general rule, you know, I just can’t travel at the drop of the hat, but if something enormous crisis came up and you didn’t travel at the drop of a hat for that one occasion, of course it would not look good. There’s this idea of having flexible boundaries, OK.

Let’s imagine you’re a Bostonian. You always want to live in Boston in your life, but there may be a time in your life were doing a short secondment somewhere else or a job swap or being a community leader for a period is OK; it’s bearable. I think you will need to do something like that to get to the top. Now, of course, if your business is, is a more local business or regional business, that may be less of an issue, but if you’re working for a larger organization, even if it’s just a national organization, you know, there’ll be lots of locations. It will be very hard to reach a very senior level without some flexibility on this.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, I’m imagining that there are some people nonetheless who are listening and thinking, you know, this is all about millennials wanting to have everything; in my day we just sucked it up and did it. Do you ever sort of hear pushback from managers that this is like, you know, part of like going through this process, everyone has been through this. It is painful, but it’s what you have to do to get ahead?

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: All the time. And what I would do say to them is they are missing out on talent. So, there is a very interesting trend in organizations now where the managers — see the managers who was saying that are people, I can guarantee who have a stay-at-home spouse or who have a spouse who very much has the trailing role, I can guarantee it. But this a very strong trend in organizations now where managers who get this issue and are really supporting it are doing what I call talent hoarding. And so, when I talked to talented people, especially in big organizations who, you know, sometimes there’s a choice between roles, there’s an informal network which where people communicate, oh, this person is great, he or she really gets it. They’re super supportive. This person, don’t go and work for them if it’s the last choice in the organization. And so, what is happening in organizations is those, there’s, of course, it’s not just a war for talent between organizations. There’s a war for talent within organizations. And if you’re a manager who has that attitude that people should just suck it up and do what I did, I can guarantee you are going to lose the internal war for talent. And we can see this very strongly because those people winning that internal war for talent are people who may themselves have had stay-at-home spouses or come from this unbounded talent, but they’re people who have taken the time to really understand the issue and try and accommodate it.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Now, the people that you talked to and interviewed for this, you talked to couples, you talked to people in HR. I’m wondering — managers — I’m wondering if there is someone you talked to who had kind of been on both sides of this. They were part of a couple who dealt with this, but then now they’re also managing other couples who are dealing with this, too.

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: Many. Many, many. And I think this is what is actually the hope for organizations, is that what’s happening increasingly is the wave of people who are getting into middle and more senior management now have faced these issues themselves, and so it’s easier to manage. And so yeah, this is an increasing trend is that the people who are doing the managing and making the decisions have face this themselves, and that’s where we see this issue starting to ease.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well Jen, I’m glad to know that it’s getting better.

JENNIFER PETRIGLIERI: Thank you. I know; me too.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That’s Jennifer Petriglieri. She’s an assistant professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD. And she’s the author of the article “Talent Management and the Dual-Career Couple.” Read it in the May–June 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review or on HBR.org.

Our show’s produced by Amanda Kersey and Curt Nickisch. Adam Buchholz is our audio product manager. And we get technical and production help from Rob Eckhardt.

Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael.

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[talabib]

How To Be Financially Secure

Seeking advice on how to be financially secure can be stressful; there is a glut of financial gurus telling you how you can follow a few simple steps and become a millionaire.

Most of this advice is hogwash, but some of it isn’t. This post presents a simple and straightforward plan based on advice from distinguished financial experts. If you follow this plan, you’ll stand a greater chance of getting your finances in order and becoming financially secure – that is, reaching financial fitness – something we all dream of.

Your financial security is an illusion, and it’s time for you to take action.

Would you say you’re financially comfortable? Many of us feel secure enough in our finances, even though we all could use a few extra dollars. You probably have a job, and perhaps a car and house, and financial difficulties therefore seem far, far away.

But no matter how secure you may feel at this moment, financial insecurity may be closer than you think.

Imagine you suddenly lose your job: What would you do? Would you be able to pay your bills? Unlikely. Financial security is often more illusory than we think.

Take Sarah, for example. After her marriage she and her husband calculated their joint annual income to be over $75,000, and they had only a few debt obligations between the two of them. Feeling comfortable with their earnings and their debt, they proceeded to take out a large mortgage on their house.

But that’s okay, right? They could afford it. Or could they?

One day Sarah discovered that she was losing her $45,000-per-year job. Suddenly, they faced foreclosure on the house.   

As in Sarah’s case, sudden financial setbacks can put us quickly in dire straits. What can we do? One way to avoid unpleasant surprises is by taking action before it’s too late. Change things now.

It’s easy not to feel this sense of urgency, to think instead that you can simply carry on until things turn sour, and then change. But this is totally irresponsible. Financial difficulties sometimes creep up on you, and before you know it, you’re in trouble.

It’s like the proverbial frog in the pot of water: As the water slowly heats up, the frog doesn’t realize that it’s being boiled alive and will let itself die.

This is what is happening to you right now. Your financial security could be slowly collapsing around you, and you have no idea. It’s time to make a change.

Debt is treated like a fact of life, but we need to recognize its constraints and dangers.

In our modern world, we are constantly encouraged to go out and buy stuff – a house, a car, a huge TV, you name it. And how exactly are we supposed to pay for all these things that we simply must have? With credit, of course.

Debt today is so ingrained in our lifestyle that it’s hard to imagine living without it. You probably have a decent amount of debt yourself, whether in the form of student loans, a mortgage, credit card debt or car payments.

In fact, debt is so embedded in our society that people feel okay with having $72,000 in debt on a rental property and $35,000 on credit cards and student loans.

Though debt seems to be ever-present, it is absolutely not the path to financial happiness, and instead leads straight to financial difficulty.

Take one of the most common forms of debt: the credit card. Credit cards, which feel essentially like free money, give users incredible spending power. In the long run, however, they can hurt our financial strength.

In fact, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute, 69 percent of people who file for bankruptcy say it was caused by their credit card debt.

Interestingly, while many people use debt to create the appearance of wealth, genuinely wealthy people tend to avoid debt entirely.

In fact, 75 percent of people on the Forbes 400 list said the best way to build wealth is to become and stay debt-free. And some of the most successful companies, from Walgreen's and Cisco to Harley-Davidson, are run completely debt-free.

If these companies and individuals are able to find success without the burden of debt, then can’t we do the same?

Step one on the path to financial fitness involves creating an emergency starter fund.

So far, we’ve established one way not to establish financial security: trying to spend our way to success using credit. So what can we do?

You’ll need to start by creating a step-by-step plan that charts the route to financial fitness. Although you know you need to change the way you approach your finances, you must also realize that you can’t change everything at once. Instead, you should do yourself the favor of proceeding slowly, one small step at a time.

Just think: if you had to eat an elephant, you wouldn’t even think to try and do it all at once. You would start maybe with a foot per day, moving eventually to the trunk, then the body, eating bit by bit.

You want to take the same approach with your finances. If you try to attack different areas all at once – for example, your mortgage, credit card and 401k – then you’ll dilute your efforts and, ultimately, fail. So, go slow and take small bites.

But where do you start? The first step on your Total Money Makeover is to grow a starter emergency fund, a $1,000 chunk set aside in case of a rainy day.

In fact, Money Magazine estimates that 78 percent of us will experience a major negative life event, such as an unexpected pregnancy or car problem, in any given ten-year period. You’ll want to be prepared for when this happens.

And while $1,000 won’t cover that much, it’s nevertheless a useful start and will reduce the likelihood of having to go into debt.

But remember: this fund is only for emergencies, and if you have to take anything from it, you should replace it as soon as possible.

Steps two and three: Start paying off your debts one at a time and, when you’re ready, grow your emergency starter fund.

Once you have your emergency starter fund set up, you’re on your way to turning your finances around. Now it’s time to get your debts sorted out.

Step two of the Total Money Makeover is to create a debt snowball.

Everyone knows that if you start rolling a small snowball along the ground, it will, in no time at all, turn into a veritable snow boulder. The same thing happens when you pay off your debts. Here’s how:

Start by listing all your debts in order of size, from your tiny phone bill to your massive mortgage. Then it’s time to get serious about paying them off, starting with the smallest. As the small debts start to disappear, you’ll get inspired to tackle those bigger, trickier debts.

After you’ve started rolling your debt snowball, it’s time to turn your attention back to your emergency fund.

The goal of step three is to grow your emergency fund so that it could cover your expenses for a three to six month period.

Of course, everyone has different spending needs, so this number isn’t fixed. However, it often ranges from $5,000 to $25,000. To make things more concrete, if your family earns $3,000 per month, aim to save $10,000 or even more.  

Now let’s say you succeeded and have a bigger emergency fund. You’ll find that this gives you the confidence to continue on the path toward financial freedom. If, as you pay off your debts, you have to use some – or even all – of your savings and retirement funds, you’ll have an emergency fund that’ll cover you for half a year. That allows you to get on with your life securely and confidently.

Step four: Invest 15 percent of your income in mutual funds to provide for yourself in retirement.

Everyone has big worries about the financial situation they’ll face after retirement. We ask ourselves: Will we have enough money to live comfortably in our golden years?

In order to overcome such fears, we turn to step four of the Total Money Makeover: A dignified and secure retirement will require you to invest 15 percent of your income.

Although this might seem like a lot, there are a number of reasons why it’s worth setting aside that kind of money.

For starters, old age simply wouldn’t be any fun if you had to rely on others to maintain a comfortable living. This is especially true if you are hoping to live off government pension plans. By the time you reach retirement age, the chances of our inept government providing for a dignified life are negligible.

It can be tempting to put aside less for retirement so that you can focus on things like your children’s college fund or quickly paying down the mortgage. But your kids’ degrees won't feed you after you retire, and too many senior citizens live in a paid-for house with no disposable income.

Once you have committed to putting away 15 percent of your income, where exactly should you invest it? For the best returns, experts recommend mutual funds.

Throughout history, the stock market averages just below 12 percent in returns. Mutual funds take advantage of this trend, and thus make for an excellent choice for long-term investment. One tip is to select funds that have a solid track record of winning for more than five years, ideally for over ten. Make sure to diversify your investments across various funds to ensure profitability.

Here’s a another good rule to follow: allocate 25 percent to growth and income (or blue chip) funds, 25 percent to growth (or equity) funds, 25 percent to international funds and the final 25 percent to aggressive funds, i.e., ones that are riskier but can give higher returns.

Step five: if you want your kid to go to college, plan for them to get there debt-free.

Nearly every parent dreams of sending their child to college, and many parents are prepared to let themselves and their children go into debt to fund this dream.

But as we’ve already discussed, debt is to be avoided at all costs. Funding college with debt should not be considered a tenable option.

A college loan will hamper your child for a long, long time. The current generation of students has earned the nickname “generation debt” with good reason – they graduate from college with an average of $25,000 to $27,000 in debt, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

So how should you pay for college? One way, of course, is to win a scholarship, or to simply save up enough in cash to foot the bill.

Yet, there is another way: using an Education Savings Account (ESA) and funding it in a growth-stock mutual fund.

If you were to invest $2,000 a year in a prepaid tuition plan, from the birth of your child until their eighteenth birthday, you would end up with $72,000 worth of tuition. However, if you instead used an ESA funded by mutual funds (which average 12 percent), you’d have $126,000 to spend on education and living expenses.

And as long as you use this account to pay education expenses, the money is tax-free.

But, even with this option, you must ask yourself whether a college degree is the right thing to invest in for your child.

In his book Emotional Intelligence, about successful people, Daniel Goleman states that only 15 percent of success can be attributed to training and education. The remaining 85 percent is attributed to attitude, perseverance, diligence and vision.

These latter qualities will take you much further in life than some piece of paper with the words “degree” scrawled on it.

So does your kid need to go to college? If getting there means going into debt, then certainly not.

Step six is becoming debt-free by paying off the biggest loan of them all: your mortgage.

So how long have you been paying off your mortgage? Often, they take decades to finally pay off.

Step six of the Total Money Makeover is about paying it off as soon as possible. For most people, this is the final hurdle on their path to financial fitness, and paying it off will leave them absolutely debt-free.

However, there are many pitfalls that can prevent you from finishing off your mortgage. It’s your job to avoid them.

For example, you’ll hear it suggested that you should borrow money against your home, taking advantage of low interest rates and investing your money in the stock market.

But this is terrible advice. Imagine, hypothetically, that you borrow $100,000 against your home at  8-percent interest and invest it in stocks with 12-percent return. In this scenario, you stand to make $12,000 in profit. After paying the interest on your mortgage, in this case $8,000, you’d have a healthy $4,000 left over. Not so bad.

But that doesn’t take into consideration all the taxes and fees that go hand in hand with playing the stock market. In the end, you’re left with around $1,000. Hardly worth it for such a huge risk.

Another misconception is that it’s possible to take out a 30-year mortgage with the promise to pay it back in 15 years. But you will inevitably run into expenses that take you off course – high heating bills, dog vaccinations, sick children and so on.

And if they aren’t compelled by law to do so, virtually no one ever makes the extra payments necessary to pay off a loan that quickly.

However, it’s often better to simply take a shorter mortgage out anyway. In comparison to a 30-year mortgage at 7 percent, a 15-year mortgage will earn you a savings of $150,000 over the course  of the mortgage. Think about what you could do with that kind of money.

Step seven: follow your plan and spend (and give away) your money if you have it.

At this point, you’re right on the brink of financial fitness. You’re on the last leg of your journey, with just one final step to go.

Once you are debt-free and have begun to save for your future, it’s time to start building up your wealth.

Surround yourself with experts, people like tax advisors, CPAs, estate-planning attorneys, etc., who can offer you sound advice on what you need to do with your money.  

And no matter what, stick to your plan. As you grow older, you’ll find yourself more inclined to react to small changes in the market, especially if you fear a downturn is looming. But don’t fret! These small blips are nothing compared to the market’s trend of long-term growth.

Finally, understand that financial fitness doesn’t mean living like a Scrooge. Have fun with your money when you can.

Fun is a crucial element of the Total Money Makeover. Should anyone wear a $30,000 watch? Drive a $50,000 car? Or live in a $700,000 home? Absolutely. But only if they can actually afford them.

You have to learn to spend your money only on what you can afford, and forget the rest.

When the right opportunity presents itself, you should also be prepared to give your money away. Giving money away is just as fun as spending it, and possibly even more rewarding. It feels good being generous – but you need to have before you can give.

At last, you’ve completed your journey to financial freedom. Now it’s time to enjoy it, living in comfort, happiness and security.

For most people, financial security is little more than a comforting illusion. However, you can turn your financial situation around by following seven “baby steps” that put you on the path to a debt-free and financially successful life.

 Action Plan: Learn to live your own life your own way.

You probably have some friends who appear to be pretty well off. Yet, a lot of people appear to be doing better than they actually are. Debt allows for this illusion, but it will eventually crumble beneath them. So don’t measure yourself against your peers.