How to stay calm when dealing with financial stress

 

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Have your money problems become so dire that you find yourself searching “I need financial help immediately?” We get it. You’re in a tight spot, and you’re panicking. Hearing that you're not alone doesn’t really help, and you aren’t sure what to do while you’re not thinking clearly.

Take a breath. Financial stress can be overwhelming, but you have more resources and options than you know. However, we need to get you in the right mental space first. Let’s go over some ways to keep yourself calm so you can tackle your financial problems with a clear mind.

Identify the Problems and Make a Plan

One of the reasons why money problems can seem so daunting is the mystery of them. Of course, besides the obvious answer that you don’t make enough money to pay your bills, financial difficulty can have other sources. It might be your spending habits, a past mistake, a misunderstanding of the financial system, or something else. Those you can address right away.

Look over your financial statements and try to identify where the problem lies. Are you spending too much on unnecessary items? Does your paycheck come in too late? If the former is the case, then make a budget that ensures you can pay off your debts before spending anything on excess leisure items. If it’s the latter, then you have more control over when you receive your income than you may know: apps like Earnin allow you to access up to $500 of your paycheck per pay period, giving you time to pay your bills before incurring late fees.

Improve Your Financial Literacy

Next, make an effort to educate yourself about financial topics. Books about personal finance are a great place to start, such as Personal Finance for Dummies, along with blogs about related subjects. Take advantage of free or inexpensive financial literacy courses online or from your local community college. The more you know about the financial system, the more prepared you will be, and the less scary your money problems will seem.

Talk to a Professional

Consult with a credit or debt expert for practical advice regarding your situation. A professional can help you perform the steps mentioned above and guide you through the remainder of the process, including making a concrete debt management plan. Having someone in your corner will bring you peace of mind.

Besides a financial expert, another kind of professional you should talk to is a therapist. Regular conversations with this kind of expert will help you navigate the emotional aspects of financial stress. If your habits are partly responsible for your situation, then hopefully, a therapist can help you change those, too. You can find free and low-cost therapy resources here.

Avoid Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

People struggling with financial difficulty sometimes resort to bad habits to deal with stress. Unhealthy coping mechanisms will only exacerbate your situation in more ways than one. Avoid the temptation to spend even more money (this is not the time for retail therapy), eat excessively, drink alcohol, or abuse other substances. Call SAMHSA’s free national helpline at 1-800-622-HELP (4357) if you feel that you are about to engage in harmful or addictive behavior.

Practice Mindfulness Exercises

Instead, practice mindfulness exercises to cope with stress in a healthier way. You can replace bad habits with good ones or start practicing mindfulness immediately to avoid unhealthy coping mechanisms to begin with.

Breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, and other activities can help you center yourself and stay grounded. They don’t alleviate your money problems, but you can use them to change your perspective and attitude toward your situation. Other stress-relieving activities include going for a walk, spending time in nature, creating artwork, hugging someone, playing with pets, and learning how to talk about yourself in a more positive light. Dwelling on your stress isn’t productive, so put your energy into something wholesome if you are unable to relax.

Keep Track of Your Progress

Keep track of your progress as you take steps toward addressing your financial problems. Not only is doing so necessary for the process itself (you should keep a careful record of the money you spend and the debt you pay off) but celebrating small goals is beneficial for your mental health. Take pride in your little victories. Keeping track of your progress puts your entire financial situation in perspective, motivates you to push forward, and makes your circumstances seem less bleak.

Remember: financial difficulty is not a moral failing. The money system is complicated and underserves the under-educated and a vast majority of people. Take advantage of the resources available to you and believe that you have what it takes to turn your situation around.

This article originally appeared on Earnin.

 

Please note, the material collected in this blog is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be relied upon as or construed as advice regarding any specific circumstances. Nor is it an endorsement of any organization or Services.

7 of the most practical ways to save money

 

Photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash

 

Are you trying to be better about saving money? You’ve heard the same advice, time and time again: spend less. But the question now is, how? “Spend less” is vague, and you have expenses to pay that you can’t just eliminate, as much as you’d like to. Here are seven practical ways to save money, and not all of them entail making sacrifices:

Save in Small Increments

Perhaps you struggle with saving money because you always forget or don’t know how much to put aside. When your paycheck comes in, do you immediately put a certain percentage in a different account that you don’t touch regularly, or do you let it all sit in one account, waiting to be spent? 

Start by saving small increments. $2 to $5 will add up over time if you do it frequently enough. Instead of logging into your online banking account every time you want to add a few dollars into your savings, you can use third-party apps that make small transactions easy. For example, you can use Earnin’s Tip Yourself feature to save a small amount of cash, and assign tipping yourself to a positive behavior (such as working out), so you remember to do it often.

Snowball Your Debt

A significant part of your money-saving plan should be paying off debt. Identifying where to start eliminating debt can be just as tricky as figuring out how to save more money, so experts suggest employing the “snowball” technique. As a snowball rolls down a hill, it grows larger as it accumulates snow and momentum. You can apply the same concept to your debt and begin with the smallest amounts.

It sounds counterintuitive, but by paying off your $500 credit card debt before tackling your $5,000 loan, you glean a sense of satisfaction and practice better financial habits. If you pay off $500 of your loan, you still have two debts and two interest rates. Knock one out of the way by starting with the smaller debt and build enough momentum to pay off the other.

Audit Your Expenses — Then Trim Them

Conduct a thorough audit of your expenses to see where your problems lie (besides not earning enough money, of course). What are the payments you cannot avoid, and what are the costs you could do without or somehow reduce? We’re not suggesting you cut out leisure entirely — recreational activities and entertainment are important to everyone’s mental health — but if you’re spending money on something you don’t use or that doesn’t bring you happiness, put that money toward your savings instead.

Cancel Monthly Subscriptions

While subscriptions are convenient because you don’t have to think about paying the bill each month, they can be a sneaky expense that drains your account for no reason. If you watch a Netflix show in June and August, why pay $15 for July? Don’t be afraid to cancel subscriptions, even if you know you’ll resume using the service in the future. 

Be wary of year-long subscriptions, too. Don’t bother paying the fee for Amazon Prime if you’re only going to order something a few times per year.

Forsake Brand-Name Goods

The appeal of brand names is enticing, but it’s often manufactured. Generic goods can be just as high-quality as brand-name varieties. Omitting the price difference from your monthly expenses can result in significant savings. If a designer's shirt costs $100 but is hardly better than another of the same style that costs $20, go with the latter and don’t pay for novelty.

However, some brands do use higher-quality materials and put more effort into their products. It’s good to invest in longevity, so you aren’t buying the same product over and over again, so research what companies you buy from and whether the extra cost is worth it.

Call and Negotiate With Your Providers

It might not have crossed your mind to call your various creditors and providers (such as your credit issuer, mortgage lender, health insurance provider, internet provider, etc.) and ask them if they are willing to reduce your bill or interest rates. Why not? What they charge you isn’t fixed, and it never hurts to ask. The worst thing they can do is say no, so pick up the phone (you may have to call around to find the right person) and negotiate lower interest rates and fees. Hopefully, they want to keep you as a customer enough to grant your request.

Convert Money to Time

Saving more and spending less requires thinking about money differently. When you see an item you want to buy but aren’t sure whether you can afford it or not, try thinking about the price in how long it would take to earn that money back. For example, if you make $17 an hour and want to purchase a new coat that costs $65, that’s almost four hours' worth in wages. Changing your perspective will help you align your spending habits with your budget more effectively.

Your financial health will be in a much better place if you know how to save more money. You may have to make some lifestyle changes, but there are other practical ways to reduce your expenses and pocket what you earn.

 

This article originally appeared on Earnin.

 

Please note, the material collected in this blog is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be relied upon as or construed as advice regarding any specific circumstances. Nor is it an endorsement of any organization or Services.

Fixed Google Play services keeps stopping problem in Android device

Recently, my Samsung Galaxy Tab A 6 tablet suddenly hit the infamous "Google Play services keeps stopping" problem.

The following window will pop up almost every few seconds, even after you have chosen to close app or send feedback.

Clearing cache of Google Play services did not solve the problem.

The Google Play services was unable to be forced stop nor disabled.

Unable to uninstall updates to Google Play services too.

Restarting the tablet had no effect to the problem.

Force stop the Google Services Framework, clearing its cache and even clearing its data did not help.

It seems that factory reset the tablet will be the last resort.

Luckily, I managed to fix it before going to the extreme of factory reset option.

What I did was to manually download and install the Google Play services.

You can download the APK file of Google Play services from APKMirror website.

Choose the latest version, which currently is 21.06.13.

You need to download the APK file that matches with the CPU architecture of your Android device. In the case of Samsung Galaxy Tab A 6 (2016 edition), its architecture is arm64-v8a.

The APK file also needs to match with the Android OS version currently running on your device. In my case, it is Android 8.1.

After downloaded and installed the Google Play services APK file, my problem magically solved.