Will scary yield curve headlines derail this finance-phobe’s fearless future?

Writing this blog has represented a real shift in mindset for me, away from being reactive and towards advanced planning. Publishing the first posts was so freeing that I started to learn about investing. My curious mind soaked up all the information it could, like trying to make up for time lost being trapped by financial fear.

Suddenly new fears jumped out in the form of scary yield curve headlines. Would this derail my hard-won progress?

On MarketWatch.com today’s headline reads, 2-year/10-year U.S. Treasury yield curve inversion deepens, flashing ‘red’.  CNN Business on cnn.com reported today, Insiders are selling stock like it’s 2007. Bloomberg Opinion posted on social media, There’s evidence that people have been stockpiling cash.

Then I made the phobe’s mistake of watching an online news report about recession fears. It was on Bloomberg Real Yield, and asked the question, When does U.S. fall into recession?

I felt like I needed a translator to understand most of the financial terms the moderator and experts in suits were volleying back and forth. So I hit pause and looked up some words, like mean reversion, negative yields and full easing cycle. Although I was grateful for the education by Dr. Google, haha, by the time I was done I wasn’t really in a good mood.

Fortunately a link on MarketWatch.com led me to a FI blog called Chief Mom Officer at chiefmomofficer.org. (FI stands for Financial Independence. It’s like the updated brand of FIRE, the Financial Independence Retire Early trend.) Last week she published a post titled, Yield Curve Inversions Will Doom Us All – Parody & Real Advice. The parody video was pretty funny, and just what I needed to snap me out of backsliding into a fearful attitude.

My last forward step of the day is to publish this post. Do you feel like you are still making progress?

Dual-income-kids or dual-income-no-kids? BYOCoffee or $3.65 latte? Innie or outie?

No, not belly buttons! I’m talking about something called internal or external locus of control. Here’s what I mean.

After hustling and trying to change my day job, in 2017 I got an offer to teach some professional development classes. They offered me 3 classes for that semester, but due to circumstances, I could only teach one of them. Three classes and my side hustle would bring a good income, plus a flexible schedule. But one class wasn’t enough money.

Disappointed, I turned down that job offer. I thought to myself, you could’ve taken the job if you had a decent savings! Things would’ve been fine until they offered you more classes.

This story sounds sad, but it was actually amazing because for the first time, I realized how my actions could create a different outcome. I saw how my spending habits had led to what happened. The bad situation hadn’t fallen on me at random. If I could learn smart savings habits, I could change the outcome of my situation.

Locus of control is a common term in psychology. I think it has to do with how empowered we feel in our life to make things turn out for the better. Internal or external influence? Innie or outie? Understanding the connections between our own choices and our life’s outcomes can motivate us to make better choices.

I was reading some how to make your blog interesting so that people wanna read it posts. They say find your audience, like, who you connect with, and write to them. But whether you’re a mom or whatever status, like double-income-no-kids, single-income-with-kids, budget-phobe or penny pincher, I think ideas are universal. If you’ve ever struggled to take good advice and thought, I know what to do, why can’t I do it? then you can relate to what I’m writing about.

So many of us go through life spending thoughtlessly, without grasping that even small actions can affect our life! So much comes out of those daily little decisions. They’re choices! I didn’t understand that in the past, but I’m learning.

I’ve been learning about mindset, habits, and the FI (Financial Independence) lifestyle. As I write more, I’d like to share the blog posts, podcast episodes and books that helped me the most, and why. I want to thank the authors for their advice and tell them how much it’s helping. Have you read something recently that’s helped you?

Step One: share my money fear story (yes I said it aloud! now I have to change)

Let’s go back to 2013. Hurricane Sandy had destroyed large areas of New York City and the Jersey Shore. Some neighborhoods were finally considered safe to return, but everything was still a mess and local roads flooded every time it rained.

One night I was driving on a road that, in hindsight, probably should’ve been closed. Alerted by the flashing lights of a police car and an officer sitting inside, I saw the dark road ahead was flooded. The traffic kept moving through the floodwaters. No one was stopping by the side of the road, no one was waiting, everyone was just going through.

I called out to the officer, “I dunno, do you think my little car can make it?” He replied, “Well… you do it at your own risk, but… I will say that everybody else, and smaller cars than yours, have made it. Nobody’s had a problem going through this.”

I said, “okay!”

So I slowly drove forward into the water. No common sense occurred to me in that moment, like, turn around, don’t drown! Seeing the officer made me feel safe and reassured at first. But the flood was big enough that I was in there a couple minutes, and the water got up to my headlights.

Ahhhh, I’m ruining my car! I thought. And as soon as I drove out of the water, my car was jerking back and forth, and the anti-lock brakes were going crazy. Gotta air out my car, I thought. So I turned on the heat for the rest of my trip.

My mistake was I didn’t turn on my air conditioning. First I took my car to the dealer, and then to a mechanic. Between the estimate and the repairs, that incident caused $1,200 of damage to my car. Why is that number significant?

Because in 2013, I had rebounded from a health crisis and finished my car payment. I had stopped putting out fires and started saving again. The week before this incident, I had just opened up a savings account. I opened it up with $1,200. The repairs to my car cost $1,200.

This took me back to my childhood. My parents would promise me something and say, when we get our tax refund back, then you can have it. Or, when we get our tax refund back, then we’re gonna be ok. And every. single. time. something would happen, like, the washing machine would break, or the hot water heater, or a car repair, or some emergency took the whole amount of the tax refund. Things happened that way every year, year after year.

Somehow the idea got into my mind that if I saved money, bad things would happen to me. After the $1,200 car repair I felt scared, and ashamed of my fear of saving and my dumb decision to drive through floodwaters. I had no one to consult, so I closed my savings account. I didn’t even try to leave $10 in it, I just closed it.

I’ve hidden this from everyone close to me and avoided talking about it, until now. It’s time to start learning gold can stay! What is your money fear story?