My Divorce Taught Me a Financial Lesson I Will Never Forget

Don’t stop paying attention to your financial life, even when you marry with forever in mind.

Lately, I’m attracting abundance. This has not always been the case. Abundance hasn’t always been the predominant experience in my life. In the recent past, I was so desperate for money, a result of my messy divorce taking me to court on a stay-at-home mom’s salary, that I had to borrow large amounts from friends and acquaintances when I had none. I guess you can call that abundance (I have a knack for getting people to part with money), but it also wasn’t abundance because I knew I had to pay them all back.

I know what it’s like to have nothing overnight.

When I found out my husband of ten years was having an affair, that wasn’t the only devastating part. I then found out he hadn’t been paying our bills for sometime. Insult meet injury.

Partly my fault.

When we married, and for the next six years, I paid our bills early — our credit rock-solid. We were able to purchase and rehab three properties in California, building equity.

When we had a baby, I handed the task of paying our monthly expenses over to him (he’s an “artist,” not great with money). I was with our child 24/7, and he dropped the ball on paying things on time, and then once behind, on paying bills at all.

I should have been paying attention; I wasn’t.

He didn’t tell me until it was too late. He didn’t pay some medical bills as well. I didn’t find this out until I found out he was leaving, for good.

When I found out about the mounting debt, I took money from my retirement fund, took a capital gains tax hit, and paid off our credit card debt and my medical expenses. I then learned his tardiness had ruined our credit.

Once I paid the bills down to zero, my individual credit line went from around 60K to 1K overnight. I no longer had any money or credit to pay an attorney, and I needed one badly because my then-husband lost his mind and thought everything had to be settled via judge on his mistress’s “advice.”

Luckily, I have good friends who are well-off. They came through for me, no questions asked.

I know what it’s like to lose everything, two homes in California, my savings, a retirement account, my husband, along with my credit overnight. In the eyes of TransUnion, I was a big, fat zero.

It was debilitating. After I threw myself a six-month self-pity party, drank too much red wine, and cried randomly at odd hours of the day, I decided the hot mess routine wasn’t me. I spent five hours one sleepless night cleaning out my fridge until it sparkled anew. By the end of the cleansing, I realized although I was starting over with less than nothing, I had to get my financial sh*t together. And I did.

I now respect my money again. I’ll never *not* pay attention to my finances, even for a short time. Side-tracked for a bit by my exes denial of things, it was a valuable lesson; I will always pay attention to my financial life.

I’ve paid my friends back every dime they lent me. And I’m back on track to building wealth and the peace of mind that comes with it.

When we value money, it comes back ten-fold.

Lately, I have money everywhere, in an IRA account, another brokerage account, a savings account, Crypto, property (my favorite thing to own besides shoes), and now, in my wallet. I recently found $950 in cash in an old wallet while cleaning out a desk in my house I hadn’t used in a while.

The more I save, the more money comes to me.

It is the law of attraction at work. When I say “no” to things I don’t need, like, another $150 sweater or pair of shoes, and instead buy two shares of Lemonade in my retirement account, I feel good about myself and my money.

Honoring my future self adds to my self-worth. By saying “no” to short-term wants and instant gratification: shoes, purses, Teslas, you name it, I’m creating a solid financial future. I have plenty of shoes and dresses, some I’ve never worn. When I look at them now, I think of how many shares of a stock I could have had or Bitcoins.

This mind-shift has changed my energy around money — the vibration I put into the universe when I think of my finances. When I see my investments grow, the vibration is one of abundance — a happy place. The opposite, mounting credit card debt from things I don’t need, is abundance’s opposing force — a feeling of scarcity.

You attract what you are sending out. Like attracts like.

Like everything and everyone else in the universe, you are vibrating and creating energy. Our bodies are composed of energy-producing particles, each of which is in constant motion. You are literally vibrating energy every moment — when you charge something you can’t afford or pull up your E-Trade account to look at your portfolio, you do those things with certain energy.

When we don’t have a nest egg or too much debt that keeps us awake at night, wondering how we will pay it back, this scarcity/fearful/anxious vibration affects what we attract monetarily.

But when you have money saved and no credit card debt, you send different energy — abundant energy — into the universe. You attract more abundance with abundance.

When we have huge amounts of credit card debt that we can’t afford to pay off, it feels like we’ll never have abundance, like, we’ll never be free. It is an oppressive feeling. We are always waiting for the next paycheck, desperate, working to only pay off our past instead of building an abundant future.

But when you respect money, pay things off first, get in the black, any money you make goes into the abundance category. And that means, you have to pay attention.

You will attract different things from these two opposing states of being in the world.

Four Ways to Abundance

#1. If you have credit card debt, pay it off first

This is the very first step you need to take. Do whatever it takes to get out of credit card debt. A mortgage and a car loan are a little different, but the average credit card interest rate is 17.87% for new offers and 14.58% for existing accounts, according to WalletHub’s Credit Card Landscape Report.

If your interest rate is 20% and you carry a $1000 balance, you would owe roughly $200 in interest after a year. That is flushing abundance down the toilet.

Cut up your credit cards until they are paid off, and then use them only for emergencies or when you have the money to pay them in full each month.

You want to be in charge of abundance.

You won’t feel abundant if you’re paying for things you “need” with a 20% charge on top of what you initially paid.

#2. Rethink the definition of “need.”

You’d be surprised how much you don’t “need.”

If you have debt, do you really “need” cable, the gym membership you never use, the app subscriptions adding up each month to 100’s of dollars, or Grubhub five times a week? If you order food in five times a week and have credit card debt, please stop that.

#3. Learn from the last pandemic.

After you pay off your credit cards, pay yourself first. Reach for 10% of what you make, 20% is better.

Have a solid emergency fund so you aren’t stressed when the hot water heater breaks or when the next pandemic quarantines us. Covid taught us how a global emergency can emerge from nowhere.

We’ve been warned, be ready next time. Start saving for a rainy day because we all know it pours.

#4. Create a solid investment portfolio.

I can have a Tesla or a solid retirement fund. Oh, believe me, I’m working toward a Tesla. It is the one thing I really, really covet (I’m a confirmed heathen). I have it picked out, all black with black matte handles and black matte emblem.

For now, I own Tesla stock to satisfy that craving.

Having a solid investment portfolio is when you allocate a certain amount of your monthly take-home for stocks and cryptocurrencies. I only invest for the long-term, in value stocks, companies I’ve researched and have committed to holding for at a minimum of five years.

In 2020 I invested in 30 popular stocks and earned an average of above 24% return on the investments I made in one account. The S&P 500 has an average annual return of 13.6%. I bought ZM and SFIX before the pandemic when they were priced low and have since gone up significantly. They went down recently, but I bought them for far less. I’m not emotional about my investments. I’ll sell when I need to. I’m just trying to beat the S&P 500 by a lot.

My philosophy on stocks (and this is *not* financial advice, I’m not a financial advisor) is to buy when stocks (that I’ve researched) are crashing — when everyone is running away — and hold. It’s just my natural instinct.

Most people do the opposite.

Do your homework.

Good investors do their homework. They don’t ask others for buy signals because if you’re going to be a good investor, you have to have your own conviction. After all, you have to know when to sell.

If you ask me what stock to buy, are you going to call me every day and ask me when to sell? No. you have to fundamentally understand it yourself.

If you want to invest your money into an investment account, you can sign up for one online. But if you don’t have the time to research companies, find a financial advisor who can help you and choose safe stocks based on your individual situation.

#5. Redefine want, need, and quality.

The older I get, the less stuff I want.

The stuff I want is of higher quality (who am I kidding, I’ve always been into quality), but I need a lot less of it. I’d rather have a $200 pair of loafers that last ten years than 10 pair of cheap shoes from Shoe Mart that last three months.

The less “stuff” I have, the happier I am.

What I deem a quality life keeps evolving and distilling over time. Now, it means having healthy savings and investment accounts. As well as having money for experiences that come along that I want to say “hell yes” to. Like, more education, travel, zip-lining through a rainforest, a peaceful night’s sleep free from worry over not knowing how to pay the bills, or seeing the Broadway show Hamilton as many times as I want.

Those are experiences that add to the quality of my life, experiences, not things. I have that money now because my money is no longer going to paying down high credit card payments for things I bought in the past but towards abundance first, stockpiling money.

If you respect the money you make by paying attention and saving most of it, you feel it, you feel abundant.

Conclusion

Walking around as part of the universe with abundant energy radiating from you comes from knowing your financial picture, storing your money in places that increase the value of it and don’t cost you interest. Having enough money and not debt will attract more money to you, like finding a wallet full of cash.

You know what I did with that cash? I invested it — more abundance.