Articles – Master Mom Stress

115 Days of Yoga Later: The Health Benefits I’ve Noticed

I hate to sound cliche, but I think it’s safe to say that daily yoga has changed my life.

For real, ya’ll.

But before I get into it, let me back up a minute for anyone who is new to my blog and unaware of what’s been going on.

I started a daily yoga practice at the beginning of 2021, originally taking a 30-day challenge – which lead to my continuing the practice by using the free yoga calendars provided by Yoga with Adriene.

Side note: At the end of March, I switched to a paid membership through Sarah Beth Yoga and I’ve been working on her 31-day Slow Down calendar for April. (The switch from Adriene to Sarah wasn’t anything personal. They each have different styles of teaching yoga and for this season of life, I’m sticking with Sarah’s chill vibes.) For May, I’m using her Happy Yogi calendar.

Today, I’m amazed that I’ve completed over 115 days of practice. It doesn’t even feel like we’ve been living life in 2021 long enough to say that, but it’s true. And, honestly, once I finished the first 30 days, all the days afterwards just flew by.

So, that’s the brief backstory. I’ve written a post about how those first 30 days went here and another post with tips for maintaining a daily yoga practice here. If you’re interested, feel free to check those out.

But for today’s post, I want to share with you some of the health benefits I’ve experienced this year as a result of my daily yoga practice. Remember, your experience could be different than mine, but I wanted to still share how my daily yoga has benefited me in case it’s something you’re considering.*

*Be sure you’ve got the all-clear from your doctor before starting any exercise practice. While yoga is definitely more gentle than other forms of exercise, it can still be intense so keep that in mind.

A few things I want to point out first

I’ll explain a little bit more about each of the health benefits I experienced from daily yoga in a few minutes, but first I just wanted to remind you that I’m not a medical professional. I can only share what I’ve personally felt and experienced.

Some of the health benefits I experienced could also have been the result of other lifestyle changes/circumstances that had nothing to do with my yoga practice.

For example, I completed a 30-day meditation practice during the month of March that overlapped with my daily yoga practice.

I also introduced a new supplement (tumeric)in mid-January (for inflammation).

Therefore, it’s hard to say with certainty that the benefits I’m experiencing are strictly from my daily yoga. I just wanted to put that out there so that you can keep that in mind as you read on.

What studies say about frequent yoga

Let’s start with some background context – yoga studies conducted by medical professionals – so that you can get a better idea of how my experience lines up with what others have experienced. Of course, my daily yoga practice at home can’t compare to what was done in these studies, but it’s close enough of a comparison for you to get an idea. Bottom line: it shows that my experience isn’t isolated.

Sometime last year (2020), Time Magazine released a special edition called “Alternative Medicine: The New Mainstream.” On page 30 was an article about yoga by Lesley Alderman that cited an Ohio State University College of Medicine study where they compared 25 newbie yogis with 25 expert yogis.

The expert yogis (people who’d been practicing at least twice a week for a year or more), had “lower blood levels of interleukin-6, a marker of inflammation that often results from stress.” The study also revealed that the “IL-6 levels in the expert yogis increased less after they were subjected to stressors.”

In the same article, Alderman cited another study from Boston University School of Medicine. Two groups of people were monitored for 12 weeks: “one group walked for 60 minutes three times a week; the other spent the same amount of time doing yoga.”

The yoga group reported lower levels of anxiety and a greater improvement in mood.”

Chris Streeter, one of the authors in that study, said “Yoga may work in part by correcting imbalances in the autonomic nervous system caused by stress.”

Finally, in another study Alderman cited from the University of Pennsylvania, they “found that after completing a three-month yoga course, participants with hypertension had significantly lower blood pressure.“

My daily yoga experience

Most of the health benefits I noticed were physical in nature, however, I can’t deny the emotional health benefits. Like some of the yogis in the studies I mentioned above, I feel like stressful events don’t get under my skin as much as they did before. And my recovery time, emotionally, after something stressful is much less.

This isn’t a new benefit for me. I’ve noticed this same effect in the past, whenever I’d made a point of practicing yoga regularly (as in multiple times a week). Prior to this year, I never had a routine practice. I’d go through seasons of life where I’d practice often, and then I’d back off and practice irregularly. But I always noticed that when I was practicing regularly, I did feel that effect of bouncing back quicker after stressful moments.

But here is my list of the changes to my health that I’ve noticed this year:

stronger core / increased ab strength
looser hips / hamstrings
better range of motion (neck & shoulder)
natural hip realignment (it “popped” back into place; it was loud)
calmer mind / less stressed

These are all pretty self-explanatory. My body is clearly in better physical shape. But what I’m most excited about is the mental health benefit of feeling calmer.

And I know I’m calmer because I tracked my mood for the months of March and April and “calm” was the mood I felt most of the time, with “okay” being second. (For me, “okay” is sorta like answering neutral in those personality tests when you don’t feel swayed one way or the other. Not good, not bad.)

I also tracked my stress levels during the same time period, and on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being low stress, 5 being high), I recorded a stress level of 1 for 38 days and stress level 2 for 17 days.

I’m so glad I tracked these things because it’s helped me actually see that I really do feel calmer and less stressed and that I’m not just sugar coating and forgetting the bad days. I know that the tendency when we reflect back is to only remember the hard times, but clearly, I’m having far more calm and low-stress days than anything else.

I think another thing to point out here is that just because I’ve felt calm and low-stress for most of the time doesn’t mean that I haven’t felt any stress at all. I have noticed that I don’t allow stressful moments to totally take over my mood for the entire day. My daily average mood might be calm, but I’ll also experience moments of annoyance, happiness or sadness.

What I’m trying to say is that it seems like my mind automatically resets back to calm when other fleeting emotions pass. In yoga, we are taught to return to the breath, return to the mat, focus on right now. Yoga (and meditation) has trained my brain to reset back to a neutral (okay) or zen (calm) state because I’m not attaching my mood to the events that are making me feel annoyed, sad or stressed.

Is daily yoga the only factor contributing to how I feel?

Probably not. But considering the studies that have been done on yoga, I’d say that it’s definitely a factor.

4 Tips to Help Moms Stay Consistent with a Daily Yoga Practice

Self-Care

In mid-December, when I decided to commit to a 30-day yoga challenge, I had no idea that I’d still be doing daily yoga, today, in mid-April.

Back then, since I was freshly recovered from a mild case of COVID, I had no idea what to expect from my body. Yoga had been on the backburner while I was sick. Plus, I’d never practiced more than a few days consecutively before. Was I really going to be able to do yoga every day for 30 days?

Well, I did. And, surprisingly, it wasn’t as difficult as I made it out to be in my mind. I enjoyed my daily practice so much that I decided to keep the habit going into February, then March, and now April.

In today’s post, I’ll share four tips to help you stay consistent with a daily yoga practice. If you are a mom who is interested in developing this amazingly beneficial self-care habit, keep reading to learn what I found helpful to me. Of course, I don’t claim to be an expert in daily yoga just because I’ve been doing this for a few months. However, my hope is that sharing the things I’ve done to help me remain consistent can help you feel less intimidated.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

Tip #1: Be flexible

Okay, so I don’t mean you need to literally “be flexible” (that will come the more often you practice yoga (*wink*)). What I mean to say is that it’s important that you understand this: to be successful with daily yoga, you have to be flexible with when and how you practice.

As a stay-at-home mom, I’ve found that there is no set time of the day that works for practicing yoga all of the time.

Most days, I practice in my bedroom, after 8 pm when my three girls are down for the evening (my teenage son is usually doing his own thing in the evening so I’m off the hook there, too).

(Side note: My husband understands that I developed this habit of evening “me time” when he was working away from home and he’s respected my decision to continue using some of my evening for that. Once I’ve completed my evening routine, I’ll rejoin my husband for some time together to close out our day.)

But, evening yoga isn’t always the case. There are days when, due to the type of yoga (energizing) or number of minutes, I’ll choose to find another part of the day to practice. For instance, if my yoga is 45 minutes or longer, I’ll try and do that practice during nap time. Or when sooner, even if that means my two-year-old is in the same room with me (she’s usually really good about leaving me alone).

Do I prefer not to keep an eye on my toddler while in downward dog? Absolutely! But, sometimes, it’s just better for me to get yoga done earlier in the day – however imperfect – than for me to allow it to hog up my entire evening (or worse – risk scratching yoga off entirely if I’m feeling too tired).

You don’t need to only do yoga in the morning or only at night. Be flexible with when you squeeze it into your days.

Tip #2: Use a yoga calendar

Prior to this year, I’d never used a yoga calendar before. I would just search for a video on YouTube (usually from Sarah Beth Yoga or Yoga with Adriene). I would select whatever video I felt was relevant for how I was feeling and I’d do that.

This meant that I’d never really know how long I’d practice (until last minute) and it meant spending extra time finding the right video. And, honestly, it meant I hardly ever did practices that were longer than 20 minutes.

After following a yoga calendar in January for my 30 days of Breath, I knew that I wanted to keep following a calendar. It’s made practicing yoga daily practically effortless in the sense that I don’t have to think about what I’ll do today. All I need to do is show up to my mat. Plus, calendars created by yoga instructors tend to follow a structure that builds from the day before, making them great ways to achieve a specific goal (like strengthening your abs).

I don’t know about you, but it sounds amazing to me to know that by using a yoga calendar designed to (sticking with the example above) strengthen my abs I can work on my core every day without thinking about how. Plus, I know that I’ll always do something different than the day before, which means I won’t get bored. Sign. Me. Up. (Seriously, though, I wish I’d signed up to the whole yoga calendar game sooner.)

Tip #3: Schedule yoga into your planner

Anytime you’re establishing a new habit or routine, like daily yoga, scheduling it into your planner just like you would an appointment is a great way of helping keep you on track.

The way that I plan, I don’t time block. So for planning my yoga, I don’t put down the time slots for when I’ll practice. Instead, I write down how many minutes that day’s practice will be, using my yoga calendar as my reference. (I also print out my yoga calendar for the month and tape it to my bedroom mirror and refer to it each week.) When I’m planning my week, having the details of how long I need to practice yoga helps me make sure I accommodate for it. Plus, seeing it alongside my other plans allows me to better map out my day’s plans.

For example, today’s practice is only five minutes long so I can squeeze that in pretty much anytime I want. However, tomorrow’s practice is a twenty-minute morning session so I’ll need to make sure I carve out time during the first half of my day rather than wait until evening. This means that tomorrow evening will be freer than usual (more time with my hubby) and that any chores I plan for tomorrow need to wait until I do my yoga (or else I’ll likely get sucked into the rabbit hole of cleaning and forget about morning yoga).

Tip #4: Make adjustments as needed

Of course, things happen and you’ll need to adjust on the fly. There have been times when I’ve forgotten to practice a morning routine early and had to do it at night. Oops. Or I’ve had to swap calendar days because I don’t want to do an hour-long, high-energy practice on the very first day of my menstrual cycle (yin yoga only, please!). Heck, once I accidentally repeated a video two weeks after watching it the first time instead of doing the video assigned to that day (*facepalm*). (Was I upset when I noticed? Uh, yes, but yoga is yoga and I brushed it off as the universe deciding that I really needed to repeat that practice.)

If you can only practice five minutes every day for a whole week because of all the other plans happening, so what? Yoga is yoga, I don’t care how long I practice.

Go wild and create your own calendar if you want to by making a playlist on YouTube. Find all the short five to ten-minute videos (trust me there are plenty) and do that for an entire week, month, year! Bottom line: your practice is your practice. Feel free to adjust, delete, swap, whatever you want to make it work for you.

You can practice yoga. every. damn. day.

To recap, here are my four tips to help you stay consistent with your daily yoga practice:

be flexible (with what time of day you practice)
use a yoga calendar (so you don’t have to constantly figure out what to do)
schedule your daily yoga time into your planner (you do own one of those, right? if not, use your phone calendar to set reminder alerts)
feel free to make adjustments as needed (swap days, substitute long practices for shorter ones, etc.)

I could write an entire post just on the benefits of daily yoga (and I probably will at some point), but for now, I will say that practicing daily has given me “me time” I look forward to.

Even if I’m practicing with my toddler in the room, I feel more in control of my days just by getting my daily yoga done, just by showing up to my mat. It hardly feels like a chore and has been a wonderful, proactive tool for helping with stress management.

I hope that by sharing my tips today you feel inspired and motivated to try daily yoga for stress management, too.

Love & light,

PS If you need some help with yoga calendars, Yoga with Adriene has free calendars on her website here. If you’re looking for something different (perhaps a yoga instructor with a more zen energy), I’ve been enjoying the Slow Down calendar from Sarah Beth Yoga, but it’s only available through her paid membership (currently $29 per month). If you’re totally new to yoga, you might enjoy Sarah’s beginner yoga challenge, which is a 7-day calendar and includes a 7-day trial for her app and membership so you can poke around and see all that she has there.

*This post isn’t sponsored. None of the links here are affiliate links. I’m just sharing what I’ve used and enjoyed and hope that these resources will be helpful to you, too.

Can Writing Things Down (in a Braindump Notebook) Help Moms Master Stress?

Planning

A few weeks ago, when I realized writing my to-do’s in my weekly planner wasn’t working for me, I set an intention to come up with a better solution.

While I didn’t mind writing down my tasks, I just didn’t like the system in which I was doing it. Once a week, I would map out my week, assigning tasks to certain days, and for a little while that worked. Until, well, it didn’t.

I failed to account for the ups and downs of life as a highly sensitive person. I didn’t think about how that might impact my ability to get things done. My system was too structured. I needed more flexibility.

Sitting down once a week with my planner to decide when I’d do what just didn’t jive with my personality. I’m not sure if it’s an INFP thing or an HSP thing, but I’ve always known that I struggle with self-imposed structure. I’m most comfortable when I’m given the freedom to do what I want, when I feel like doing it.

This is ultimately why I’ve never been a to-do list person. I’ve always been more of a mental to-do list chick, relying on what I’ve come to find out is also known as the “silent to-do list.” I relied heavily on visual cues to remind myself of what needed to get done. This is probably why I get sidetracked when I walk into a room and see 10 things that need to get done and I forget what I was doing in the other room (*facepalm*).

So, fast-forward four kids, one hell of a 2020, and a case of COVID, and my brain is exhausted. It started to become overstimulating to run through my catalog of thoughts 50 thousand times a day. I needed to calm my mind. I needed structure.

When my planner didn’t give me the right kind of structure for jotting down the things I needed to get done, I stopped forcing myself to plan out my to-do’s and set out on a quest to see how other people manage their tasks.

That’s when I discovered the braindump notebook idea! In today’s post, I’ll share how I’ve come to use a braindump notebook to help me manage the stress and overwhelm of all the things on my to-do list. My hope is that if you’re feeling the same, maybe a braindump notebook is something that could help you, too.

Step 1: Weekly braindump

A braindump notebook is a place to log down your thoughts, ideas, and productivity-related things, projects, and tasks that are on your mind.

Once a week, I write down all my thoughts, in a list format. Well, not all my thoughts, exactly. Just the ones that have to do with getting things done, my to-do’s. (I use a journal for “braindumping” my feelings.)

I have a 3-subject notebook with a section dedicated to my weekly braindumps. I dedicate each week a full-page, front and back. Of course, that doesn’t mean I expect to get all these things done during that week.

Remember, the main purpose of using a braindump notebook is to log all the things I need to do so that they don’t keep living in my head.

Step 2: Color code by category

Within the first week of using this system, I knew that I needed to do something to categorize my list so that I didn’t have to read through each line item to find out what tasks I wanted to work on.

To keep it simple, I subdivided my list into 5 categories: clean, household, blog, to buy, and personal and assigned a color to each category.

Each week, after I make my list, I go through and highlight each item according to its assigned category color. It might seem tedious, but this extra step helps me later when I’m looking back on my list (more on that later).

Step 3: Daily braindump

Once my braindump is listed out and color coded, I review it every morning and add anything that has come up since the last time I wrote in it. That’s also when I sit down, look over the list and decide what I’ll work on that day.

Here is the beauty of this: Depending on the other events happening that day, I may select several items to tackle or only one or two. This daily routine of checking in with my list has dramatically improved how productive my days are (and how I feel).

This works for me because I never really know how my energy level will be each day and I prefer to use that as my basis for whether I should tackle 20 things or just two. As an HSP, it’s important for me not to overdo, especially when my body is craving recharge time.

Using this system, I’ve discovered that, typically, if I have a busy day, the following day needs to be lighter. Otherwise, I’ll burn out and feel overwhelmed if I try and push myself beyond my limits.

Step 4: Create a daily list of to-dos

While reviewing my weekly braindump list each morning, I use a daily to-do pad to write down what I’ll do that day. This particular one (pictured above) came in the most recent Erin Condren Spring Surprise box. (Ya’ll have no idea how excited I was that this pad was in there!)

Sometimes, if I’m not planning to do very much, I just use a sticky note or a small sheet of loose notepaper.

Ideally, I’d prefer to have some sort of bound book to house each day’s to-do’s, like a to-do book or daily planner (so it can close and truly be out of sight when I don’t want to see it). But for now, I’m just using what I’ve got on hand. (BTW, I’m eyeing the upcoming planner launches from Erin Condren and Bloom Daily Planners in hopes that I’ll grab something like that very, very soon.)

Step 5: Carryover uncompleted tasks week over week

Before I sit down and start my new weekly braindump, I look back on the previous week and decide what items from that list should be carried over and what items should not. Of course, completed tasks are simply crossed off, but if something was their last week and I’ve since changed my mind (maybe I don’t really want to alphabetize my DVD library), I’ll simply put an “X” next to it to indicate I’m not carrying it over.

When I first started braindumping, though, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep rewriting things each week because I didn’t want to feel like I wasn’t getting stuff done. But, I ultimately realized I didn’t want to have to flip through a bunch of pages of past weeks in order to figure out what I wanted to do today. Taking the few extra minutes to rewrite items I’m carrying over is the better option for me.

Bottom line: Is writing things down actually helping?

After using this method of tackling to-do’s for over a month, I will say that somedays, I don’t open my braindump notebook at all. Which is totally okay with me, and how I’d prefer it.

If I don’t want to see my to-do list, I don’t want to see my to-do list.

That’s partly what bothered me about my tasks living in my weekly planner. Seeing my to-do list in my weekly spread used to trigger me into stress mode, making me not want to open my planner at all. Separating the two by utilizing a braindump notebook was just what I needed.

Also, the other reason why I wanted to start a braindump notebook was because it was getting exhausting trying to remember ev-er-y-th-i-ng. Now, I have a designated place for my to-do’s to live and that helps me feel way less overwhelmed.

And honestly, the act of writing things down has helped me see that I don’t actually have as many things to-do as I thought. Granted, the list is long, but it felt way longer in my head.

So, to answer the question of today’s blog post: Can writing things down (in a braindump notebook) help moms master stress?

Yes, I believe it can and it certainly doesn’t hurt to give it a try.

**How do you manage your to-do list?**

Do you use a braindump notebook, too? Do you use a planner and like to write your to-do’s in there? Do you use a notepad or separate book for helping you tackle your daily to-do’s?

Or are your to-do’s living in your head like mine were? I’d love to hear your system and how it’s working (or not working) for you! Leave a comment below or send me a DM on Instagram.

Love & light,

No Healthcare? Always Do THIS Before Paying Costly Medical Bills

Household

In my household, we typically elect our healthcare coverage through my husband’s employer. Rarely are we ever uninsured, but when my husband was laid off in August 2020 and went several months without work, we fell into that category.

Under normal circumstances, being without insurance probably wouldn’t have been that big of a stressor because none of us have any sort of medical condition that requires frequent medical visits and refills. However, in the midst of a global pandemic, being uninsured meant that we freaked out a little bit about what would happen should we need to see a doctor for COVID treatment.

Okay, correction: I freaked out a lot.

COVID hit our household during the Christmas break and thankfully none of us needed expensive medical care.

And so once the scare of having COVID passed, I wasn’t too concerned anymore about being uninsured.

Until one day in early January, I found myself heading to the ER.

Again, thankfully, nothing major came of that trip. I had some symptoms that freaked me (and my primary doctor) out and so it was a precautionary visit.

No matter the outcome, visits to the ER without health insurance mean one thing: costly medical bills.

In today’s blog post, I’d like to share with you something that you should always do before paying any costly medical bills. Whether you are uninsured or just have a ridiculously high-deductible health plan (been there, too), this post is going to hopefully help you stress a little less over those costs.

Take a breath

Before I share that ONE thing you should do before paying your medical bills, allow me a few minutes to first calm your mind about the fact that you’ve just accumulated debt that you likely have no idea how you’re going to pay off: I completely understand how you feel.

Look, as a mom, I tend to put my own medical needs aside and it’s easy for me to care for my kids’ needs and ignore the medical symptoms I’m facing. I’m guilty of putting off appointments because I don’t want to waste the money on something that probably isn’t anything.

And when I accumulate medical bills in the way that I did in January, when it turned out to be a false alarm, I blame myself for the debt and feel like a burden – especially not earning an income by being a stay-at-home mom.

But at the end of the day, my health is just as important as anyone else’s in my household and feeling bad about the cost only adds to the stress. While I can’t entirely remove the guilt, I can choose to just accept that it happened and not dwell on the “what I could have done betters?”

Lessons on medical debt

In addition to coming to terms with the expense (I can’t change the past), there are a few other things I want to share first because it will help you understand how I processed things (and it will lead me up to that one thing you have to do). Here are a few things I’ve learned about medical debt over the years that has helped me stress less about my current situation.

First of all, if you have an emergency trip to the ER, with or without insurance, you’ll likely receive multiple bills. In my case, I received a separate bill from the ER physician, a separate bill from the hospital, and another bill from the radiology department. While it might have caught me off guard once upon a time, it doesn’t anymore.

Second, even though the bill statement will say “your payment is due in full”, you don’t need to actually pay it right away. In my experience, medical bills can take up to 3 months before they will send the bill off to a collection agency (which could then screw up your credit score, so don’t let that happen). If you do receive a bill, take a breath and know that you do have some time to pay them back (*phew*).

If you’re thinking you only have 3 months to come up with the money to pay your bill, rest easy, mama. You don’t have to pay the bill back all at once. I knew this fact going into my ER trip because, in the past, I’ve always been able to set up a payment plan with the hospital or whatever medical provider (mostly when I had high deductible’s during pregnancy). For me, those payment plans might have taken years to pay off, but they were without interest, so it was better than swiping my credit card.

The whole point of this post

Now that you understand that medical bills don’t have to be paid right away or all at once, that brings me to the one thing you absolutely must do when you receive a medical bill – always, always call the billing department.

While this year was the first time that I accumulated medical debt while uninsured, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve called the billing department to discuss my options to pay back my medical debt.

Like I mentioned earlier, you don’t have to pay your medical bill all at once. But in order to make monthly installments, you have to contact the billing department and set that up. You can’t just mail them a check with whatever amount you want (yeah, I still use checks sometimes). You have to request a special arrangement so that your bill doesn’t go into collections.

I know, I know. I don’t like to make phone calls either (and I used to work in a call center), but trust me, it’s absolutely worth it – especially in my case.

Apparently, if you are a cash patient (and you are if you don’t have insurance), you’ll probably receive a discount on your bill – but you don’t know about it unless you call.**

This was HUGE news to me!

Ya’ll, I waited 3 months to the day of my visit to call them because I was dreading finding out how much the monthly payment would be. Come to find out, one of them offered me a 25% discount and then divided the balance up into 18 monthly payments, making that bill way more affordable than I expected.

And another provider offered me a – drum roll please – 40% discount if I paid the balance upfront (*jaw drop*).

Don’t stress paying back medical bills

Hopefully, if you are uninsured, you won’t be for long. And if you are, and you do have medical bills, I hope that you found this post helpful.

Remember: most medical providers are willing to work with you so that you can pay back your debt in a way that fits into your budget. But in order to take advantage of things like discounts and payment plans, you have to do the hard thing and pick up the phone and call.

I know that calling and asking for a payment plan can feel like admitting money problems. Just know that the representatives on the other end of the line are there to help you. Asking for help in the form of a payment plan does not make you a failure. It just makes you human.

Again, this has just been my experience. I don’t pretend to know everything there is to know about paying medical bills. But if you have any questions, feel free to send them to me over on my Instagram. I’ll do my best to answer them as honestly as I can. If you found this post helpful, let me know in the comments below or send me a DM on Instagram.

Love & light,

PS It dawned on me a few hours after calling the billing departments to the hospital and ER doctor that I didn’t call my radiology bill department a few weeks ago when I sent them their payment. I probably could have gotten a little discount there, too. *face palm* FOMO feels, for real, ya’ll. Oh it hurts.

**Getting a discount for being uninsured was the case for me. It’s possible that some providers might not do this. Hopefully, you could get a discount, too.

4 Bills to Postpone if You’re Facing Financial Stress

Household

I’m no stranger to financial stress, especially after all the unemployment spells my family has had to deal with in the last two years.

Due to the nature of my husband’s work, which is in industrial construction, projects start and projects end, which means sometimes there are unemployment gaps. It also means that he works outside, making his work hours and pay inconsistent and difficult to predict.

Thankfully, all those finance classes I took in college didn’t go to waste because I’ve been able to take what I learned in the classroom and apply it to managing my family’s fluctuating finances.

One of the many things I’ve learned over the years has been how to navigate our money during times of financial stress. When money gets tight around here (like it did for us in the second half of 2020), I know exactly what bills I can postpone and for approximately how long.

In today’s post, I’m sharing which bills I know (through personal experience) can be postponed with little or no late fee. The only catch is that you have to be proactive. Which means you have to contact the companies before you’re late. (*gulp*)

You have nothing to be ashamed of.

Before I dive into this post, I want to first take a minute to let you know that I understanding how embarrassing it feels to admit that you can’t pay a debt that you owe when you’re in the middle of financial stress.

If the thought of calling a creditor to admit your hardship makes you feel uneasy, you’re not alone. I’ve found myself on the verge of tears when speaking to representatives multiple times over the years.

Remember, financial stress can happen to anyone – even someone with the best of plans (or someone who’s studied financial planning like me). So please be kind to yourself if you’re feeling ashamed of your situation.

When it comes to your money, it’s always better to admit to your creditors when things aren’t going well than it is to ignore their phone calls. The sooner you ask for relief, the more likely you’ll receive it.

On that note, here are 4 bills that you can postpone if you’re currently facing financial stress:

1. Student loan payments

Applying for a private or federal student loan forbearance is a simple process. You just call them up and explain that you’d like to apply for it. Depending on the servicer, there might be a few types of hardships to apply for. For example, this summer, when Hurricane Laura hit my area, I applied for a natural disaster forbearance on my private student loan to help ease the financial burdens we faced during what turned out to be an extremely stressful time. You can expect to be able to postpone payments for up to 3 months.

2. Car loan payments

Just like with student loans, applying for a car loan deferment is fairly simple. Contact your lender and request it. However, it’s important to up to find out exactly what type of payment postponement your lender is allowing. One time, when my husband’s original car loan note ended, we were billed for the remaining balance of an amount equal to 3 months worth of payments. This was because that lender pushed the deferred payments until the end of the loan instead of granting us a loan term extension. If you go this route, your only requirement to qualify should be that you’ve made at least 12 months of consecutive on-time payments.

3. Cell phone bill payments

This bill postponement was new for me in 2020, but basically, I contacted our cell phone company (Verizon) and explained my husband’s unemployment situation. They were able to issue me a payment extension, but it was for only two weeks. When the two weeks came to an end and I still couldn’t pay, I called them again and was issued another two-week extension. If I didn’t do this, my service would have been disconnected for non-payment. (A great example of why it’s always important to contact your creditors before your late.)

4. Credit card payments

Again, this was another new bill postponement for us in 2020, and honestly, one that we weren’t too sure would even allow us to postpone payments. We only contacted our biggest credit card lender (though I’m sure we could have contacted others and asked for relief from them, too). Since we also have our auto loan with this lender, and we always paid our credit card on time, we felt confident that they would assist us with providing relief. After asking, we were able to skip 3 months of payments. (A lesson that it never hurts to just ask.)

Final thoughts

While it isn’t ideal to delay debt repayments, it’s been comforting to know that postponing student loans, car loans, cell phone bills, and credit cards is always an option for us when times get tough.

I hope that perhaps you’ve learned something new through what’s I’ve shared today about my experience with postponing bills during financial stress. And, as I said before, if you are struggling to pay bills, you have nothing to feel embarrassed about.

If this post has left you with any questions about bill postponements, send me a DM on Instagram and I’ll do my best to guide you in the right direction.

Wishing you better financial days ahead, mama.

3 Reasons Why You Should Adjust to Life’s Curveballs (vs Going Back to Normal)

Life Lessons

I watched a Facebook video in early 2018 from Hey, Sweet Pea that got me thinking.

Because she said something profound (regarding how we approach business) that I felt could translate over into our personal lives.

While not in the same exact words, she basically said to stop trying to get back to normal, to the way things used to be.

Let that sink in for a minute…

“Stop trying to get back to normal, to the way things used to be.”

Of course, this takes on a whole new meaning today, in early 2021, because we’ve just spent an entire year living in a pandemic universe – something that is being called the “new normal.”

But the message from Hey, Sweet Pea still remains the same – we can’t go back to the way it used to be.

“Normal” just describes a stage of life that you were used to. When something happens that changes your “normal,” the first reaction is often to try to do what you can to go back to normal.

But why do we do that? Isn’t it more appropriate to just pivot and make adjustments?

In my opinion, back in 2018 when I first heard this, my answer was “yes.”

And today, a year into pandemic life, my answer is still “yes.”

Making adjustments is the better way to handle changes versus trying to go back to how things used to be.

In today’s post, I’m sharing with you 3 reasons why I think we shouldn’t try and go back to normal when faced with changes and why it’s better to just adjust and pivot to the curveballs of life (including this giant pandemic curveball).

Reason 1: Because your life is different now.

In reality, if there is one thing I know for sure about life after my short thirty-something years on this Earth, it is that life evolves. It grows. And unless we grow with it, detach from the past, and move forward and make an attempt to pave a great future differently, we’ll spend the rest of our lives envying our old self.

Do things differently today because you are different today.

Reason 2: Because nothing’s wrong with creating a new normal

I get it. We all miss how things used to be. But realize that finding a new normal doesn’t take away from the good times of the past. You can miss those good ol’ days, but you can’t do anything to actually go back there.

We can learn a lot about ourselves when we experience new things. Maybe this new normal can help you learn more about yourself, like how you’re stronger and more capable than you ever knew.

Reason 3: Because you have full control over your reactions

How you react to whatever challenges you face can either make or break you. Everyone faces challenges and setbacks. The ones who overcome them and were able to turn lemons into lemonade were the ones who understood that change had to be embraced. (I totally wasn’t thinking about that Budweiser hard lemonade commercial.)

You can either yell at the curveball (err…lemons) to go away (aka complain and resist and cry under a table) or you can follow the curveball and see what new direction ~~it takes you~~ you roll.

Curveballs aren’t all bad

Hopefully, the next time life throws you a curveball (lemon), you’ll think back on this post and remember that it’s better to just adjust to it rather than try to resist because:

Your life is different now.
Nothing’s wrong with creating a new normal.
You have full control over your reactions.

Pandemic type curveballs aside, over the years, I’ve learned that when life changes, I must change, too. It’s gotten easier over time to just bump along this roller coaster of life when I accept that curveballs will happen. The longer I resist them, the longer it takes for me to get back on track.

Having that frame of mind, that mindset going into 2020 and all that unfolded, I’m certain that’s why I was able to have an easier time adapting to all the changes. Sure, it was annoying, but there was little I could do about much of what happened. I somehow kept that attitude about it and made adjustments as necessary. (That doesn’t mean I didn’t cry a time or two or three or four, though. I am highly sensitive, after all. It just happens when life gets overwhelming.)

Anyway, from my experience, not all curveballs are bad. And even with that “lemon of a year,” a lot of good happened that I hope I remember as 2020 fades further and further into the distance.

Oh, but I’ll never forget about the whole toilet paper crisis. Nope, that’s engrained forever. *wink*