Life's Curveballs: Broke and Out of Options? Here's your Financial Comeback

Teresa dives into the raw, emotional reality of financial struggles—something far too common, yet rarely talked about honestly. With unfiltered emotion, she opens up about her personal experience during the 2008 financial crisis, sharing what it truly felt like to be drowning in money problems. From the anxiety, depression, and isolation to the impact on relationships, she lays it all out.

But this isn’t just about struggle—it’s about finding a way out. Teresa shares the hard but necessary steps she took to regain control, including confronting financial realities, cutting non-essential expenses, finding ways to earn extra income, and creating a no-BS budget. If you’re tired of just surviving and want real talk on how to get unstuck, this episode is for you.

Thank you for tuning in! I truly appreciate every single listener—whether you’re here for the first time or have been with me from the start.

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Transcript

0:38

Hey everyone, and welcome to the show. I am so excited you're here, and if you're a new listener, thanks for tuning in. It truly means a lot that we have this time together. If you're listening, because someone shared this with you, that is awesome and I know some of you'll pass this along to a friend because today we're getting real about something so many people struggle with, but no one really talks about. Money problems. I'm gonna break down four simple things you can do to start improving your situation. And if today's topic isn't something you're personally dealing with, I guarantee you know someone who is. So share this with'em because you know what sucks being broke. I'm talking about the kind of broke where you're scraping by. Stressing over bills and wondering, how the hell am I gonna buy food? When you're so broke, you have no savings, no investments. Maybe you have a car, but no real security. And worst of all, no one to bail you out. That's broke as fuck. Have you been there? Are you there right now? Because I've been there and I know how suffocating it feels being this broke means every dollar you make is already accounted for and you have very little to survive on. You know that kind of stress that's so heavy it follows you everywhere, even when you're trying to sleep. If this sounds like something you're going through, if you're tired of just surviving and wanna start building a way out of this broke situation, this episode is for you. Did you know that financial stress is one of the biggest stressors in the world? It is the leading cause of anxiety, depression, and relationship problems. You know why?'cause it affects every aspect of our lives. Let's be real. There's very little you can do in this world without money. We can go walk on the beach, we can go to the park, we can go outside but outside of that cash is king. And today I'm gonna share the exact steps that I took to pull myself out of survival mode. In 2008 during the financial crisis. I lost my six figure job. I was in the high tech industry and at that same time I was going through a divorce. I have three kids. One was in diapers at that time. Another in kindergarten, and I had one attending a private Catholic high school with a tuition bill I wasn't sure how I was gonna be able to pay so let me just paint the picture of what the global financial crisis in 2008 look like. Those of us who were in it will never forget it because it wasn't just a tough year, it was an economic disaster. Tent. Cities were popping up in towns across the country, and the biggest one was near where I lived, just outside of Sacramento. Families were creating these makeshift shelters and open fields bringing. Anything that they could from their home to these new houses that they were creating because they had lost everything. They didn't have money to pay their mortgages. They were losing their homes. Foreclosures were at an all time high, and the worst part, there were no jobs. Every single industry was cutting people loose, left and right. Tech, finance, retail, manufacturing. The restaurant industry, you name it. It didn't matter what your background was. If you had a job on Monday, you could be unemployed by Friday. This was millions of people. Who weren't just struggling to pay their bills, they were losing everything. Savings gone, homes gone, stability gone. And for someone like me who had just lost a six figure job and was going through a divorce, it felt like the entire world was collapsing around me. I remember waking up in the morning thinking. How am I gonna get through this? Because in my mind there were no options. The economy wasn't recovering anytime soon, and the companies that were still standing at the time, they sure weren't hiring. Maybe you're going through something similar right now. Maybe you're in an unexpected life change that turned everything upside down for you financially. That feeling of panic, of realizing you have no backup plan. I get it. I had no safety net, no savings. My 401k went to shit. I had nothing. Just me, my bills and a hell of a lot of uncertainty. I was stretched so thin. I had nothing left after rent monthly bills, my car payment and my son's school tuition, it added up so fast. I barely had anything left to buy food. Have you ever skipped a meal just to make sure your kids could eat? That was my reality. Some days I wasn't even thinking about myself. My only concern was how was I going to feed my kids? I was in the middle of a very difficult divorce with no support coming in, and three boys depending on me, one of my girlfriends invited me over to her house to go grocery shopping in her pantry. Let that sink in. Can you imagine standing in your friend's kitchen with a couple of grocery bags filling it with their food that they bought for their family? Because you have nothing at home to feed your kids. I'll never forget the mix of emotions. So grateful, yet so humiliated. I had no idea how I would ever pay her back, and just when I thought it couldn't get worse, another bill hit. I wasn't just broke. I was drowning. You guys. When you're broke, it's not just about the money, it is about what it does to you, how it eats away at your confidence, your dignity, your sense of self-worth. I felt trapped, no matter how hard I tried. I was sinking deeper. I didn't have the luxury of distractions. I couldn't go on a vacation. I couldn't go out to eat. I couldn't even grab a burger at McDonald's if I wanted to. I wasn't grabbing drinks with friends. I wasn't even buying a damn coffee. I stayed at home because I didn't have the money to go anywhere, and even then I didn't want people covering my tab. It made me so uncomfortable. I was somebody who took care of myself. I made my own money. I was grateful, but every time it happened, I felt like I owed them something, even though they never asked. After a while, I started feeling like a charity case. I couldn't shake that feeling, and honestly, I didn't want the reminder that other people weren't struggling like I was. The weight of it all felt so heavy. I was drowning while everyone else seemed to be swimming right past me. It was an awful feeling. I cried a lot. Shit. It's still something I remember so well, and it is such a terrible place to be. I know how it feels. For those of you who are in it, there's frustration. There's sheer exhaustion and sometimes you're just so worn out from all of it. You just wanna sleep your life away. When you're in that place, it's not just about being broke, you guys, it's about feeling very alone. I was at the thinnest point in my life. I was so damn skinny. Not because I was dieting, not because I was hitting the gym, but because the anxiety was eating me alive, literally one pound at a time. When you're broke, you're not just struggling financially. Your body feels it too. The constant anxiety, the sleepless nights, the skipped meals, because you can't afford to eat because your stomachs and knots from stress. It all adds up if you're in this right now. You've gotta start taking care of yourself. I didn't. I wasn't eating enough and I damn sure wasn't sleeping. In my last episode, I talked about meditation and how powerful it can be for relieving stress and improving sleep. If you're not sure where to start, it's easier than you think. Just go to Spotify. Or your favorite streaming platform and search for meditation. You will find tons of great options. Pick one. Close your eyes and just chill for one to two minutes. Maybe take three to four deep cleansing breaths and really let it out. So that you can reset yourself. It doesn't have to be complicated, and trust me, even in a few minutes, it can make a huge difference. But back then I was waking up every morning exhausted, and every night I would just lay awake, staring at the ceiling, feeling completely helpless. And the worst part of all, I had to pretend I was okay. I had kids to take care of responsibilities. I couldn't just walk away. I. I'm gonna share some lessons and the things that I did to make it better, being broke teaches you things that nobody else can. It is one of life's greatest lessons because you have to have money to survive. no matter how impossible this may seem, you can get unstuck. If any of this is sounding familiar to you I want you to know and to believe you're not alone. I knew I couldn't keep living like that. I could either sit in my struggle and let it consume me, which it already was, or I could start figuring out how to pull myself out, how to make this better. You're not stuck, but you do have to make a decision to change it. You've gotta change your mindset. So here's what I did. I faced my reality head on. This was the hardest part. I actually wasn't somebody that paid attention to my finances. I always avoided it. I wasn't in a marriage where someone took care of me. I always earned my own money. I. I know there's people out there that would rather be taken care of, and I get it. But I just avoided sitting down and looking at my finances. I would pay my own bills. That wasn't new to me. It just felt overwhelming and avoiding it guys, it doesn't make the bills disappear. So I sat down, and I got real about what was coming in and what was going out. It wasn't pretty. I had to face it in order to fix it. If you're feeling stuck, the first step is knowing exactly where you stand, no matter how bad it looks. I'm telling you, avoiding it does make it worse. It creates a lot of stress. This at least puts the facts on the paper. It doesn't. Lie to you, so get out a notebook. My favorite thing, get out a spreadsheet if you prefer to do this digitally, but write down plugin the amount of money that you're getting from unemployment or from your paycheck and what's going out. What do you have left to survive on? I also cut back on everything, like everything. I had already cut back where I could, but I needed to go deeper. I looked at every expense I had. Do I absolutely need this? I canceled subscriptions. I called service providers like Comcast to ask for a lower rate, and I stopped spending on anything that wasn't essential. It wasn't fun, but it was necessary. And you probably think I've already cut back enough. I promise. There's always more that you can adjust. You have to get ruthless with it. I'm gonna go back in time a little bit. So I lost my dad when I was 10 years old. He died of colon cancer. We lived in a country club. On the golf course were very well taken care of. My father owned his own architect firm. What I want you to know is that my mom had four kids. She had to take care of. So she blew through our savings and she always said, we're broke. We're broke. We even went on food stamps. This isn't the first season of being broke. But when you're in it by yourself as an adult versus being the child of it, it is very different'cause you have responsibilities. I never wanted to say I was broke to my kids. It has a negative connotation to it and if you're like me and you believe in the law of attraction, it's gonna keep delivering that you gotta change your mindset. So this is kind of a cute story. I. My kids would say, you know, I want this, I want that. You know how it is when you got little hands in the cart at the grocery store. We didn't have money, and they would grab something and I would say, we don't have money in the bank to buy that right now. It has to be something that you really need. We can't afford anything that we want. And their cute little faces looked at me and they said, what does that mean? And I said, well, when you need something, that's something there that's gonna help you, it's gonna make you feel good because you're taking care of yourself. Something along those lines. But when you want something, it's a nice to have. It's something that you just don't need. Oh, and what was really funny about this, they kind of modeled that after me. There was a time when one of'em said, mommy, I really want this. Is there money flowing in the bank so that I can get it? I sure remember those days and they're just adorable when kids repeat things that you've taught them. So change your mindset and use different words. I think that's very helpful. But when you're broke. It's easy to feel like you have nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean that there are no options. There's no way out. There's no control, but there is'cause. Guess what? We all have skills we can leverage to make money. You may not see them right away, but they are there. I had to sit down and ask myself. What am I good at? What skills do I already have that someone would pay for? At that time, no one was hiring, getting a job was out of the question. My profession was in technology sales. I knew how to problem solve, so I use that skill to help me I started looking at every possible way that I can bring in extra cash that would be selling things that aren't necessities. Things like clothes, toys, furniture, anything like that. And speaking of toys, I used to go Christmas shopping at thrift shops way before thrifting was cool. That's how I got my kids Christmas gifts. You gotta get creative I took on side gigs. All my friends knew I was struggling financially. It was pretty obvious. They watched me melt away into nothing. Together we came up with these creative ideas. Why don't you watch my house while I'm on vacation? Why don't you come over and water my plants during the day? I don't wanna do it when I get home. Can you watch my dogs? Can you walk my dogs? Can you run errands for me? And they paid me for it. Yes, it was absolutely weird at first because these were my friends, but everyone was willing to help and I was helping them. So my level of guilt was minimal. I was creating opportunities for myself. And that is the first step to getting out of survival mode, recognizing that you have something to offer. One of my girlfriends and I were on a walk,'cause it was free, and that was in my budget. She's a career counselor and this was not a session, it was just two friends out on a walk talking. And I had said, I gotta figure out what else I can do to make a little bit extra money. I'm still really strapped. And she said, you know what? You've been a fitness trainer, you've taught aerobics. Why don't you train people and make some money? So I put an ad in Craigslist and I got a couple clients out of it. When you're broke, you have to be resourceful. Think outside the box. That's what I had to do. So if you love animals, try pet sitting or house sitting. If you're really organized, maybe you offer to help a friend get their home organized. If you're good with words, help people write their resumes you could babysit maybe you're an incredible cook, and all your friends say, my God, I wish I could cook like you. You could offer to cook for their family. Maybe you deliver your cooked meals because they're such a busy family. That's what I'm talking about. We all have these skills and we can turn them into little gigs. Think how much. People pay to maintain their yards, get their houses cleaned. You could offer to do that and charge a lot less and would be helping them save money in return. The key is to stop thinking you're stuck. The other thing I did for the first time in my life is I put a budget together. Even when you're stretched thin, creating a budget is non-negotiable. You need to see exactly how much money you have. How much is going towards covering your overhead, and most importantly, what is left to survive on? To put gas in your car, food on your table. Yes, that's surviving because when you're broke, it's not about budgeting for extras, it's about making sure you can make it to the next check, anything to help without losing everything you have. If you're feeling completely stuck and drowning in credit card debt, know that you do have options. Bankruptcy might not be for everyone, but for some it can be a way to wipe out the slate clean and start fresh. And if you wanna learn more about whether or not bankruptcy is for you. My girlfriend, who is a bankruptcy attorney. Did a podcast together, episode three, financial Freedom, navigating Debt and Bankruptcy. Listen to it. Even if you're not gonna file, you might get something out of it. So whether you file for bankruptcy to clear out your credit card debt or you took the path I took because I didn't have credit card debt at the time, there were definitely hard days. There's still moments where you feel like you may. Not be making progress, but over time these little changes that you're making add up. If you're running an errand for a friend and they're giving you 10 bucks, it's 10 bucks. You didn't have, do you wanna know how much I was charging people to train them?$20 a session? Why did I do that? I wasn't undercutting myself. I was trying to get people for me to train them at a reasonable price because this was during the global financial crisis. It's not like everybody had an unlimited amount of money. Everybody was tight. Some had jobs, some didn't. But it was hard living during that time. So I took what I could get. You pay me 15 bucks to walk your dogs, I'll walk your dogs, but I want you to know you can get out of this survival mode that many of us have been in. You can rebuild no matter how bad things might look for you right now. I did it and you can too. Open up your laptop, get that spreadsheet cranking, and what you do is on the left side you create a column of all of your bills, and then at the bottom you run a total, and underneath that, you plug in whatever the income is that's coming in for you is subtract that monthly total from the amount of money that's coming in every month. You get to see what you have left to survive on. That's this very simple budget. There are many templates out there that I am sure are available to you for free. Some of'em are more complicated than others. I don't want this to be an exercise that feels complicated'cause God knows we're all stretched for time. If you're stressed, the last thing you wanna do is whip out a notebook or a spreadsheet. It's simple. If you don't have a laptop, crank this out on a piece of paper, all the outgoing and what you have incoming. Subtract it so that you can see what you have left over. If you're going through this right now, what's the biggest struggle you faced and what did you do to help yourself through it? DM me on Instagram at In Shock Radio. I would love to hear about it and if this episode. Wasn't for you specifically. But you know somebody who is that could benefit from it. Share it with them so that they can hear. They're not alone. You heard me earlier. I was crying. It was emotional to talk about this. Far more emotional than when I had cancer. That's how massive financial struggles hit somebody. Think about that. Until next time.