Financial Ups and Downs

Posted On: 2006-01-11Length: 15:00

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Hi, this is Joan and this is episode 26 of The Prosperity Show. Thanks for tuning in. Today we're going to talk about financial ups and downs. But first if you want to contact me, you can write to Joan@theprosperityshow.com. Or you can call our voice mail line at 206-888-HELP. That's 206-888-4357. Our main site is prosperityplace.com where you can find lots of free information about improving your relationship with money, and yourself.

So let's look at this topic of financial ups and downs. The reason it interests me so much is it's amazing to me how many people I talk to who started at a particular level financially, made fairly significant progress, stayed at the higher point financially for a year, two years, three years, and suddenly found themselves back down again, to pretty close to where they started out, or maybe a little bit higher. Sometimes it's lower, but often it's about the same level. The other variation of this is people who get large settlements from either divorce or legal cases or inherit large sums of money, and a couple of years later, anywhere from two to five years later, it's all gone. Now, what's this all about? People dream of having more money, and they finally get more money, and then before you know it they're right back where they started. What causes that and what can you do to prevent it? And the numbers really can be frightening. I talked to one fellow one day who made six million in a short period of time and lost it. Made a million dollars and lost it. He just kept going up and down and up and down. The ones with the divorces, I talk to someone recently who had gotten $250,000 for a divorce settlement, and wound up with financial advisors who gave her a lot of the wrong advice. Some of it happened during the tech bubble, and a lot of people were getting a lot of bad advice, and wound up to where she was before. So let's take a look at what it is that makes people go back to where they were before. What is it that keeps them from sustaining and increased income level? It all goes back to the identity factor, which I introduced in episode #3. The identity factor is a mechanism that kicks in when you start to make significant changes in your life. If those changes are incongruent with who you perceive yourself to be and your place in the world, that's what I consider your identity. In other words, this is who I am. And if my world starts changing, then it means that I'm becoming something different and that makes me uncomfortable. Very often when...