Category Archives: Preparing to Make The Leap

These posts talk about the various things I did to get everything in order financially to make the leap.

Top 5 Things I Did Before Taking the Leap

As you’ve learned through this blog, it took me a long, long time to follow God’s lead and quit my full time job. By quitting I gave up awesome medical, dental, vision and mental health insurance, my pension that I would have been able to draw in 3 1/2 years and a guaranteed bi-weekly paycheck. Needless to say, I didn’t just run and take that leap of faith without some planning. Here are the top 5 things that I did to prepare:

Top 5 Things to Do

Prayer: I prayed the same prayer over and over for years. Through those prayers I believe that God slowly changed MY attitude and beliefs until I was finally convinced that this was His will and that I could do it. In my opinion, prayer doesn’t have to be perfectly scripted or said in a certain order or way. Prayer for me is just like having a conversation with God, a continual conversation regardless of where I am or what I am doing – driving, cutting the grass, cleaning the house, whatever.

Listen: Of equal importance to prayer is creating a quiet or still time so that you can hear what He has to say. For the greater part of my life, whenever I was in the car, the radio would be blasting the entire time. I had to have it on from the minute I got in the car, until the minute I got out. Not anymore. At least 50% of the time I’m driving, I drive without the radio on. It’s amazing what that quiet time will do for you. Listen to your intuition. Listen to your gut. Listen to your thoughts. Listen to what others say to you. So many times God speaks to us through others. Mostly I listened to the peace within me about the decision to leave.

Save: I saved enough money to pay an entire year’s worth of both my car and house payments. Those are the most important things and those are the things that would affect my credit if they weren’t paid. I realize the importance of impeccable credit and so I do my best to keep my financial affairs in order.

Got my finances in order:  I met with a financial adviser several times. It’s funny, she immediately said I should never leave my job. Five minutes into sharing my story with her of how God had been speaking to me, even she changed her tune. I refinanced my house with a lower interest rate, looked at all of my expenses and “cut the fat” as they say (turned off house phone, changed cable providers in order to drastically cut prices, etc). I made sure all of my debt was paid off other than my car and house.

Be proactive: Not only did I have anything and everything to do with my house and car checked over to be sure nothing was wrong with them, I did the same with me. I refilled as many prescriptions as many times as I could under my great insurance benefits before I left. I had a sleep study done. Had any dental work done that I needed. Went to each of my specialists and my regular doctor to make sure everything was going well with me physically.

By taking care of all of these details so carefully, I think I warded off a lot of problems and was well prepared for whatever or wherever this leap of faith would take me. So far, so good!

The Power of Planning

If there’s anyone that understand the value of being organized, it would be me. I’ve always been an organized person who found organizing to be both easy and therapeutic. And for the past 7+ years, I’ve worked as a certified professional organizer helping others get organized. I know how great it feels to know where to find things when you need them and where to put them when you’re finished with them. I also know how important it is to have systems in place for keeping things organized. I’ve had the pleasure of helping others get their home, office and lives organized so that they could enjoy the things in life that really matter.

I also know that planning and visualizing your goals plays a huge role in the process of getting organized. So much so that it’s the first thing we do when we meet with our clients. I’m a big planner but I’d have to say I’m an even bigger doer. Sometimes slowing down long enough to truly map every single thing out just doesn’t look as exciting to me as just doing it, so I just jump in.

Mental preparation

My struggle with organizing has been to try to organize all of the great business ideas and goals I have because there are so many of them. They are scribbled down here or there and repeated here or there. It can look and feel so overwhelming to try to map things out when there are an overabundance of tasks, ideas or stuff to organize. Another hurdle to getting them organized has been the distraction of my everyday life of running a business. Since the first day I started my organizing business, Simplified Living Solutions, I’ve worked 2 very full time jobs. Although I’ve been able to organize these thoughts, ideas and plans in a way that I could always find the information, I’ve never had enough time to capture them all in one place so that I could organize, prioritize and break them down into doable steps.

I have been working on doing just that for a while now, trying to block out any other nagging distractions that would normally pull me away from doing just that. Today, I am finally starting to see a sense of semblance after pulling together every little note I wrote down for the past 7+ years and beginning to organize them. It’s exciting and empowering!

It’s so funny to me that I’ve struggled with this because I spend my days teaching, empowering and coaching our clients to do this very thing. They often feel overwhelmed at the thought of it. They often don’t know where to start. And they often would prefer to just ignore it as much as they can. I have found myself feeling the very same way about this project because it all seems so big. YET, I know that getting started is the hardest part. AND, I know the wonderful feelings and structure that getting organized brings. It’s also very motivating and empowering to sort through everything, keeping only those things that you need, use or love and freeing yourself of all of the other “clutter” so you can focus on the things that really matter.

Signs of New Life Sprouting Up Everywhere

I know money is important to survival. I honestly do. I wasn’t born into money. I definitely have had to work very hard all of my life. And I’ve gone through many, many struggles because there was a lack of money since I was a single parent with absolutely no help, even from my children’s father. So believe me, I understand first-hand how important money is.

When I began trying to wrap my brain around the fact that God was telling me to take this leap of faith and leave my financial security, obviously money was the big obstacle to His plan for me in my eyes. As I began to lean into considering leaving, I did a lot of planning. I even met with a financial advisor who immediately told me that I would be foolish to leave my financial security. It’s funny though that after hearing 5 minutes of my story and all of the ways that God had been showing me that was His direction, she honestly started to believe it herself.

New Life Springing Up

New Life Springing Up

 

It’s been 10 months now since I left my “real” job and there have only been 2 big financial scares. But even with those, I haven’t regretted my decision once. The number one reason I haven’t regretted it or gotten scared is because I tested God over and over before I finally took the leap and I feel confident this is His plan. So I do trust and rest in the fact that “He’s got this” (He’s in control). He’s not going to let me fail because my life and the results of this leap of faith will be a testament to Him.

The second reason is that I see signs of new life all around me and most importantly, within me. There are changes within me daily, if not hourly. OK, hourly might be a bit extreme. But there are so many WONDERFUL things that have happened that money just can’t buy! I feel that I am really living now, not just merely surviving. I’ve already mentioned the weight I lost but there are lots of other physical changes that have happened that represent the internal changes. I am in the final leg of making some bold changes in how I look, complete with new glasses and new hair. For me, that’s a BIG DEAL! Though I’m still no beauty queen, the new changes are lighter, freer and even a bit riskier for me.

For the last 4 years of my “real” job, if I wasn’t working with one of my organizing clients, I wore sweat pants and an over-sized T-shirt EVERY DAY – even to my “real” job. (Remember, I worked nights. That’s a whole different ball game in a business office.) I NEVER wore make up and I seldom tried to fix my hair. Since my big leap of faith, I’ve worn make up more often, changed my hair style several times and slowly started acquiring new clothes that fit. The biggest thing I’ve learned during this process is that it makes me feel better about myself. I didn’t realize that I’d been stuck in a vicious cycle for the last 4 years.

By wearing sweat pants, no make up and not spending much time on myself each day, when I looked in the mirror I didn’t like what I saw and I would feel discouraged. So there was no drive to change this because when you look like hell all of the time, you start feeling like it. This little change of taking time to take care of myself has caused my feelings of self worth to blossom! Are you spending time taking care of yourself?

Preparing for the Unthinkable

I’ve always been very proactive when it comes to preparing for my own death. I want to make sure that the things I’ve worked so hard for will transfer seamlessly to my children. Since I assume they will already be devastated enough by my death and the grief associated with it, I want to make things as easy as I can for them during that time.

I am intrigued by the many, many people that don’t plan for their death. It’s inevitable, right? Death is the one thing that we can all count on. We’re all going to die. Because I’ve always been extremely fascinated with psychology, this phenomenon is so interesting to me. When I question people about why they haven’t done anything to prepare for it, they usually blush and admit they just don’t like to think about it.

Death Certificate

Death Certificate

Let’s take it one step further, it’s honestly super simple to get things in order for your loved ones before your death. On the flip side, it’s a nightmare for your loved ones when your affairs aren’t in order. Probate drags on and on, money and other belongings go unaccounted for, etc. I don’t know if it’s the inner organizer in me that made me so highly aware of the need for this (organizers are all about getting things in good order) or if it stems from the death of my Dad when I was 20, or the death of my brother when he was only 39. Either way, I have always been highly aware of the need to prepare for this. I’ve had a will since I was 20 and I have updated it several times since then.

Just having a will isn’t enough though. You’ll need to give several people copies of it. And you’ll need to be sure that those people affected by it know where to find it and that they know what your wishes are. I’ve sent copies of my will to at least 4 people and have made my children aware of my wishes, where they can find all of my legal documents and what they will be expected to do upon my death. My children are 24 & 27 so they’re really not children anymore, but they still need guidance from someone they can trust about how they should handle things once I’m gone.

Today I am taking care of a couple of things that have been nagging at me for years but I’ve been too busy working constantly to address them. It feels so great to finally get my own stuff organized now that I have more time to do it. I am having a Beneficiary Deed created and recorded so that the house I bought 7 years ago will transfer immediately to my children upon my death. I am also changing my car title to include my children as the TOD (Transfer on Death) parties so that my car will transfer to them immediately as well. All of this preparing just takes a little bit of time and a very, very small amount of money.

Taking these steps to make sure my affairs are in order, and tweaking them as I go through life to be sure they are up to date and include everything, gives me peace of mind that my children will be taken care of, and my assets will be accounted for, after I’m gone.