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Money, Financial Anxiety and Your Home Business
"A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it." - Unknown 
Money Issues - Dealing with Financial AnxietyUnless you’re independently wealthy, money issues and financial anxiety are a fact of life that you simply need to face. Owning your own business, by definition, means learning to feel anxious - and probably for a long time. Not meaning to be flip, but it’s just true – that is unless you’ve been left an inheritance and you have no financial concerns. If you cannot function without the surety of a pay check and benefits, especially if you have the pressures of a family to support, owning a business may be too stressful. But don’t despair – the beauty of most home-based business opportunities is that you can pace yourself by starting part-time, before you fire your boss. Once you decide to go for it, you need to learn to manage your nerves. Anxiety comes from having a mental exaggeration of what we believe will happen if we fail. You need to catch yourself when your mind starts spinning out of control and conjures up visions of doom. Confront your fear. Ask yourself, ``What`s the worst that could happen?” “What’s the likelihood?” “How would you cope with the problem?” “What’s in your control?” “What’s not?” “What can you do in advance to build a safety net?” There are always options including down-sizing your lifestyle and taking a part-time job for extra cash – neither of which you want, but you’d survive. Most of what we fear never happens, and even if it does, we’ll still be okay. With solid business planning and a creative expense reduction strategy, you should be able to ride out the business building period before you become profitable. In the meantime, use the anxiety adrenalin as a positive force – it will help keep you on track when you need to summon up the self-discipline to work your plan. If you have a spouse, you need a family plan that determines your expectation of risk and the level of risk that you feel is tolerable. Without serious ‘buy-in’ from your spouse/partner, you`re setting yourself up for frustration and probable failure. Evaluate your situation from a realistic ‘risk versus reward’ perspective – stretch a bit but don’t go so far beyond your limits that the anxiety will destroy your productivity. The pressure you're feeling isn’t necessarily a sign you’re going in the wrong direction – instead it could be a reality check that shows you what you're up against and saves you from striking out from a naïve place. What’s more, this pressure can also be the drive that gets you going in the morning when you'd rather be hit the snooze button or go golfing. More worrisome would be if you were so confident (arrogant) that you had no such concerns. Be realistic about the challenges and have a game plan to address them.
"A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned"When you started your own home business, you adopted a child that needs to be nurtured. Unless money's not object, you need to stretch your dollars to the max to get the job done. Here's a great site for saving money, both for your home and your business....
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