Overcoming Bankruptcy Misconceptions

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Summary

In this conversation, Louisa Larado discusses the misconceptions and ineffective strategies for recovering from financial setbacks. She shares her personal experience of going bankrupt and trying various approaches that didn't work for her. Louisa highlights the limitations of debt consolidation and strict budgeting and emphasizes the importance of addressing the root cause of financial difficulties. She advocates for a comprehensive and holistic approach to rebuilding financial health, focusing on mindset, long-term money habits, and achievable goals. Louisa encourages listeners to imagine a future of financial stability and announces the upcoming release of her online course, the Bankruptcy Breakthrough Blueprint. Join the waitlist of the Bankruptcy Breakthrough Blueprint here. 

Takeaways

• Debt consolidation and strict budgeting are not effective solutions for recovering from financial setbacks.
• Addressing the root cause of financial difficulties is crucial for long-term financial stability.
• A comprehensive and holistic approach, including mindset, long-term money habits, and achievable goals, is necessary for rebuilding financial health.
• Financial stability leads to reduced stress and worry, increased savings, and clear paths to achieving financial goals.
• Louisa Larado's upcoming online course, the Bankruptcy Breakthrough Blueprint, provides tools and strategies for rebuilding financial health.

Keywords

financial setbacks, bankruptcy, misconceptions, debt consolidation, strict budgeting, mindset, long-term money habits, achievable goals, financial stability, online course

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Disclaimer: The information contained on today’s podcast has been provided as general advice only. The contents have been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or individual needs. Before making any decision regarding the information, strategies or products mentioned on today’s episode, please consult your own financial advisor or other professional first.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Personal Experience
• 1:30 The Ineffectiveness of Debt Consolidation and Strict Budgeting
• 5:28 Addressing the Root Cause of Financial Difficulties
• 9:24 A Comprehensive and Holistic Approach to Rebuilding Financial Health
• 17:39 Bankruptcy Breakthrough Blueprint

Transcript

Louisa Larado (00:00)
Hi and welcome to the Bankruptcy to Bliss podcast. I'm your host, Louisa Larado. And in today's episode, I want to talk about some of the common misconceptions around recovering from bankruptcy. And I want to introduce a completely new approach to rebuild your financial stability.

Louisa Larado (01:06)
So what I wanted to do today is just shed a bit of light on what probably isn't gonna be working for you.

contrary to what most people tell you and I want to share with you exactly what can work for you instead to hopefully clear up some of the confusion and just take some of all that overwhelm out of the game and I know that this works because I've used it for myself in my life like we went bankrupt a few years ago and it completely took us back to having nothing and having to rebuild restart over

so I tried all these different things first that people tell you that you should be doing or the financial experts. And I was just finding that wasn't working for us. was making us still live paycheck to paycheck despite how much money we were earning. And it wasn't helping us get ahead or start reaching those goals that we had set for ourselves. And it wasn't until I did things a different way that things actually fell into place and started becoming quite easy for us.

So first of all, what most industry experts or financial advisors tell you to do is things like debt consolidation. So that is a quick fix solution where they're trying to figure out a way maybe to avoid bankruptcy.

But all this actually does is put a lot more pressure on you and it doesn't actually get to the root cause of why your debts consolidated in the very first place. another thing a lot of experts say is sticking to their very strict and rigid budgets. And this I found when I tried to apply in my own life.

caused us a lot of stress because it's really hard to try and stick to a budget. It's very restrictive and it didn't actually enjoy us to enjoy our life in any way. All that led us to do was have more stress and worry around our money. And I didn't feel like our money was helping us. It wasn't serving us. We were the ones that were being controlled by our money. And that's not how I wanted to live. And when I was living that way,

we weren't getting ahead, even though we could maybe stick to a budget and we were doing okay, we weren't having any money in savings or we'd save a bit of money and then we'd have to go into that for some expense. And money was stressful. It was causing us a lot of worry. So I believe these things just do not work. And it can be, very time consuming to be having to follow these strict budgets or

stressful if you're looking at consolidating your debts because you're trying to manage all these different things and it's not doesn't work for your life. It doesn't set you up to succeed. But the biggest thing that it doesn't do these two strategies are the most common ones is it doesn't set you up to get to the root cause of why you're in the situation in the first place. Why are you not in the money situation that you want to be in already that you need to face bankruptcy or

have these big debts that you just can't take care of. What has led you down that way? So it's really not until you get to this root cause I found that you actually start to really see things changing in your life. You really start to put the wheels in motion for big change to happen.

all these quick fix solutions are, is they are providing you temporary relief, but they're not actually setting you up for long -term financial stability. They're not teaching you lifelong habits that you can apply for the whole rest of your life to not only be in a better situation than you are now, but to be thriving and reaching goal after goal after goal in your financial life and in your life in general. So they're only focusing on

quick fix solutions and not long term stability. And isn't that the ultimate goal? Why do we want these quick fix solutions if we're just gonna end up back and repeating the same habits that led us to our financial hardship in the first place? So in my opinion, the most important thing in helping you recover financially,

The first one is working on your mindset. What has led you to this situation? Are you coming from a lack or scarcity mindset where you're focusing on things that you don't have rather than things you do have? What this does is it leads to a lot of stress and worry about money because you're constantly feeling like you're out of control of your finances.

And even if you don't have a lot of money, you can still change your mindset and you'll start seeing things starting to shift immediately. Now, once you have this mindset shift in place, the next thing you need to start doing is working on life long money habits. So what I like to show people how to do is to work on habits that are a range of different tools and a range of different strategies and a range of different habits.

that are going to set you up for long lasting skills that you can have for the rest of your life that you can apply with ease in your life, whether that is how you budget and allocate your money, whether it's how you set up your accounts so that they work for you rather than you feeling constantly stressed and overwhelmed by what's going on. I provided you with a whole lot of great strategies that you can use to apply and tools that

might work in some areas for you to help enhance not just your financial life, but your whole life in general.

What I believe instead of relying on just these quick fixes and temporary solutions that are only gonna see you back where you are, I believe in more of a comprehensive step -by -step holistic approach for your financial health. And this includes things like understanding your money mindset, creating achievable financial goals, and establishing consistent, healthy financial habits. And these are not temporary ones, but these are lifelong habits that you will have for the rest of your life.

that would just set you up to succeed. So what example I could think of, so instead of just cutting your expenses and thinking, okay, well, I'm not going to buy anything for my house for the next month so that I can save some money or I'm not, I'm gonna cut back on like drinking or takeaway foods. So instead of focusing on that,

the things you have to cut out and remove from your life. can instead focus on the things you could be setting up in your life instead. So things like maybe allocating $10 or $20 a week into a separate fund that's for emergency use. So you've got that financial buffer or setting a budget that works for you and is realistic for you and your lifestyle that doesn't make you feel restricted where you can still get to live and enjoy your life.

Now, when you start putting these more holistic and long -term strategies into place, what you'll start to find out is, and you'll start noticing, is that you'll start firstly, feeling really good about the money that you do have, doesn't matter how much it is, but you start feeling really good and empowered by it. You start feeling like you are the one in charge of your money and it's not the one that's controlling you. You'll also notice that,

Overall, you're going to have reduced stress and worry. even if you're not earning a lot of money, regardless of the amount that you are bringing in, will take the stress out of it because you know that your money is working in a way that serves you. You'll start to notice having more savings in your account because you've allocated your funds in the way that works for you and that allows you and enables you to save.

and you'll have a really clear path on achieving your financial goals. And even if they're tiny goals to begin with, what we work on is pushing those goals further and further until you get to the really big ones that you really, you you thought you could only have dreamed about. Now, like I said, I've applied these own strategies in my own life. And if you've watched some of my videos or listened to the podcast, you would have heard a bit more about

background of my story, you can definitely go back and do that if you haven't already. But just a brief overview. So we went back in 2016, my husband and I, and we went from having a really great financial start in our life to making a few wrong decisions with our money and a few bad investment choices. And then all of a sudden, all these things happen one on top of the other. And it led us having to face the option of having to go bankrupt and speak our best solution and our

best way out.

So initially it was a clean slate and we thought, yes, we're gonna get started and we're gonna set ourselves up again because we've got this fresh start now, so we're gonna make the most of it. And we were both earning decent money during our bankruptcy. We had company housing, so we should be doing pretty well financially, we thought. However, we still found we were living paycheck to paycheck. And initially I did

these approaches where we first of all looked at how can we do this really strict budget that we're sticking to to get ourselves ahead. But I found there was a lot of issues that were hanging around to do with my mindset and money because I faced a massive financial setback and I felt like I was very responsible for it being the one that managed our finances and our household. So my financial confidence took a massive hit.

Felt like money now was the one that was in control of me. And it wasn't until I learned how to shift that way of thinking, despite strict budgets, despite all our efforts to have money and savings, we were constantly going into it all the time, until we had the foundation, which was the mindset. And then we started setting these more achievable goals, which sort of became the foundation and that focus of what we were looking for.

And then we put out all these strategies that started working for us. That was having a more of a flexible budget approach. It was having our account set up in a way that money sort of automatically was distributed to different accounts so that it worked for us. It enabled us to have this massive amount of savings. So by the end of the bank, our bankruptcy, we were in a position to buy our own home again because we'd managed to save up the

amount of funds that we needed throughout our bankruptcy and a little bit of the period after that. So now we're living in our own home that we could purchase. So it wasn't until I ditched what all the popular financial advice was and tried these other strategies and that's when things actually started to work. So what I want you to do is I want you to imagine right now

that you in one year from now, where would you like your life to be? If you could just dream about it, where would you like to be? I'm sure if you're watching this, you don't still want to be in the situation you are where you're stressed and you're worried about your money.

So instead of having that worry about your bills, your debt, all the payments coming out, just having enough money for groceries for the week, or every single purchase that you want for your family, think, I can't afford that. Or the times you go to tap your card and you think, my gosh, please let there be money in my account. I don't want that for you for one year time. Imagine instead, in one year from now,

You feel like you've got this real solid plan in place. You have the foundations laid. You're starting to feel good about your money. You're setting yourself up to succeed because you've put all of these tools in place that helps set you up and get you on the right track. And you're geared now towards growth, both financially and emotionally as well, because your mindset is working on this as well.

And now you have this confidence to help you make these really great financial decisions. And what you start noticing when you're in this way of thinking, all these new opportunities that you were closed off to before start opening up to you. And it might be different opportunities to invest. It might be another idea of how you can save some additional funds. It might be an idea for a little side hustle that you could start doing to generate some extra income.

I can tell you when we put these in place ourselves in our household, all these things started opening up. We started having opportunities to invest money into shares. We had an opportunity to invest in an investment property. I had all these ideas for different businesses to generate additional income that I was so close to before, because all I could focus on previously was just getting through the next week and being able to afford it.

and try to not worry about all the stress and strain and feeling the shame of my financial situation. So it's amazing how quickly this stuff works when you start putting it into place and the difference it can make to your whole entire family. It's not just on you and your financial situation. But if you don't have that money stress and that money worry, it makes you a better person. you

have kids, become a role model for your kids. You just become the person that you wanna be.

So what I want you to do now is I want you to picture that person that is in control of their finances, that has the confidence to handle their money decisions, who no longer has to say to their family members, sorry, we can't afford that. I want you to imagine having extra money to go on holidays or go eat out or just enjoy yourself more.

I want you to imagine what financial stability would feel for you and what a difference it would make not only in your life, but your whole family's life. Because all that is possible just by putting these principles into place.

Now if this is something that resonates with you or sounds like something that you really know you're ready for and you deserve to have in your life.

then in one week's time, the bankruptcy breakthrough blueprint is going to be released. This is going to be a comprehensive, very detailed online course that's going to guide you through all of the things I've discussed today. We're going to start working on your mindset and looking at how we can get rid of those money blocks that are stopping you right now and are keeping you stressed and worried and build that foundation for long lasting financial

growth and rebuilding your confidence and just to feel good about your money. Then we're to look at how we can create all these different tools and strategies that you can feel like you're managing your money that works for you rather than you working for your money. It's going to make you feel really good about the money you have and you're going to feel like you know where your money is allocated. You're to be able to set clear financial goals for yourself that are going to be ones that you can not only reach but smash.

And then we're gonna look at how you can make these lifelong habits for the rest of your life, as well as looking at what to do when things do go wrong, because they will. So how do you build up your financial resilience?

Louisa Larado (16:44)
this sounds like something that you really are interested in learning more about, then I'd love to invite you to register for my free masterclass, What's Stopping You Transform Your Financial Future After Bankruptcy. In this episode, we'll dive a bit deeper into these misconceptions and you'll have a clearer picture on the exact steps you could start applying in your life today.

to help you get back on track and empower you for financial growth and start creating that financial stability again in your life. So if this is something you are interested in registering for, then there is a link in the show notes. Just click that link and you'll be able to register for this amazing free masterclass. Now, spots are limited, so make sure you do that soon.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this episode, then please feel free to leave me a review and I will see you on the next episode.