Connect with us

Finance

How fear and panic can be assets in your finances and career – Marketplace

Published

on

How fear and panic can be assets in your finances and career – Marketplace

There’s a lot to stress about these days and our finances, of course, are no exception. Maybe you’re worried about spending this holiday season or what market fluctuations could mean for your retirement savings. Well, instead of avoiding the panic, what if we used it to our advantage?

Farnoosh Torabi is a journalist, personal finance expert and the author of the new book “A Healthy State of Panic: Follow Your Fears to Build Wealth, Crush Your Career, and Win at Life.” She recently spoke with Marketplace’s Nova Safo about navigating panic when it hits our pocket books. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Nova Safo: Really, is there a healthy state of panic?

Farnoosh Torabi: I hope so. I have a whole book on it! It certainly is a truth in my life. When fear has shown up for me in the biggest crossroads in life — pertaining to my finances, my career, my relationships. When I feel fear, I’ve now learned to really honor this as a signal, my body’s way of telling me to think, reflect, be strategic and not do what I think we’ve been conditioned to do when that adrenaline arrives, which is to run, hide, fight, feel stuck. That is maybe our instinct. But my offer is, what if there is a world where you can be fearful and fulfilled at the same time?

Safo: That sounds like a great world. So how do we accomplish that? What is the kind of a healthy interrogation you can have with fear and best engage with it?

Advertisement

Torabi: Well, I’m a journalist by trade, and I’ve always been someone who is curious. And I think that relationship with fear is the one that you want to have. You want to question it. You want to ask fear some questions around its source: Where did you come from? What do you want me to protect? What do I need to learn so that I can lay down these fears and go still do the thing that seems terrifying, potentially — whether that’s changing jobs or getting married, growing my family starting a business — but do it in a self-aligned way, because I have given myself the opportunity to understand why my fears are showing up? What’s the story there? And what is it that they possibly want to teach me about how to live life in a more — again — self-aligned, self-aware way.

We all have fears, Nova. This is universal. It is what I call the “abundant resource” that we all have access to. And I think the missed opportunity for so long has been to say, “Hey, you know what fear is like all other emotions we experience, valid in many cases.” Now, I’m not talking about the fear of heights, or for me, the fear of cilantro is paralyzing.

Safo: [Chuckles]

Torabi: But I think when fear shows up in life’s really gargantuan crossroads and things are high stakes, — well of course we’re going to feel fear. And I don’t want anyone to feel bad about themselves or to see that as a weakness. I, for one, have been told that many years of my life that whenever I feel fear, “There goes Farnoosh being a coward.” I was called “tarsoo” growing up, which in Farsi means scaredy cat. I was the poster child for fear. And, you know, I want to rebrand this, because as my Persian mother says, “Everything work out.” And it did. I ended up accomplishing quite a bit and doing scary things, not by neglecting my fears, but learning to have a more intellectually emotionally intelligent relationship with my emotions.

Safo: You know, for me, personally, I think imposter syndrome is a big thing. That’s a fear. Also, you know, anything related with career advancement can trigger fears in me. So, if you were talking to someone and giving them advice for, you know, how to take that next step in their career, how to embrace the fear and use it, what would be some practical steps they could take?

Advertisement

Torabi: Well, first, I think it’s really important to understand what it is you’re actually afraid of in that next move. Get very specific. In the book, I talk about different kinds of fears. So it’s not the just, “I’m afraid,” but what? Are you afraid of failure? Are you afraid of rejection? Are you afraid of missing out, FOMO? And so once we can identify more clearly the specific type of fear that we’re experiencing in advance of making a big move in our careers, I think we’ll be able to learn more from that fear.

And so for example, if you’re afraid of, let’s say, switching jobs, there’s a lot of fear of potential failure there because maybe you’ll show up at that new job, and it’s not what you thought it would be or you’re feeling stuck again, I think it’s important to understand that sometimes before we go and do the thing, the fear wants you to remap your definition of success. The fear doesn’t want you to feel stuck or rush into something; it wants you to stop and go, “OK, I’m fearing failure. What would success look like for me? How can I protect my wins?” And that may mean making sure that you ask a lot of important questions before you take the job. It’s that you secure a little bit of a savings cushion before you transition, because maybe you don’t like the job and you do want to quit and you will need three, four months to get back on your feet. Maybe it means that you don’t quit your job right away that you spend another six months still exploring and instead investing in your network, investing in your own professional development and skills, so that you can be more ready for the next opportunity that will really be more exciting for you.

So, fear is just an opportunity sometimes to go, “OK, what is the gap that I need to fill?” Whether that’s an emotional gap, a professional gap, a financial gap, and then start to make those plans and do the thing, because I like I think a lot of us want to walk through life feeling secure — that’s not a bad thing. That’s not anything that we should feel shameful around. So, when fear shows up, just know that sometimes this can be your moment to go and still do the thing, but you maybe take a few beats and you fill those blanks. A lot of times in our financial life, when fear shows up, it’s a signal to get more educated. Fear loves to hang around when there is a lack of literacy. And understanding maybe even the root of your fear is the healthy exercise. When you’re afraid of a lot of these hairy, complex things, you have to question it like, “Is this my fear? Or did I inherit this from a family member? From life experiences?” Your fears tell very personal stories.

Safo: It’s interesting that you say personal there, because reading through some passages in your book, I thought, “This is a very personal book.”

Torabi: It started as a memoir. It definitely was meant to be, for me, an opportunity to share more about my life. As I’ve been working in personal finance, people have been very generous in giving me all have their stories and I’ve been inspired by so many other people’s journeys. And the question that I often get these days in my career is, “How did you become you?” And yeah, there’s an academic answer to that. And there’s a professional answer to that. But there’s a very emotional answer to that too, which is that I’ve been afraid a lot of the days of my life. The world is a scary place, but I have this sort of ironic and interesting relationship with fear that I want to share with people because I feel like it would give people finally the permission they didn’t know they needed to be respectful of how they’re feeling and know that when fear shows up, it’s maybe an opportunity, it’s not a sign of cowardice.

Advertisement

Safo: The last year and a half, two years has been a roller coaster in the financial markets and forecasts of what’s to come. And I can tell you, I’ve had several friends over the last year and a half or so come up to me and go, “Do I need to take all my money out of the stock market? What do I do?” They were panicking. What is a healthy way to sit with panic when you are in the type of volatile economic conditions that we are now?

Torabi: It’s really important to listen to your feelings, all of them. I think fear is one of the most underestimated emotions that we have. And I say panic, because it’s a word we can all relate to, but really what I’m talking about is overwhelming fear. And when fear shows up in your financial life, because let’s say you are looking at the stock market or the job market and feeling really concerned and panicky, I think that is completely legitimate. So, it’s important to first acknowledge that what you’re feeling is perhaps normal. But the real healthy move beyond that is to … a few things I would offer.

One is to examine what it is that you actually want to protect. What is it that is also specifically making you afraid? Is it the actual volatility? Is it that you don’t have maybe the knowledge to be able to really grasp the nature of the stock market? Because I think oftentimes when fear shows up in our financial lives, it’s really a nudge to get more educated. Fear loves to live where there is a gap in knowledge, in understanding. And so that might be the next healthy move. For me in 2020, when the stock market was taking a nosedive at the beginning of the announcement of COVID-19, I began to panic. I had just even bought a house in this timeframe and started to really worry about my financial safety. And I’m a journalist, I know that … I’m a financial journalist too, so I really know that it’s important to not make kne-jerk reactions to your portfolio when you’re starting to feel these feelings about the stock market. And yet I couldn’t sleep, Nova. And I think that’s always a good sign that maybe you should do something, nothing too hasty.

But at the minimum, you can look at your portfolio and examine how you’re investing. And what I realized was that I was really over-indexed in the stock market for someone who was in her 40s now, who was the financial breadwinner, who had just bought a home. My risk tolerance wasn’t where it was when I first opened the portfolio in my 20s. And so, I discovered that I could probably take that back a little bit, I could dial back my exposure to stocks. I wasn’t completely getting out of the stock market, but I think it merited a little bit of reallocating. So, for me this was an example of Farnoosh getting afraid about the stock market and wanting to do something that was constructive.

Safo: I love what you said about fear living in areas of gap in knowledge, right?

Advertisement

Torabi: Yeah.

Safo: So, if you were giving people tips for gaining more financial literacy, what would that look like? What are some concrete steps there?

Torabi: When I first started in personal finance over 20 years ago, there were limited resources on how to learn about money. There were a few books that had done very well, there were a couple magazines, one of which I worked at called Money. Now, I think what’s exciting is that there are so many different ways to learn. No matter how you like to learn, there’s a way to learn whether it’s listening, so there’s podcasts; there are books, of course; there are websites and blogs; and of course, social media, which I would caution a little bit. Make sure that if you’re following somebody that first and foremost, they’re educating you; they’re not biased, they’re not selling you, you know, crypto and other sorts of tricky and confusing assets but that they’re really there to bring you the education, the facts and the knowledge. And there are many people out there that do that. But it may require a little bit of researching. But that is where you can start for free, all of those resources.

And then of course, there are the experts that are professionals that charge fees. And even there, I would say, the landscape is vast and it’s important to go through your referral network. I mean, sometimes just talking to a friend or a colleague at work — “Who are you working with? Or, “who do you like to learn from?” — is, I think sometimes a great way to identify some of the people that you can bring into your ecosystem to help you learn about money. And sometimes I say each and every one of us, we’re all experts in finance. I know that may sound insane, considering we may not feel that way. I think everyday people, the experiences they had with their student loans, their careers, whether they got the raise or not. We’ve all navigated so many things in our financial lives, let’s start sharing that. And not because we want to mimic or copy paste, but because it can be inspirational or interesting or educational. And that’s free. I think that we have these resources, and they’re so underleveraged.

Safo: How do you know when you’ve arrived at a, you know, healthy relationship with money? What does that look like?

Advertisement

Torabi: Well, first of all, you’re sleeping at night and not getting up in sweats, like I do, sometimes. I’m not gonna say there’s this promised land where you’re going to wake up one day and you’ll never have any financial worries or fears. I think it’s an ongoing working relationship. But I think having these tools to know how to continue to feel in charge of your financial life. I mean I think that’s ultimately the goal: where you feel like you have options, you can use your money in ways that not just cover your basics but help to support your interests and provide you with options in life, whether that’s that you want to quit your job or buy a home, that you feel like your money is working for you.

And of course, along the way, you’re going to have doubts. There going to be times when things will backfire without it being your fault. There could be another recession, you could lose your job, but that ultimately, you have this sense of “can-do-it-ness” because you are in control of your feelings around money, which we know is the biggest obstacle when it comes to financial independence and financial freedom. It’s that emotional component. You can have a beautiful spreadsheet and all the numbers look great. You can have a well-paying job. But if you’re not feeling confident, or if you talked about, you know the imposter syndrome, if you’re dealing with false narratives around money because you grew up around that as a kid, this is a lot of the stuff that as adults we continue to deal with, and it shows up in our financial lives. And that’s why I wanted to write “A Healthy State of Panic.” I’ve written many other books about the technicals of personal finance but this one really was the one that I wanted to write because it was at the intersection of money and our mental health and our overall well-being. This is the stuff that sometimes takes the extra work but it’s the foundation, and once you can sort of solve for that, the math maths much better.

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.  

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Finance

The Container Store files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Published

on

The Container Store files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Investors in The Container Store (TCSG) have been sent packing as the struggling home goods chain files for bankruptcy.

The retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Sunday, Yahoo Finance learned exclusively. The company said in a press release it is doing this in order to refinance its debt to “bolster its financial position, fuel growth initiatives, and drive enhanced long-term profitability.”

For the quarter-ended Sept. 28, 2024, The Container Store listed total liabilities of $836.4 million against $969 million in total assets.

CEO Satish Malhotra — a former Sephora executive who took over atop The Container Store in 2021 — is confident the maneuver will allow the 46-year old company to stick around.

“The Container Store is here to stay,” Malhotra said in a statement, adding that it is taking these necessary steps in order to advance the business, strengthen customer relationships, expand its reach and bolster its capabilities.

Advertisement

It plans to lean into custom space offerings, “which continue to demonstrate strength,” he said.

The bankruptcy process is expected to last several weeks with the reorganization anticipated to happen within 35 days. The bankruptcy does not include the company’s Elfa home goods business in Sweden.

The Container Store has filed for bankruptcy, putting its future in question. (Courtesy: The Container Store)

The business will operate as usual across all stores, online and in-home services. The company operates 102 stores across 34 states.

The company says all customer deposits are safe and protected, and vendors will get paid in full. There are no planned layoffs.

There are also no planned store closures, but that may be a possibility in the future as the company goes through the reorganization process.

Advertisement

Chapter 11 allows companies to “renegotiate the terms of their leases to align their store footprint with market realities and business needs,” sources told Yahoo Finance, adding “if they do not achieve meaningful rent reductions, they may be forced to close a select few locations.”

The filing has been expected by industry experts.

Read more: Why Walmart won the 2024 Yahoo Finance Company of the Year award

The Container Store — a chain founded in 1978 that rose to fame for its nifty home organizational goods in the 1990s — was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 9 after it fell below the exchange’s standard to maintain a market cap of $15 million over 30 consecutive trading days.

The company has seen its profits plunge post the home remodeling frenzy fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic and competition picked up from Walmart (WMT), Amazon (AMZN) and Target (TGT). It has been unprofitable for the past two fiscal years, with losses tallying about $10 million for the fiscal year-ended Sept. 28, 2024.

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Finance

Personal finance lessons from Warren Buffett’s latest letter

Published

on

Personal finance lessons from Warren Buffett’s latest letter

Last Nov. 25, Warren Buffett announced that he would donate a substantial portion of the shares he owned in Berkshire Hathaway to his four family foundations.

In his announcement, he included a letter which contained some important personal finance lessons that we can apply to our own situation.

One of my favorites is his comment that hugely wealthy parents should only leave their children enough so they can do anything but not enough that they can do nothing.

Article continues after this advertisement

Despite being one of the richest men in the world, Buffett shared that his children only received $10 million each when his wife died. Although $10 million is a lot of money, it’s less than 1% of his wife’s estate.

Advertisement

I am not hugely wealthy, nor do I have $10 million. However, Buffett’s comment about just giving our children enough made me reflect on the importance of also making our children resilient.

Many of us want to make sure that our children will be financially secure by the time we pass away. While there is nothing wrong with this, sometimes we go overboard in making sure that this goal is met.

Article continues after this advertisement

For example, sometimes my husband and I are guilty of overindulging our children.

Article continues after this advertisement

Advertisement

Warren Buffett’s comment reminded me that we should also allow our children to go through difficulties so that they will become resilient and learn how to survive comfortably with less. Aside from letting them know that they shouldn’t expect much in terms of inheritance, this could mean limiting their allowance, allowing them to commute to school when there is no car available, and saying “no” to their request to buy nice and expensive things like the latest top of the line gadgets.

Article continues after this advertisement

Another thing that we are guilty of (especially if you are Filipino Chinese like me) is thinking that we need to build a successful business so that our children will eventually have a steady source of income and the bragging rights of being their own boss.

Although there is nothing wrong with building a successful business, passing it on to our children should not be a priority. This is because there’s no guarantee that our children will want to run our business. In fact, they might not be equipped to run the business properly. If that is the case, they may end up running our business to the ground. This would put them in a worse position, especially if they were raised to think that they do not have to worry about money because they have a business that will take care of them.

Article continues after this advertisement
Advertisement

Another personal finance lesson Warren Buffett shared is the importance of being grateful and learning to give back.

In his comments, Warren Buffett acknowledged the role of luck in making him wealthy—being born in the US as a white male in 1930 and living long enough to enjoy the power compounding.

However, he recognized that not everyone is as lucky as he is. Because of this, Buffett and his family are focused on giving back so that others who were given a very short straw at birth would have a better chance at gaining wealth.

Learning how to be grateful is very important. We cannot be truly happy unless we are grateful for what we have. In fact, many people who are rich are unhappy because they constantly compare themselves to others who have something that they don’t.

Meanwhile, giving back is a natural outcome of being grateful. It is also very fulfilling. For example, in my company COL Financial, we believe that everyone deserves to be rich. This is why we actively educate Filipinos on personal finance and the stock market.

Advertisement

Helping Filipinos better manage their hard-earned money is one of the greatest fulfillments of my career as an analyst. In fact, this is one of the reasons why I have stayed as an analyst despite the availability of other higher paying jobs.

Finally, Warren Buffett shared the importance of learning how to say no.

People who are wealthy will always be approached by friends, family and others seeking help. Although giving back is important, there is a limit as to how much we can give. Because of that, we need to learn how to say no, even if it is difficult or unpleasant.

To make it easier for his children to say no, Buffett’s foundations have a “unanimous decision” provision which states that unless all his three children agree, the foundations cannot distribute funds to grant seekers.

Although most of us are not as rich as Buffett, we can also benefit from having an accountability partner to help us say no to requests for help. That person can be our spouse, our sibling, or someone who shares our values and understands that while we want to be generous, our resources are limited. Our accountability partner can also help us decide who we should or should not help which is also a difficult task.

Advertisement

Warren Buffett ended his letter by saying that his children spend more time directly helping others than he has and are financially comfortable but not preoccupied with wealth. Because of that, his late wife would be proud of them and so is he.



Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.


Your subscription has been successful.

As a parent, I’d be happier to have children who grow up to become productive citizens with good values rather than to have children who become very rich but are dishonest and greedy. INQ

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Finance

Personal finance guru Dave Ramsey warns over 'mind-blowing' Christmas debt

Published

on

Personal finance guru Dave Ramsey warns over 'mind-blowing' Christmas debt

Holiday spending is putting a big strain on American wallets and leaving some in debt well past the holiday season; however, personal finance expert Dave Ramsey said ‘mind-blowing’ debt can be avoided.

“The average over the last several years has been that people pay their credit card debt from Christmas into May,” The Ramsey Solutions personality shared during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday. “So it takes them about half the year to come back, and because they don’t plan for Christmas… it sneaks up on them like they move it or something.” 

According to a study conducted by Achieve, the average American will spend more than $2,000 for the 2024 holiday season, breaking down the outflow of cash into travel and holiday spending on hosting parties, food, clothing, and other gifts.

Advertisement

STOP OVERSPENDING OVER THE HOLIDAYS AND START THE NEW YEAR OFF FINANCIALLY STRONG

Another recent survey by CouponBirds indicated that parents will spend an average of $461 per child and that 49% of parents will go into debt to pay for this Christmas. 

Ramsey Solutions’ Dave Ramsey says “you won’t overspend” if you stick to a Christmas budget. (Getty Images)

The Ramsey Solutions personality balked at the amount of money shelled out for the season while explaining that the holiday should not come as a shock, and that spending for it should be planned out. 

“Those numbers are mind-blowing when you look at the averages there. That’s a lot of money going out,” Ramsey added, “all in the name of happiness comes from stuff, and it doesn’t.”

Advertisement

He also weighed in and agreed on advice from fellow expert, Ramsey Solutions personality and daughter Rachel Cruze, who suggested making a list of people to shop for and noting how much to spend on each.

“You know, I’m old, and I met a guy from the North Pole,” the expert joked. “He said ‘make a list and check it twice,’ so Rachel’s right.”

Ramsey followed up by expanding on his daughter’s suggestion: “If you do that, and you put a name beside it, and then you total up those dollar amounts, you have what’s called a Christmas budget.”

“If you stick to that, you won’t overspend,” “The Ramsey Show” host remarked.

Advertisement

The money guru pointed out what he sees as problematic with the holiday season – not taking a shot at Christmas itself – but referring back to the spending issues.

“The problem with Christmas is not that we enjoy buying gifts for someone else. That’s a wonderful thing,” he reassured. “The problem is we impulse our butts off, and we double up what we spend because the retailers make all their money during this season.”

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

Ramsey concluded by advising shoppers to be wary of retailers and to not be ensnared by their marketing strategies.

Advertisement

“They’re great merchandisers,” he warned. “They’re great at putting stuff in front of us that we hadn’t planned to buy.”

READ MORE FROM FOX BUSINESS

Continue Reading

Trending