The Mindful Investor: How a Calm Mind Can Bring You Inner Peace and Financial Security

Chapter 9. When Things Go Wrong

Despite all of your goal setting, planning, and hoping, things can, and do, go wrong. Many things can derail your financial future if you don't handle them properly, including illness, death, divorce or separation, job loss, debt, business failure, stock market correction, and fraud and scams. Each of these on its own could fill a book, but we'll lightly address them here and offer suggestions for ways that you can deal with them so that their impact on you and your financial future is minimized.

There are many resources at your disposal to help you evaluate and improve your situation when one of these disasters strikes. For instance, your planner can show you a new forecast, review some options with you, and perhaps add some perspective to your situation; your accountant may be able to show you how to mitigate the damage through tax relief; and your lawyer may be able to help you with the legal issues that arise. However, you must understand that in order to regain stability in your life following a major financial disruption, you'll first need to deal with the pain and suffering it's caused. You must face the problem head on and not wait around, hoping in vain that someone else will take the pain away.

It's important to remember that everyone in the world will be affected by at least some of these "disruptive" events at some point during their life. Often when you experience loss or pain, the immediate feeling is one of solitude and it's as if you're ...