Category: money

career, economy, education, money, Real Simple, relationships, travel

A framework for getting through tough times, economic or otherwise

Christa Avampato

With the current state of the economy, every news cast, newspaper, magazine, and radio station has been offering a nightly segment on making our money go further by cutting expenses, shifting our investments, and finding places with bargains. Money experts like Jean Chatzky and Suze Orman are encouraging us to live within or below our means, pay down bad debt, and save, save, save. While a lot of these tips are very helpful, they are just that – suggestions and tips. I haven’t seen a consistent, customizable framework to help us cope with specific, difficult challenges we’re facing on so many fronts. Until yesterday.


I’ve been a loyal subscriber to Real Simple Magazine for several years. I look forward to its arrival each month and it’s one of the few publications I read cover to cover every time. This month, their resident motivator, Gail Blanke, wrote a column entitled “How to Thrive in Tough Times.” I expected another set of high quality tips and hints on personal cost cutting. What I found instead was much more valuable. 


A personal and executive coach, Gail offered exactly the kind of framework I have been looking for when evaluating a challenge and formulating a way to overcome it. A fun five-step process takes us through naming and evaluating the challenge, considering possibilities, and then taking action. 


Step 1 involves naming the problem in a discrete way and then asking, “can we do anything about our situation to quickly make the problem disappear?” If no, proceed to step 2. Gail’s example in the article talks about a family who can’t afford to take vacation this year because of the tough economy. 


Step 2 we consider all of the things we’re missing out on or losing as a result of the problem. This can be an emotional coming to terms so take your time going through this step, face each fear and loss head-on, and then keep going. 


Step 3 now that we have faced what we’re losing, consider a new possibility. This can be the most difficult step because we now have to let go of what we are losing and imagine a new reality. Eventually, the family Gail was working with formulated the big idea of having a vacation at home. 


Step 4 now the fun begins. It’s time for imagining impossible things in the hope that we can make some of them possible. This is a free-for-all brainstorm. No idea is a bad idea in step 3 – get it all out there without considering limitations. This is your license to get completely carried away. The family in Gail’s example came up with ideas like taking Latin dance lessons together, cooking classes, and visiting all of the local museums in town.


Step 5 leads us on the path to reflection. We put the best of the ideas from step 4 into action, and put our best foot forward in making them a reality. No half-hearted efforts here. And then carefully consider how this new found possibility is different and even better than the opportunity we had to miss out on in these tough times. Step 5 will be a work in progress for some time, and it may teach us that while the hard times are tough to initially confront, they end up creating the circumstances for which we are most grateful. 


I hope this framework helps us all consider new realities that we must create in order to move forward, even in the toughest of times. It’s valid for personal matters, as well as professional, and can be used by anyone regardless of circumstances. It has enough structure to serve as a gentle guide and enough flexibility to make it valid in a myriad of situations. It can be used by individuals, families, and companies. Many thanks to Gail and Real Simple for finally offering up a tool that we’ll be able to use for many years to come. 

business, career, creativity, entertainment, happiness, innovation, money, New York, society, technology, trend, writing

No one needs to pay you

Christa Avampato

From my earliest memories about what profession I’d like to have, I wanted to write. And the troublesome thing to me was always that I may never get anyone to pay me for doing what I love. I’m 31 so when I was growing up, blogs and the like didn’t exist. We were still living in the days of big blue chip companies dominating the globe. “New media” as it’s known today was just a dream inside the imaginations of a handful of people.

Today, I can confidently say that I am a writer. I don’t have a magazine gig. I don’t write for television of film. You can’t see my work in a theatre. I never signed a contract and I don’t have an agent. No one gives me assignments. And it’s no longer just tucked away in some old journal that even I’ll never go back and review, much less have anyone else read. It’s out in the world, in this wonderful thing called the blogosphere and I write whatever I’d like to write about. I do what I want, when I want, which is really the only way I am capable of living my life. I have a disdain for authority or anything that hampers personal freedom and creativity and I am largely a contrarian at the mere mention of phrases like “well, you HAVE to do it this way.” I actually don’t HAVE to do anything, and I won’t.

I used to be weird for feeling this way. Now, it’s become the way of the world. With user-generated content growing by leaps and bounds by the minute, the limits that have been placed on our lives are being ripped down in the blink of an eye. Agents, creative unions, casting directors, TV networks, producers, and film studios used to rule the roost. And while they still wield some power, it is largely dwindling to a modicum of what it used to be. We are very quickly becoming the “take charge of our lives” generation. Contrarians rejoice, we have worked our own way out of the job of being contrarians. (And not a moment too soon. Being a contrarian is exhausting work and I have other things I’d like to be doing!)

Last night I attended the Mustaches for Kids event at the Montauck Club in Park Slope. A hilarious and worthwhile event. The only nosh available was pickles by Bob from McClure’s pickles. (http://www.mcclurespickles.com/) When not in the kitchen whipping up his grandmother’s recipes, he’s acting and writing. He was telling my friend, Monika, and I about a new webtv show he’s on – http://www.theburg.tv/. It’s entirely created by his friends from college who live in Williamsburg. They didn’t create it to make money, they did it for the love of creating. And here’s the good news: they have 4 million people who have watched the show on-line, the audience is global, SAG is contacting, and Michael Eisner’s company is interested in investing in the project. The paradigm of entertainment is being torn down and built up by the talent rather than being dictated to them.

These kinds of success stories by the underdog brighten my day. It is indeed a brand new world. Focus on being great and creating your life, and the money will follow.

finance, money, technology

Making a mint

Christa Avampato

For a number of years, I have built elaborate spreadsheets of budgets to keep myself on track. I put myself through college and through graduate school working a whole host of jobs and with more than a little help from school loans and grants. I grew up in a family with very little money and was always paranoid about not having enough money or about not managing well the little I did have. These spreadsheets helped me stay on track and let me know when I needed to reel in the spending and when I could loosen the reigns a bit.
It is a lot of work to keep track this closely. A number of different sites to check, receipts to track, and accounts to balance. www.Mint.com has made that old news. A new, fun site recently featured in Fast Company, the founders wanted to help encourage young people to be more financial responsible and help all people to simplify the process of budgeting. Best of all it’s free. You can record budgets, have bank accounts, investments, and credit cards all tracked on one site. It will give you graphs that make it easy to see just how you’re faring in the world of balancing your spending and savings, and offer up specials that can help you take advantage of special bonuses from financial products you may not be aware of.
This is no easy feat. Most people don’t like the balancing act of money or the complexity of personal financial management. Mint.com just goes to show you that everything, even the most stressful of tasks, can be infused with a little fun for a whole lot of impact.