These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Series 3: Pocket – Your Personal Economy.

Week 47: When Your Finances Run Low

• When your financial resources begin to decline, you should immediately start reducing your spending or saving, whichever is less priority for you.

• Finding an additional source of income to compensate for the shortfall in your resources will help you restore your regular status and psychological balance. But do not rush to engage in ill-thought-out activities, and at the same time, do not hesitate to engage in any secured sideline work if you get the chance, even if it is somewhat less than your ambitions.

• It is important to keep your spending priorities always set ready, so that choosing what to give up—when your financial resources decline—does not become a confusing challenge for you.

• The austerity measures that you follow when your financial resources are low may be upsetting, but try to use it as a good opportunity to discover the excessive spending behavior that you can get rid of even after your financial resources return to what they were. On the other hand, it is OK to pamper yourself with what you see fit when things settle down and you return to your previous financial situation. In any case, the difference between what is necessary and what is superfluous remains relative to a far extent and depends largely on your financial situation and the circumstances surrounding you.

• In times of acute crisis involving society as a whole, or even the whole world, there is a somewhat different challenge to the austerity behavior that most people find themselves compelled to follow. The paradox is that the behavior of society—after the end of the crisis and the return of economic life to normal—is similar to the behavior of separate individuals after the end of a financial crisis that each one of them had gone through at a certain time, which means that the behavior of societies is almost actually the arithmetic mean of the behavior of separate individuals.

• Proactive action is, of course, more effective. It is important to look at the short, medium, or even long term and try to foresee the probabilities of any decrease in any of your financial resources. This will help you adjust your budget while you are in a comfortable position and make the relevant decision whenever needed in a calmer, wiser, and more prudent manner.

• It is useful to review your spending and study the possibilities of reducing in some respects without there being any necessity or indications of a potential decrease in your financial resources over any coming period. Such evaluations are important not only to study the possibilities of reducing expenditures but mainly to redistribute expenditures, helping to update your budget and refresh your financial affairs. This may include adding what is reduced in some respects to an increase due in others.

• When you decide to take austerity measures to counter a decline in your finances, do not rush to imitate anyone you know in a similar situation. Austerity measures are many and varied in forms; to ensure their effectiveness, you must choose from them not only what suits your budget but what better matches your nature as well.

• It is better to have more than one austerity measure to choose from in the beginning, as well as for the sake of replacing one plan with another in the event of failure to continue what you started with after a while.

• Austerity measures’ period to confront the decline in your financial resources does not mean that you should undergo continuous suffering until you regain your previous financial position. Take this forced opportunity to discover the special pleasure inherent in some simple living experiences in food, clothing, and transportation—and most importantly the advantages inherent in the human relationships that the experience allows you through communication with new categories of people. To read more about the author, click here