Accelerate Your Legacy
Accelerate Your Legacy
92. When Life Throws You Curveballs
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Hello and welcome to the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. I'm Laura Sexton, your trusted financial coach and money mindset specialist. Join me as we explore the world of money and money mindset while also paving the way for a lasting legacy that extends far beyond money. Together we'll eliminate stress, amplify freedom, and ensure you stop paying for your past so you can start saving for your future. If you're seeking peace in your finances, more margin in your budget, and a legacy that inspires generations to come, you're in the right place. Hey accelerators, we are going to have a little bit of a different chat today. Have you guys ever seen the movie, The Trouble With The Curve? It was an absolutely amazing movie. I'm not just saying it because Justin Timberlake was in it, although that did definitely help. The movie is a baseball movie, but it's all about what to do when you keep getting a curveball thrown at you and you don't quite know how to hit it. In the movie, you have Clint Eastwood dealing with the fact that he's getting older. Amy Adams dealing with the fact that she is a woman in a man's league. And then of course there's Justin Timberlake, and I don't know what he was dealing with. I just like to watch him. But when it comes to golf balls, I've had a couple of doozies thrown at me recently. A couple of weeks ago, I developed a pretty nasty cold, which was unfortunate. I had a fever, and just because I have a fever doesn't mean I can lay down. And heal, because I have four children, four little children, my eight year old can only do so much. She can't cook for us. She can't clean for us. She can't drive us anywhere. It's me and my four kiddos whenever my husband is at work. So I, being sick, had to figure it out. And it was not easy, and it was not fun, and then another curve ball came my way. Then following Wednesday, my daughter woke up with a fever. Now my husband was supposed to go to work and I was supposed to be taking my three year old on his first ever field trip. We were going to be going to the pumpkin patch with his class and I was so looking forward to it. And me being, pretty far along in this pregnancy. I got so emotional and started tearing up and my husband was like, I'm just going to take the day off of work so you can take him to the pumpkin patch. I was like, okay. So I have a sick kiddo and I get to go to the pumpkin patch now that I'm healed and I just had the best time. It was absolutely wonderful. I'm glad that me and my little turkey got to go and enjoy some time together. But then towards the end of the day, he started looking a little rough and he started getting a little fussy and not acting like himself. Turns out he was coming down with something, probably the something I had, but it could have been the something that was going through my kindergartner's classroom. It could have been anything. Well, that cold turned into croup, turned into swollen tonsils that restricted his airway, and we got to spend that Saturday night. Curled up together in a hospital bed in the ER. It's never fun to go to the emergency room, but going to the emergency room with a three year old that can't breathe is absolutely terrifying. Thankfully, the doctors and the nurses that were there took very good care of him and he was the bravest boy. He was such a brave boy. I couldn't be with him when he was getting his x rays because I'm pregnant. I have to protect this other baby as well. And so he, he had to do it. I was standing behind protective glass and he, you could see it on his face. He wanted to cry, but he did not. And the first time they did his IV, the, the vessel blew and they had to do it in the other arm. And he wanted to cry, but he did not. Two o'clock in the morning, we finally got admitted and put into a hospital bed. And that's when he really wanted to cry. But he did not. And the nurse, the sweet nurse, she looked at him and goes, Oh, he needs a popsicle. It's two o'clock in the morning. Yes, he does. Certainly doesn't need a popsicle. He has worked really hard tonight. He deserves one. Now you're probably thinking, well, that's gotta be the end of the story, right? No, my friends, not at all. So while he's still recovering and he's at home, we, we got to go, we had to leave the hospital just the next day. But that did not end our story. It took him another four days to heal. And while he was healing, his sister fell backwards out of a swing and broke her arm. Yes, that's right. My eight year old now only has one functioning arm. We got to go today and we sat in a waiting room for two hours. Because we did not have an appointment, but there's only 1 pediatric orthopedist in our area. And so we waited and we waited and the baby cried and caused a fuss and the 8 year old and the 3 year old and the 1 year old all ran around in circles in the waiting room and I did the best I could to keep them under wraps and out of people's way. So even though we assumed that she was just crying out for attention, it turned out she was crying out because she was actually hurt. And I guess that's going to teach me to make assumptions, isn't it? Hopefully. Because that all happened before noon this morning. Hopefully, we're at the end of this road. Bad things always come in threes. Massive colds, an ER visit, and a broken arm. We should be done. Right? I'm going to hope so. Well, what does this have to do with you? Thank you for indulging me in my story there. But what does this have to do with you? Well, life is going to throw you a curve ball and it may throw you three at a time and you have to decide whether or not you're going to swing or you're just going to let it go lying right on by. If you are, life will keep throwing curve balls at you and it will strike you out. I tell you all this not because we need meteor insurance. You don't have to have a plan for every single contingency. You don't have to have every scenario mapped out, planned out, ready to go. I was not planning on a broken arm, but I had insurance and I knew that I could cover it. I know that if my kid has to go to the hospital in the middle of the night, I know exactly how to get there. I know what the plan is on grand scheme. I don't know the nuts and bolts, the ins and outs and the small things, but I know big picture stuff. So I wanted to talk to you about when life throws you some curve balls, five things that we can do to help mitigate the situation. The first is to remember this old saying, a stitch in time saves nine. And what does that mean? It means if you go ahead and do it right this instant, it will save you time in the long run. The fact of the matter is when we ruminate on something, when we think about it over and over and over again, it actually takes up more time, more space in our brains and causes us slower reaction times to other things. Very specific situation with stitches my kindergartner wore a dress to school that had a little bit of the hem coming out and my thought was, I mean, maybe, maybe half an inch, maybe a quarter of an inch, something like that, just a little bit of the hem had started to come out and I thought to myself, well when she gets home I'm gonna stitch that up. When she got home the entire hem had to come out. The entire hymn. And I was like, wow, that's an actual stitch in time. Could have saved me 900 stitches, literally. So we need to think about those little things. If you can do it right away, just go ahead and do it. Get it done. Don't let it ruminate in your mind. Don't let it take up your brain space. Move on. Thing two. Very similar to thing one, but a little different. Don't put off to tomorrow what you can do today. My friends, you are not guaranteed tomorrow. You are guaranteed today right now. So don't say, Oh, I can get my will done tomorrow. I can put that trust in place tomorrow. I can change my beneficiaries tomorrow. The things that need to get done today, the important things that need to get done today. Do them today. Take the time, pause, whatever it is you're working on, because these things are very important. You want to make sure that you have your will, your trust, your beneficiaries. I know too many people who had their ex spouse as the beneficiary of their life insurance policy. So when they died, their current spouse got nothing. And it's not like the ex spouse can transfer it over without having to deal with tax penalties or things like that. Number three, plan and work ahead. My friends, if I had followed this, you wouldn't have missed a couple of weeks of podcast. I would have been ahead and things would have gotten done. But this season of my life has shown me the importance of not only planning ahead once, But continually planning and working ahead. If there's something that I can get done, I might as well go ahead and get it done so that I don't have these lapses for my business, but it's more important for your home. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to have a podcast interview with Hannah Stewart, who is specializes in saving money on groceries. One of her biggest things is to plan ahead. If you want to save money, it's like making a budget, right? Plan for what you want your money to do. Don't get in the middle of the moment and go, well, what am I supposed to do? I don't know. That's not good for anybody. It's not good for any situation. If there's something that you can do to prepare yourself for the future, let's go ahead and get it done. Number four, put protections in place. Yes, I said earlier, we don't need meteor insurance. We don't have to have insurance for every single contingency, but you need health insurance. You need term life insurance. You need to make sure that you have an emergency fund for when emergencies come up because I don't know if you guys noticed, but we had emergencies. They came up. Protect yourself and your peace of mind. The peace and the calm that comes from knowing that I can go to the ER and I don't have to worry about how much it's going to cost. They can give me a bill for the brand new red cast that my daughter got. No big deal. Here, here's my debit card. Take my money. It's in my account. Now I don't have to worry about it. Do you have that same peace of mind? Do you have that same calm? Something were to happen, you know, that you're taking care of. What about long term future? You have retirement savings. What's going to happen when you're done working? What would happen if you had a short term disability situation? Does your job cover that? What about long term disability? Are you covered there? There's so many things to think about. And sometimes we just need to have a conversation with somebody that's on the outside that can say, Hey, what about this? Hey, what about that? I've talked to too many people in the last week. That have either never put any thought into their retirement until it's 10 years away, or whose parents don't want them to move out. I have two people in particular I'm thinking of, one is 24 and the other is 30, and their parents are doing anything and everything they can to keep these kids in the home because they never prepared themselves emotionally for what it would be like for their kids to leave the nest. We have to plan ahead, friends. And we need to put protections in place. So number five, this may be one of the most important. If you are uptight, like me, number five is to go with the flow. Stuff's going to happen and we're going to have to make adjustments. I had so many plans to get things done over the past two weeks. I have a picture book that I'm working on. I wanted to work ahead on some things in my business. I have new programs that I'm developing that I'm so excited about. I had to put it all on pause and you know what, when I got to hold my one year old who had a cold herself, she was also sick. I just held her and I enjoyed that moment with her because I know that soon she's going to be big and she's not going to want me to hold her anymore. And today when she was screaming, screaming in the doctor's office, in the waiting room, I was like, you're one and you have no idea what waiting is all about. You don't even know why we're doing this. And I'm just trying so hard to go with the flow and just be patient and be calm and I'm going to be completely honest with all of you. I cried. I was in the waiting room and twice I just started sobbing, trying so hard not to because I had my eight, three and one year olds with me and I didn't want them to see me crying because if they see me crying, then they're going to cry and they won't have any idea why. And I only partially know why because I'm just so overwhelmed with the screaming and the running and the embarrassment of the people looking at me and, you know, I was there for two hours. You know what? After two hours and my kids want to run around, let them, let them not going to let them run out the front door into the parking lot, but anything else, whatever they want to do, just going to let them do it. And it actually helped because we got in faster because of the ruckus that we were causing. My friends, life is going to throw you curve balls. You can do nothing and let the empire determine your fate or you can learn the pattern and swing for the fences. Don't let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game. I know that there is a famous baseball player that said that, and for the life of me, I can't remember who it is, because every time I say that quote, I only think of A Cinderella Story with Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray. If you know what I'm talking about, feel free to give me a shout out there. So there you go, bookends, two really great movies, Travel with a Curve and A Cinderella Story. In both of them, life will throw you curveballs. And you get to make the most out of your day and your decisions. That's it for this week, accelerators. Go out and make a difference. Thank you for investing your time with us today on the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. Remember, your legacy isn't just measured in dollars and cents, but in the tools, habits, mindset, and reputation you leave behind. Don't just listen to the show, but take action on what you've learned. Share this wisdom with a friend who can benefit and help us spread the word by rating and reviewing the podcast. For questions or encouragement, reach out to me on Instagram at Accelerate Your Legacy or explore the resources listed in the show notes. I will be back with you next week. Until then, build your legacy with intention.