I was elated! My company was outsourcing its SAP support and my secret wish to be one of the ones let go was granted! Early retirement! WAHOO!!!!

That was almost 5 years ago..... While I'm still elated not to work for a large corporation, we didn't plan well; the economy went south; and my husband and I find ourselves scrambling to start over - pretty much from scratch.

So how DO you start over?

First, stop doing whatever it is that got you into a mess in the first place. As Thomas Friedman said, "The first rule of holes is that when you're in one, stop digging."

Then stop beating yourself up. Sure, you made mistakes - some of them very big ones; but that's in the past. Look at your mistakes as learning opportunities and keep your head clear. You can't really start over if you're mired in the mess of the past.

Next, take a careful look at what went wrong. Starting over can't include any repeats of those ugly mistakes! Ours included, but were certainly not limited to, helping family members more than was wise; moving to another state and all the uproar resulting from such a huge change; using credit cards too much because we JUST KNEW our business would be dazzlingly successful; investing in poor ventures; taking a wrong and very expensive trip down a real estate investing path; and just, plain spending too much money. The economy and some health issues didn't help, either.

Then put together a plan for starting over and securing your financial future. Get to work figuring out what you can you do RIGHT NOW to get some cash flow going. I'm using materials from Loral Langemeier - the e-book "Get Off Your Lazy Assets" to help us work through this process. GOOD STUFF!!

Take long, hard look at your expenditures. Where can you cut costs until you get your income flowing nicely?

And, most importantly, take action. You can't start over if you don't get started!

How have these steps translated into action for us RIGHT NOW? We're looking at various ways to manage our debt. We've temporarily trimmed almost all of the fat out of our budget. We working on a plan for our business and our future. And we've gotten started bringing in some cash. We sell GOOD STUFF at the flea market, on amazon.com and on eBay. We have our own website for our online store, The Pack Rat's Pockets and we're learning how to drive traffic to it. This isn't our final solution but we can quickly do these things RIGHT NOW.

Getting another JOB may not be your best solution for starting over unless you have no other choice. In our case, my husband has some physical limitations; and although I was a pretty good nerd in my day, my technical skills are woefully out of date. Besides, at my age, I'm a little too intolerant of corporate nonsense to just be quiet, keep my head down and work, work, work for someone besides myself. That said, I'm MORE than willing to be an entrepreneur and work, work, work for us. Maybe that profile fits you, too!

My husband and I are looking to the future - beyond our immediate cash flow problems. We're figuring out how to generate income as we grow older. We know we love finding good deals and beautiful, unique things and passing them on to others. But we also know we'll need multiple streams of income to protect our financial future. We know we'll need a less hands-on approach, too. We're not getting any younger. One of our stragegies will surely involve the internet. It's powerful and there are many ways to harness some of that power to generate income - affiliate programs and drop shipping, for example. We're also looking at a multi-level marketing program with a company called ACN. Our friend, Julie, is involved in it and it has great potential for residual income when we're too old to actually work 12 hours a day 7 days a week.

One thing's for sure:

I know we can start over and I know we will succeed! And you can do it, too!

We welcome your comments!

Please stay tuned for more info!