Feng Shui results

The results of implementing feng shui changes in our home and property in an effort to help our financial crisis have been excellent. It's only been about 30 days but here is what has happened so far. The feng shui expert, Gary Hendrickson, gave us several charts with corrections to implement. If you want to learn more about Gary you can go to his web site at http://www.fengshuidesign.net/ He listed several of the steps he recommended in order of importance for us.

1. We arranged our beds, office, couches and dining tables so that each of us were sleeping, working and sitting in our best directions. Wild horses would not make me put my bed back in a bad direction for me. We are all sleeping so well and waking up ready to head into a new day instead of starting out tired because of a restless or painful night's sleep. In my office I'm getting so much more done each day and staying on track so much better. Our family meals and conversations are better because we're all facing our good directions.
2. We made color changes that were easy to do just by moving furniture, using fabric covers, rugs and moving wall hangings around. It took us several hours and I got to bed around 2:00 AM. The next morning I woke up with a definite ease in my mind that hadn't been there for months or even years.
3. With that ease in my mind I realized I could tackle a major recommended construction project that would change the direction of my front door. My husband and I began that afternoon. Three days later the new door was actually functional in the wee hours of the morning. The next morning I woke up noticing a VERY big change in my mind. The usual war with myself wasn't going on. Up until then, my normal mind activity was to be focusing on the problems, the dangers, the disasters I was trying to avoid but at the same time trying to wrench my attention to positive thoughts about solutions, goals, etc. It had been a continual war. The war was gone and my mind rested easily on a focus of easy and joyful potential rather than strugglesome and painful potential. It has stayed that way 90% of the time since changing the door almost four weeks ago.
4. Two sectors of the house were starred on our charts meaning they were crisis areas that needed immediate attention. Coincidentally they were the two places in our house that were full of unpacked boxes, and they were also painted very bad colors for those sectors. We spent a day painting, emptying boxes and organizing. Throughout the process we were all very angry and yelling at each other. The next morning I realized we had been experiencing the results of a habitual behavior pattern that has always worked against our joy instead of supporting our joy. We "stored" our stuff to deal with later rather than disturb the peace of the moment to take care of our personal "stuff". No wonder we were so angry. For the next week we argued a lot more than usual and then noticed that it was because we were all speaking up about what mattered to us. Suddenly the arguing lessened as we collectively agreed that we liked being comfortable dealing with our "stuff" as it came up instead of stuffing it.
5. We placed specific items in specific sectors and positions in the house according to our charts. Each placement was supposed to attract more opportunities, money and good energy. We started with three fountains each facing a very exact direction. Within a day I felt another layer of peace settle into my mind. It just felt like everything was going to be okay. Next was a statue of a metal horse running. It had to be in a specific spot and face a specific direction. The next day I got a marketing idea for a friend's business that could make us both a lot more money. We're currently implementing that marketing plan. I put up another statue exactly as instructed and a couple days later got another idea that is getting me back into subdividing a property that had been halted for months because of lack of money. That is also currently in motion and looking very promising. Other parts of that plan keep coming together and making it even more exciting. So many opportunities in nearly every area of our lives have been flowing in that I couldn't begin to list them all.
6. We moved a eight foot tall tree that was blocking our new front door and trimmed back bushes that nearly obliterated the front of our house. Even before we finished, people from two neighboring houses came by to meet us who we had never met. We've since had much more social interaction and invitation. Even people including some old family members have contacted us and invited us to be more involved in their lives.
7. We are still not out of the woods yet, financially, but changes are happening. Problem relationships are becomming supportive relationships. My mind is clearer. I have good energy (maybe because I'm sleeping so well). I'm seeing behavior patterns that have contributed to struggle and I'm changing them. I'm watching my children's lives become more balanced and they seem to have become more empowered.

I haven't increased my income by the required $5000 per month but I can see that I have the ideas and the steps in motion that could possibly accomplish that goal much sooner than I imagined possible. Both my husband and I have moved from terrified determination to avoid foreclosure if at all possible, to a calm certainty that all is well no matter how it goes. That alone has made the feng shui changes valuable to me.

Next: What we've learned about Love and how it relates to our finances.

From RoadKill to King of the Road - First Day

From Roadkill to King of the Road, is the title of my blog. It was suggested to me by a friend, Kitty Connel for another purpose but is a very appropriate title for this blog account which is to record my progression from financial "roadkill" to financial "king of the road."

Here's the starting point - Roadkill.
In less than a year my husband and I lost our cushy little nest egg and found ourselves in debt up to our ears with too little money coming in to cover the monthly obligations. It's not so different from hundreds of thousands of other baby boomers who have experienced various versions of finding themselves helplessly tossed back to square one in the game of building a retirement income. Financial Freedom has been snatched from the hands of many of us just as we were approaching the final lap that was to carry us to the finish line.

In case you're interested in our particular scenario, here it is. (Or you can just skip past the sequence of events that landed us at Roadkill and begin reading about the recovery.)

--We were on track for a cushy retirement. My husband's retirement account had been leveraged to allow us to build a very nice passive income stream. We were about one to three years from complete financial freedom that would allow my husband to choose to continue working or to retire. Our two sets of twins were 13 and 16 years old and we were looking forward to enjoying financial freedom during their last years at home with us.

--In April-May of 2006 we had to evict the tenants at one of our houses for non-payment. Major cleaning and repairs needed (about $900.00 and many days of work). They left in early June.

--We decided to sell the house since it had been one problem after another for us and a negative cash flow from the beginning. We felt our equity in the property could be better used in another investment. The property "almost sold" twice but the deal fell through before closing both times. However the "almosts" kept us optimistic so we continued trying to sell.

--In August tenants in another property stopped paying rents and we began eviction. They turned out to be masters of the legal system and managed delay after delay resulting in several months of a second property with no income but mortgage to be paid. Our resources began dwindling at an even faster rate and there was little we could do to stop the hemorrhaging.

--By the time we realized the situation with the eviction battle, we were past the window of opportunity for easy renting of the house we'd been trying to sell. It was already Late October. We put up signs and advertised anyway (at an additional cost of $400.00 per month). Not surprisingly, the effort was futile. We had to carry two vacant properties with high mortgages through the winter.

--Sometime last fall I discovered that I was to have paid the property taxes for the first vacant house instead of Washington Mutual as I had thought. I called them and they said they would pay the taxes.

--We finally won the court battle with the tenants of the second property in late December and were forced to evict them into the street just after the snow storm of the century (with 2-1/2 feet of snow on the lawns and streets). The house was a mess as would be expected and needed nearly $1500.00 of repairs and cleaning before it could be rented. We couldn't begin work yet because of the weather and because we had to pack up our own home for a move. We were frustrated with the rapidly dwindling cash pot but were still OK.

--We moved into a new house ourselves in mid January.

--In an effort to slow the monthly money drain we put two of our properties into an investment payoff program. That program used up the last of our cash pot but held the benefit of eliminating four mortgage payments.

--We thought we had stabilized the finances until tenants from two other properties gave notice within the first week of moving in to our new home. From February 1st we had four vacant houses plus the chaos of moving into our own new home and office. All together the vacant properties required a total of over $8,000 in repairs and cleanup before they could be rented. The house we'd tried to sell was the only one in rentable condition but it wasn't renting. (Very little rents from November to March anyway but especially not when continuous heavy snow is falling all winter.) In over thirty years of property management I've never before had more than one vacancy at a time until this disastrous year.

--We had to work on one property at a time to get it rented and leave the others sit until we could get to them since we no longer had the money to hire contractors.

--In late January or early February I discovered that Washington Mutual had NOT paid the taxes on the first vacant house and would not do so until after escrow payments had been added to the account. I had been told that the acount was already escrowed last fall (but it hadn't been). We had no money to pay the taxes ourselves with four vacant houses and cash pot fully depleted. We were scrambling desperately just to keep the mortgages and insurance paid and get the houses rentable.

--The first vacant house rented simultaneously with another house in late February/early March. We had to chip deep ice & snow off the driveway and street of both houses so they could move in.

--During all this I had to stop all marketing work on my other income producing business in order to handle all the repairs of each house to get it back into cash flow as quickly as possible. Repairs on the vacant properties plus the house we'd moved out of kept me busy full time from mid February through mid May.

--Another house finally rented April 1, but the first vacant house was again not paying because the new tenants both lost their jobs within the first month of moving in and finally had to be evicted in May.

--Also in April we discovered that the payoff program we'd invested in was re-organizing and would not be able to make any further mortgage payments until March of 2008. We would have to find a way to cover an additional $4300.00 in mortgage payments each month for the next year or, sell them, or lose those houses to foreclosure. If that happened, we would probably lose the house we live in as well.

--The last two vacant houses finally rented July 1 and while that was my constant prayer several months back, it was now only a minor drip into the financial crisis because of the failure of the payoff program. I still have to increase my income by over $4000/per month immediately in order to avoid foreclosures. We've miraculously managed to make the investment mortgage payments till last month but cannot make this month's payments on those two.

--The problem is compounded because for six months I had to stop all marketing for my other business and now need to get that back up to speed which will take about six months of pretty constant focus. That slow buildup of income will not be enough or soon enough to save my properties.

That was the starting point - Roadkill.

Here's the beginning of Recovery.
We were stunned upon discovering that the investment program would not be able to make four mortgage payments for the next 9-12 months. It took us nearly two months just to accept that we could be about to lose some of our investment properties and maybe even our beautiful new home. I'd always focused my attention on building wealth. I'd never put any thought or attention into how to save oneself financially in the wake of an avalanche of financial disasters.

There was no time to follow the steps I'd taken to build wealth the first time. I needed IMMEDIATE increase in income and knew that it would not be possible through any of the methods I'd known about and used. Getting a job is not a viable solution for me because my children are homeschooled and our properties require far too much attention to manage while working another full time job. While we could make changes in all that to accomodate me taking a job, it could not be done quickly. Besides I am a 61 year old woman and not a likely candidate for quick start high paid employment.

When we began to be able to think again, these were our first steps.

1. Stay positive. After all I'm a teacher of positive thinking and creating through our choice of language. I'd written a book called "How To Create Gold, A Step By Step Method." I sell it on my websites and around town when I do my presentation called, "The Eight Words That Will Change Your Life." It was a good book but I didn't have time to follow my own guidance. In the book I taught an effective but long term linear method of building wealth. I now need instant wealth or at least instant solutions.

2. We began looking for solutions. I also have a website called http://www.explorethesolutions/ but it had no solutions that I could use in this crisis. I had no suggestions for myself or my customers about how to immediately (and legally) increase sustainable income by over $4000,00 a month. I knew about investors who would take the properties (I was one of them) but I couldn't see where that would solve my problems. Ben, my husband, began working overtime as much as possible but we both knew it would not produce any where near enough money and would not be sustainable.

3. A friend suggested that I get an expert to feng shui my house. I knew I couldn't afford it ($750.00) but I called him anyway just to get a little more information. He told me about a sewer break in his rental property that had just happened and asked if I knew a good plumber who could dig up the line and repair the break. It seemed like an open door to me so I offered to trade the labor force of myself, my husband and our three teenage boys for feng shui on my house. He agreed so we dug up the sewer line and helped him with repairs.

4. During the feng shui analysis of my house I learned that we'd moved into an extremely unlucky house that was disastrous to us. I had no money for the feng shui corrections that were needed but we had a little bit left on a credit card. Since I didn't know anything else to do that might stop the flow of financial disasters into my life I decided to get the most urgent corrections done. For two weeks we did a little construction, painted, moved things around a bit, and cleaned up.

Tomorrow I'll talk about the results of that and tell about other things that we have put into motion.

Wishing you the best you can imagine and speak,
JoyceM