Overcoming the Unexpected

Bill Long · July 06, 2022

I have written before about making sure that I have savings in the bank and how my mother taught me to have discipline with spending and saving. Financial times like we’re all experiencing now prove she was wise beyond her years. With record inflation in our nation, rising costs are eating away at what we would normally have left to spend on living after our savings have been deposited. Even worse, the savings we can muster for our emergency accounts or invest in our retirement accounts or college funds for our kids are not increasing in value due to the performance of investments right now. Heck, some of us are struggling to just make ends meet as our wages have not kept up with price increases on what seems like everything.

We must prepare for what we don’t know and at the same time understand we can only control what we can control. That doesn’t mean we have to expect the worst to happen, but sometimes we must plan for the worse-case scenario.  

I spoke to a client today who had paid off her loan with On the Road Lending and is now in the process of buying a new home. She needed a letter to show her lender, and I gladly sent it to her after we spoke.  I reviewed with her what her credit scores were when she got the loan over four years ago, and she told me what it was now. Was it an easy road for her to get the loan paid each month?  No. COVID happened. She had a second business fail, which cost her some income and almost caused her primary business to fail. Did she think that would happen? Absolutely not! She came through it and fought back and kept her head down and focused on the things she could control. She stayed in touch with us, worked hard, and ended up paying her loan off early. I told her she made my day, and she quickly told me that without our help, this never would have happened. She was so thankful that we gave her a chance.

Long story short, stuff happens in life, and a lot of it we can’t control—life events, medical emergencies, unexpected costs for anything and everything. We can now add pandemics to this list as well. On the Road Lending is here for just these reasons. Bad things happen to good people, unexpected and unplanned things. It’s okay to have a setback. How you respond to it is what people will remember. We offer an opportunity, and for a lot of people, that’s all that is needed. The client I spoke with today is a perfect example of this—control what you can control, overcome unexpected events, and get on the road to greater opportunities!