Losing Your Job and Moving Forward with Patricia Paredes

We are all going through a tough time. Everyone is grappling with the uncertainty brought about by a global health emergency. One of the effects has been massive unemployment & underemployment – many of us are experiencing lower incomes than usual, or no income at all for the moment. We explored this situation with Patricia Paredes, whose employer shut down in April – she was so calm and cool when we interviewed her for the Level Up Podcast, we just had to understand how she was keeping it so positive during such a tough time. 

Through our conversation, we learned it was all thanks to the stability she found in her finances – she had built a safety net, but it wasn’t the story about saving 3 to 6 months of expenses that we have all heard before.

When she started trying to be ‘financially responsible’ she would record her expenses obsessively on her palm pilot- and if there was extra money at the end of the month, she would splurge to reward herself for not overspending. I’m sure you’ve guessed that she didn’t have much saved in the first half of her career.

Everything changed when she received a book as a gift: Secrets of The Millionaire Mind by t. Harv Eker – it helped her explore the things she subconsciously learned about money over the course of her life. She followed the steps in the book to unlearn what was not beneficial, and adopt a new money mindset to live a more satisfying and stable financial life.

It took her quite a bit of work to overcome the inherited trauma associated with money, which was the first step the book suggests. The cultural stigma on wealth is specially challenging in the Philippines, where our telenovela villains are wealthy and our superheroes are street vendors (Captain Barbell), blacksmiths (Panday), or from the rural countryside (Darna and Pedro Penduko).

But all frames of mind can change. Her shift to a healthier relationship with money empowered her to set up seven bank accounts for seven different goals the book outlines: Play, Financial Freedom, Long-Term Savings (to spend later), Education, Giving, and finally – Necessities. Every month, no matter how much money came into her life, she always contributed 10% of her income to each of these bank accounts after routing 50% of income to necessities.

“They looked at me like I was crazy when I went to open seven accounts all at once, but I didn’t care” Patricia laughed as she told our host Jenn Simons. These categories were the opportunities she wanted to nurture in her life, so she invested in them. 

Now that she’s between jobs and the world is in chaos, she can draw from her long term savings and pay her bills- she doesn’t have to worry about the basics while job hunting and making sure she and her loved ones stay safe. She has the freedom to pursue further learning and skill up to meet the new needs of this new normal. Most importantly, her emergency fund gives her a stable foundation to re-launch her career from. Listen to our conversation with Patricia about the job market right now and hear expert advice from Award Winning HR Coach Darwin Rivers here .