Tools for Coping with Roller Coaster Market

Are you unnerved by the current stock market's dramatic volatility, with its wild swings down and up? If you're feeling anxious about how the national and global economic unrest will affect your personal and family finances, you're not alone. You may be rethinking how you will handle your planned retirement, your kids' college educations, supporting your needy parents, even your day-to-day expenses. While we here at Nourishing Relationships and Her Mentor Center are not financial experts, we do have some coping tips that can help you deal with the emotional overload you may be experiencing. In support of our readers - baby boomers, gen X'ers or others - we are now giving you a gift of our ebook, Taking Control of Stress in a Financial Storm: Practical Strategies and Resources for Success free of charge for a limited time.

When you download our free ebook, you'll find practical tips for reducing stress, getting some control over your expenses, understanding the role financial instability plays in your marriage, creating new ways of flexible family living within this turbulent economy and investing in your own physical and emotional well-being.

And if you're a part of the Sandwich Generation - caring for growing children and aging parents - we've found a website that sells some helpful tools. It's called asaneapproach.com and we'd like to share it with you.

You've often heard us talk here at Nourishing Relationships about the importance of creating a written contract when your family is dealing with difficult issues - a teenager's rights and responsibilities, a boomerang kid's privileges and duties, your sibling's roles vis-à-vis aging parents. It's important to clarify expectations on both sides and deal with boundary complexities so they don't sabotage your family relationships.

A Sane Approach offers agreements you can modify to fit the specifics of your family; there are two that may be particularly useful to you in the coming months. In response to the economic downturn, if you're expecting a boomerang kid, their downloadable contract for an adult child moving home can be used to organize the policies you've agreed to implement. Or if you're caring for an elderly parent, their document can help you and your siblings determine exactly how you will share obligations and decision-making.

We hope you'll get some help in keeping your balance in the midst of this financial turmoil and download our free ebook, Taking Control of Stress in a Financial Storm: Practical Strategies and Resources for Success. Let us know how these tips work for you.

Is Another Financial Storm Brewing?

Now that credit rating firm Standard and Poor's has downgraded the United States' government debt from AAA to AA+ for the first time in history, a sense of uncertainty has again taken over the American psyche. After another historic plummet of the stock market last week in response to Congress' clumsy negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, the market again today has opened drastically lower. How will the week play out? No one knows for sure. But families all over the country are bracing for the effect of the national - and global - financial chaos on their own personal futures.

Many are concerned that the S&P downgrade of U.S. bonds - and now their additional downgrade of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - will raise interest rates for families, making it more difficult for them to pay off credit card debt or arrange for a loan to purchase a new car or home. And small business owners, already hampered in their abilities to function, are facing another setback in their growth from these S&P downgrades.

What can we do in these difficult days? Here at Nourishing Relationships and Her Mentor Center, we'd like to help you cope with the stresses of the economic turmoil that you may be facing. So for a limited time, we are now offering you our ebook, Taking Control of Stress in a Financial Storm: Practical Strategies and Resources for Success, completely free of charge. Comprised of eight white papers, our ebook can empower you and give you tools to manage the challenges and tensions you are experiencing. Simply click on the link to Taking Control of Stress in a Financial Storm and you can receive a complimentary download of the pdf file. Use the tips we provide to create solutions for your family distress in these tough times. And please let us know how you are doing through the "comment" button below.

Video Tips for Coping in a Recession

Thriving during any crisis may seem impossible to achieve, but you can learn techniques to help you deal with these uncertain times. All this week, we will be featuring tips to help you cope with our current economic downturn. Our video today lets you get started.



For more suggestions about how to cope with this difficult economy, click on the title above to take you to our website, www.HerMentorCenter.com and the article, "How to Achieve Family Flexibility in Times of Financial Flux."

Has all the talk about how to accomplish the bailout of the financial markets added to your stress? Are you anxious about the big collisions on Wall Street and Main Street? Would you like to spend less time racking up emotional debt and more time receiving dividends from your 'feeling better' bank account?

Research findings show that the complex demands of family and work can really get Sandwiched Boomers down, particularly during times like these. When inundated with a myriad of responsibilities, daydreaming about what you would rather be doing is a typical and common pastime.

It is well known that tension is the body's response to any stimulus - external or internal - that is perceived as taxing personal resources. Stress can appear suddenly, unexpected and unannounced: physiologically as headaches, stomach upset; emotionally by feeling irritated, overwhelmed; cognitively with memory loss, trouble concentrating; behaviorally by changes in eating or sleep patterns. If you're ready to learn how to keep your stress in check, stay with us this week as we give you tips to help restore balance to your life.

We got an email from a subscriber who said that the information here and in our newsletters has been most useful since she has taken on the responsibilities of caring for her Mother.

A recent article in the New York Times discussed an unusually large increase in suicides among middle aged Americans - for women aged 45 to 54, the rate increased 31% over the past several years. Speculation about the causes include financial worries, depression and abuse of prescription drugs. Another possible reason is the growing pressures of modern life, as parents live longer and Sandwiched Boomers have to juggle work and family with limited social support.

Which got me thinking about the proliferation of websites for Boomer Women lately. As you begin to deal more with retirement, financial and family responsibilities, the Internet is stepping up to meet your needs. Just this month, www.VibrantNation.com and www.wowowow.com went live. Let us know about your favorites and we'll share them with others.