When I met Teddy almost a year ago, he carried himself like a man who has been fighting every battle, all alone, for far too long. On paper, he was "just" a single father who was temporarily living with his cousin. In real life, he was exhausted, stretched thin and trying to reach a goal that felt miles away: he wanted to become a homeowner.
Simple Goal. Real Obstacles.
His goals sounded simple enough. But when we pulled his credit report, the numbers told a different story. His FICO score was about 30 points below what most conventional lenders require. There were two small collections hiding in the background and high credit card utilization eating away at his score every single month. Nothing on that report was impossible to fix—but noneof it was going to fix itself.
Over the next several months, we worked together through both financial and employment counseling. He secured a better-paying job so he could start paying down debt and build some stability. For a while, things were moving in the right direction. Then, like life tends to do, a series of setbacks hit. An unexpected bill here. A family emergency there. A few missed payments when the budget got too tight and the stress got too loud. Before either of us wanted to admit it, Teddy’s credit report had drifted right back to where it started.
His dream of homeownership wasn’t just delayed—it was pushed back to “not any time soon.” Sitting across from me, Teddy started to list out every reason this had happened. The unfair breaks. The unexpected crises. The people who didn’t follow through. And every one of those reasons was real. Every one of those moments hurt. But the reality we had to sit with together was this: lenders, generally, do not care about the story. They care about the score, the payment history, the debt-to-income ratio. They care about what is, not why or how you got there. That’s the part that stings.
All Things All at Once.
Teddy didn’t yet understand that when it comes to being financially sound, it’s all things all at once. Your life, your money, your choices—they’re all connected. Car broke down? You can’t just fix it; you have to budget how to fix it. Emergency expense pops up? Before it jumps on a credit card, you have to ask: Will this set me back three months from now? Six months? Longer? Out of paid time off but thinking about calling out anyway? That “just one day” without pay can be the missed dollars that would’ve kept a bill current.
Every decision you make presses on your financial landscape, for better or worse. Not because you’re bad with money, but because money responds to movement. Sometimes the movement is gentle; other times it’s a full-on earthquake.
“All things all at once” doesn’t mean you have to be perfect. It means your car, your health, your job, your rest, your boundaries, your giving, your parenting, your spending—are all part of the same picture. When life is hard, complex, and fast-paced (and it will be), you need something stronger than wishful thinking. You need rhythm. You need a plan that assumes emergencies are coming so they don’t knock you completely off track when they do.
Having a plan for eventualities is not easy to build when you’re already tired. But it is necessary if you want to secure your highest goals—like Teddy’s dream of owning a home. Balance is not soft or passive. Balance is active. It’s choosing, over and over again, to slow down long enough to ask, “If I say yes to this right now, what am I saying no to later?”
That is how you proof your dough: not by pretending life will calm down, but by learning to stand steady while everything comes at you all at once.
