Month: August 2024

Whether you want to consolidate debts or take out a personal loan to ensure your vacation is amazing, let’s talk about the key features you might consider when looking for a personal loan.

Safety First

First, check if the loan provider you’re considering is legitimate. There are innumerable scams out there with companies offering to consolidate debts, advocate for you with creditors (which you can do by yourself, by the way) and many other promises. Google the name of the company plus “scam” or “reviews.”

Shopping around for your personal loan is also a fantastic idea. Pay attention to interest rates and terms (how long it will take to pay it off) and THEN look at monthly payments.

Other Considerations

What Will You Use It for?

Get clear on what the purpose of this loan is to you. Do you need it to get by until your next income check comes in? Do you need it to consolidate debt? Or perhaps you need it to cover travel expenses?

Are There Alternatives?

Think through some other possible options. The interest rates on these loans can be quite high, so if you can even partially mitigate the need for a personal loan, it might be worth it in the long run.

Use a Debt Calculator

Run the balance, interest rates and monthly payments of a potential loan (personal or otherwise) through a simple debt calculator like this one I use with my own financial coaching clients: Debt Calculator. It’s free, and you won’t have to sign up for anything to use it.

You’re trying to answer this question: How much will I actually end up paying on this loan?

What If You Have Bad Credit?

What can you do to increase your chances of getting the loan, even if you’ve got bad credit?

Before a potential creditor runs your credit (and your credit score takes a hit), ask them what their credit score, income, and other requirements are. If you know you don’t meet those qualifications, shop around for another lender.

It is normal for your credit score to drop if you’re looking for a loan and potential creditors are running your credit. As long as a credit check is done within 45 days of your first credit check, it shouldn’t impact your credit score. So, if you have one company run your credit on Jan 1 and two more companies run your credit in February, there should not be three hits to your credit score, only one.

Another way to increase your chances of approval is to ask for the lowest amount you need. The lender is likely calculating your reported income against the loan amount you’re asking for, so the lower the amount of the loan the better your chances may be.

What to Do if You Get Denied

To my own clients, I recommend legitimate companies like self.inc. In very simplistic terms, you are taking a loan out on a savings account and paying yourself back. This is not an investment, and you will not, in the end, make money, but you will build credit in a safe way and perhaps build a little savings in the process. It’s also cancellable at any time.

Building savings, whether on your own or through something like self.inc can be a fantastic way to recover from a denial, but because you are building financial resilience by growing savings it could prevent the need for a loan in the future!

Money Questions:

When was the last time you considered or took a personal loan? What was the experience like and would you do it again? What was the purpose of that loan and did it make sense in the long run?

Do any of you remember Carole Jackson’s blockbuster book from the 1980s called Color Me Beautiful? Maybe you – like me – carried around colored fabric swatches to help you choose the clothing colors that would help you look your best.

According to the book, we were either a “winter,” “summer,” “spring” or “autumn” and all of these determinations were based on the undertone of our skin. Although the field of color analysis has certainly become more sophisticated in recent years (with further subcategories of intensity and bright, light, soft and dark), the basic premise of warm, cool or neutral undertones still holds true.

Quite honestly, I did not look forward to filming this video because the products I used go totally counter to the guidance offered in Carole Jackson’s book and my knowledge as a makeup artist. And because of this, it was somewhat uncomfortable to do. But my hope is that this article and video will provide very dramatic, visible evidence of what a positive difference it can make to wear makeup colors (and clothing colors) that complement the undertone of our skin and make our complexion come alive.

These Colors Will Be Oh So Wrong on Me

In today’s video I apply makeup colors that make me look sallow and just “off.” Now, granted, trying to choose the perfect makeup colors can feel overwhelming – especially if we’re shopping online – since colors can look very different in online pictures.

But the most important secret to looking our very best is to choose makeup colors that make our skin come alive and glow rather than look sallow, ashy, green or even orange. And the secret to picking our best makeup colors is to choose the colors that enhance the undertone of our skin.

It’s All About Our Skin’s Undertone

Although the outer surface of our skin can change with the seasons or over time, the undertone – which is the shade of our skin just underneath the surface – doesn’t. No matter where our skin falls on the spectrum of fair to dark, when we shop for foundations, concealers, lip, and cheek colors – and to some extent eye colors – the key is to match the colors we choose with our skin’s undertone which is either warm, neutral or cool.

If we don’t do this, our makeup will never look quite right because a mismatched undertone will work against our skin’s natural complexion instead of complementing it.

For instance, if you have a warm undertone and use a cool toned foundation, your face will look ashy. If you have a cool undertone and you wear a warm shade of foundation, the warm foundation shade will enhance the redness of your skin and you’ll look sallow and unhealthy. And another reason that your makeup won’t look good if you’re wearing a foundation that’s not the right shade is that you’ll also always see a line of demarcation.

If you’re not sure of the undertone of your skin, be sure to check out this video where I go through the nine questions you can ask yourself that will help you determine the undertone of your skin and I also demonstrate how to make these determinations.

Be sure to check out Elise’s YouTube channel which specifically focuses on makeup tips, techniques, and product reviews for those of us 50+. Don’t forget to subscribe!

I have a cool undertone so the colors that work best for me are cool toned colors such as pink, berry, plum, mauve, burgundy and blue based reds. The colors that are best for me to avoid wearing are warm colors such as yellow, peach, coral, orange and copper. But if you have a warm undertone, peach, yellow, coral, orange and copper can look fabulous on you.

If you have a neutral undertone, you have an equal amount of cool and warm color in your skin’s undertone and can wear either cool or warm colors. But you probably want to avoid the most extreme bright or deep shades in either the cool or warm family of colors such as bright or deep orange or bright fuchsia because these will most likely be too strong for you.

Creating a Great Look for a Warm Undertone – But Not So Great for Me

Let’s Start with Eyebrows

Warm eyebrow shades such as warm brown – rather than ashy brown shades – will really look wrong on me. Since I don’t have any warm brown eyebrow products in my collection, I use a red brown eyeshadow in the video, choosing between the colors in these two eyeshadow palettes: the “Gone Matte” eyeshadow palette from Colourpop and Makeup by Mario’s original Master Mattes palette which is primarily warm toned neutral colors.

Eyeshadows

For my eyes, I combine warm colors from two eyeshadow palettes: Colourpop’s “In the Springs” palette and Bh Cosmetics’ “Summer in St. Tropez” palette, but I also present a beautiful golden palette from Juvia’s Place called “The Nubian Glow” palette. I use the shade “Chino” from the “In the Springs Palette” for my eyeliner.

Foundation

For my foundation I apply a newer product from Makeup Forever called HD Skin Hydra Glow Hydrating Foundation in the shade “Warm Vanilla” which is shade 1Y06. This is a wonderful, hydrating foundation which I love – and which is wonderful for mature skin – but this is definitely not the right shade for the undertone of my skin!

Blush

The only warm contour shade I have is the deep warm color in this Makeup Forever palette. I have three different warm toned blushes from which to choose. One is a new blush from Haus Labs called “Glassy Tangelo” which is a bright coral and the other is a newer liquid blush line from Georgio Armani. It’s their Luminous Silk Cheek tint in the shade 31 which is a softer coral shade.

I have two warm toned powder blushes from Kosas: the shade “Blissed” is a warm peachy pink and the shade “Thrilled” is a vibrant blood orange. I often use a powder blush over a cream or liquid blush to make it more long lasting, so I’ll apply just a small amount of the vibrant blood orange shade “Thrill” over the cream blush I’m wearing.

As a cool-toned person, I normally wear a pearl or pink toned highlighter, but to keep going with the warm-toned look, I apply a shimmering medium gold highlight from the Makeup Forever Palette. Another gold tone highlighting option could have been Merit’s Highlighter in the color “Citrine” which is a soft gold, but I felt I needed to go with a bolder gold look today.

Lipstick

There are some interesting warm lipsticks from both MAC and Makeup by Mario which make me nervous and uncomfortable, but I’ve settled on the MAC option in the appropriately named color “Lady Danger.” And the three Makeup by Mario choices are the colors “Soho” which is a soft coral, “Chelsea” which is a red orange and “Uptown Girl” which is a rusty orange-red. I’ll combine “Soho” and “Chelsea.” Now these could be absolutely gorgeous on you if you have a warm or neutral undertone, but on me – well, I kind of feel like I should be in a scary movie.

Lip Gloss

The best warm toned gloss in my collection is from a palette called “Favorite Lip Glosses” from Three Custom Color Specialists (which has now been discontinued).

Final Thoughts

In the video you will see my completed warm-toned makeup look and to be honest, I can’t wait to get into the bathroom and take off these colors which are so wrong for me. But I hope you found it helpful to see what a dramatic difference it can make when we wear makeup colors that don’t work with the undertone of our skin.

I’ve always wanted to wear a “Golden Bronzed” Golden Goddess makeup look which seems to pop up every spring and summer and looks absolutely stunning. But I’m afraid on my cool-toned skin all those gorgeous gold and bronzey shades would look completely wrong. However, if you have a warm or neutral undertone, this type of look could be stunning on you.

But as a cool-toned gal, I definitely do love my cool-toned raspberry and pink colors and would never want to give up deep blue eyeshadow for those special occasions!

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you know the undertone of your skin? If so, what colors don’t work for you? What makeup and clothing colors look fabulous on you?

It’s common knowledge that stress contributes to weight gain. But why does this happen? And, more importantly, is there anything we can do about it?

What Happens When You’re Stressed?

Stress puts your body on high alert, causing nearly every organ and system in your body to react. Stress also puts you into fat STORING mode because of what happens metabolically to your blood sugar, insulin, adrenaline and cortisol levels.

And here’s the deal…

The stress or threat can be from something going on in your life right now, like worrying about the kids, stress about your job, or caring for your parents. Or it can be from worry about world events or politics or scrolling through social media.

It can even come from stressing about what to eat, or what not to eat, or from obsessing about your weight.

But It Can Also Be Stress from Your Past That Is Triggering You

For example, if you were bullied about your weight as a child, and the trauma from that is not resolved, then being bullied by your boss as an adult can take you right back to that event in your subconscious mind. 

Or maybe you experienced abuse growing up, whether it was physical, emotional, or sexual, and the relationship you’re in right now brings up those feelings and emotions from the past. 

Or maybe you’re trying to lose weight by dieting or deprivation, and before you know it your subconscious mind has taken you back to the days when your mom or a doctor said you were too fat and put you on a diet.

All of these situations count as stress or trauma, and they put your mind and body on high alert. 

When You’re Stressed, Your Body Goes into Fat-Storing Mode

Stress amplifies your cardiovascular system, meaning, your heart rate and blood pressure go up, which, of course, is not great for your health.

But it’s the effect that these stresses and traumas have on your METABOLISM that really affects your cravings and emotional eating and causes you to gain weight.

So here’s what happens:

Your blood sugar goes up, because your body is sensing the danger and it wants you to have fuel so you can fight or run from the danger.

And this is a physiological response that happens even if you don’t eat anything. 

What also happens is that you become more insulin resistant. This tells your pancreas to make even more insulin because it’s trying to get those extra sugars that you just released out of your blood and into your cells where it’s needed.

But because your cells are more insulin resistant, all this extra insulin isn’t helping. In fact, it’s contributing to weight gain.

Actually, these higher insulin and blood sugar levels are triggering fat storage, especially in the belly area.

What also happens is that you become more leptin resistant. Leptin is the hormone that signals you’re full and helps with appetite regulation. And when you’re leptin resistant you’re more likely to suffer from obesity.

Stress and Trauma Also Put Your Adrenal Glands on High Alert, Increasing Your Cortisol

One of the most damaging effects of stress is that it increases your cortisol levels. Your adrenal glands get the message to increase your cortisol and adrenaline, and all this extra cortisol shuts down non-essential functions in your body like digestion, reproduction, and your immune system. 

And the extra cortisol can also give you what I call chaos brain. You know… when you can’t think clearly and you certainly aren’t making good food choices!

What’s more is that the adrenaline and cortisol tell your liver to release EVEN MORE sugars into your blood to handle the “emergency.” Once again, those extra sugars in your blood end up getting stored as fat, right in the belly.

The bottom line is that stress and trauma, real or imagined, from the past or the present, put your metabolism into fat-storing mode instead of fat-burning mode.

And until you find a new way of responding to your stress, the cycle will not end and your body will continue to be a fat-storing machine. And no matter what you do, you just can’t lose the weight.

So What Can You Do?

The good news is that there is hope. While we can’t always control the stress around us, we can control our response to the stress so that it doesn’t put us into fat-storing mode.

One way you can achieve this is by practicing some type of meditation practice. Whether it is deep breathing, prayer, walking in nature or something else, find a practice that will calm your mind and body response.

Something else you can do is engage in an activity you like, such as a favorite hobby, that will act as a stress reliever. A puzzle, working in your garden, listening to a podcast or reading a book can bring your cortisol levels down.

If you want to learn more ways to calm your stress response to get out of fat-storing mode, I warmly invite you to watch my FREE training: How to Stop Cravings and Emotional Eating So You Can Lose the Weight and Keep It Off.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How often do you feel stressed? Have you recently gone through a traumatic event? Did you notice you gained weight while you were stressed, even if you didn’t eat that much?

I can’t change a tire, so when I woke up one morning with one around my waist, I knew I was in big trouble. “What the hell?” I thought as I tried to button my jeans, and in doing so, created a muffin top. This was not here yesterday; I swear. As I looked in the mirror, it seemed I had gone to bed with my 27-year-old body and experienced the invasion of the body snatchers overnight.

How dare the universe do this to me! In my magical thinking, I’d just assumed I would be exempt from this aging degradation because I ate well, exercised, and I’m just special. As the slow reality had begun to dawn on me that my body had given up its shape, I said out loud, “Oh, this is not going to work.” I was not ready to go into that good night. I was only 52!

Shakespeare’s Hamlet was wrong when he spoke, “Frailty, thy name is woman.” He should have said vanity; I hired a personal trainer whose two-hour three-times-a-week workout included at least 100 abdominals. I also went keto. Have you ever tried to eat only 60g of carbs a day? It is not pretty, especially when I realized that my daily cup of vanilla yogurt contained 22g of carbs! That had to go.

A Hottie?

My daughter took a picture of me in a bikini when I was 53, looking better than I did at 19. Oh, I was rocking it… until I stopped rocking it. I am convinced that my intense training with intense weight accelerated my joint disintegration and that winter I had my first hip replacement.

The long and painful recovery, complicated by the surgeon cracking the femur, gave me a ton of time to complicate aging and my stupidity and the cost of thinking I can change a tire. For me it was a jagged little pill to swallow, but swallow it I had to do.

My cousin, who is four years older than me, laughed and confessed her own aging demons she had wrestled, including skin treatments that left her skin looking like an alligator’s. I kept voicing my disbelief to her at how this tire had just shown up when my weight had not changed. So, she explained:

Fat’s Frequent Flyer Miles

Because her and I had gone through menopause in our late 40s, we, like all women post menopause, had little to no estrogen. Estrogen plays a big role in both fat storage and its distribution. Before menopause, fat likes to be a homebody and sets up house in the thighs, hips and buttocks. After menopause, fat likes to use its stored frequent flyer miles and packs up and moves to the midsection. It is like Cancun for fat.

And this fat lies deep – just like repressed memories – and it surrounds organs. Young fat is shallow and sits below your skin on your thighs, buttocks and outer abdomen. This fat is what makes a woman curvy, in a good way, and if biological anthropologists are right, watching a curvaceous woman can feel like a reward in the brain of men, much as drinking alcohol or taking drugs might. As such, it makes sense evolutionarily speaking that studies across cultures have shown men typically find hourglass figures sexy.

The Cave Man Lens

My cousin theorizes, and she is not a biological anthropologist but an astute observer, that there is a survival component for women to store fat after menopause that goes back to the Cave men. In her words, “Men won’t hunt for us anymore so we have to store our fat so we won’t starve to death. They’re bringing that slab of meat to a young hottie that can have babies.”

I laughed so hard, I forgot the pain from my hip replacement. While I have not been able to find scientific studies that substantiate this, and it makes my feminist-self bristle, it does make sense to me and somehow this idea pushed me over the edge into acceptance.

I suppose if you have only been valued for your physical appearance, it would be an affront to age, drip and droop. While I probably have my own dark psychological reasons, I also know that body acceptance and positivity, and the celebration of grey hair, is only a recent cultural shift.

Yet, my attractiveness to myself has ceased to be evaluated by the physical, and I love my two silver streaks growing and shining on the side of my head. The low waist jeans have all been donated. Good God I wore sneakers to work the other day because my feet hurt!

It is actually kind of wonderful – and freeing – and when I look in the mirror, I say, “Damn, you’re old… you lucky thing.”

Please Join the Conversation:

How did you come to terms with aging? What physical ideas of attractiveness did you let go? Are there still anti-aging ideas that you hold on to? And if so, why?

When you exit your current business, you’ll have choices about what to do next. It may be too early for you to think about this because you’re knee deep in your current business but think about it for a minute.

When you’re done with this business, you may choose to do nothing for a while. Or you could travel. You might volunteer for a favorite cause or spend more time with your spouse, partner, friends, or grandkids. With more free time, you might devote yourself to your hobbies. All these possibilities are open to you.

You might also decide to start a new business. I did. Here’s what I learned that might help you as you think about taking this route.

Opportunity for a Fresh Start

On the plus side, starting a new business is an opportunity for a fresh start. It’s a chance to take the lessons you learned in your old business and apply them to a new venture. You’re not starting from scratch as a first-time business owner and hopefully you can avoid some of the mistakes you made in the old business.

It’s exciting to think about the latest problems your new potential customers face and how you can help them overcome their challenges. In my case, I’m trying a new business model free from the constraints my previous business required. I’m doing this business by myself without the complications of staff or teammates. It’s very freeing.

You might find the new business will test you in new ways. You might be forced to learn new ways to market your business. You might also need to develop different tools and systems to serve your new clients. If you enjoy learning new things as I do, this can be a wonderful benefit.

Selling your previous business may give you a financial buffer or capital to start something new. This can allow you to invest the time and energy to grow a new business without the pressure of needing to make payroll every month. Of course, there is a limit to how long you can operate a business with no or little ROI so the clock is ticking.

It’s fun to try to build something new. I enjoy business in general and most days I look forward to creating a new enterprise. You could do the same thing. You could apply the knowledge, experience, and lessons from your previous business to avoid past mistakes and optimize your new venture.

The Challenges

On the downside, starting a new business after exiting a previous business has challenges. Here are three.

Burnout

First, as you know, running a business can be exhausting, and jumping into a new venture could burn you out, especially if you start something new without giving yourself time to recover from the strains of selling your previous business. I find some days I have less energy to push the rock up the hill so be aware.

Whether you want to admit it to yourself or not, you may have less physical energy now that you’re 60+ compared to when you were 40. Even if you have good health in general, eat a healthy diet, and exercise most days, with age comes less energy. Of course, you can also find ways to work smarter and compensate. For example, I schedule my hard work for the mornings and leave easier administrative tasks for the afternoons. I’ve also simplified my business to use technology smarter and my time more efficiently.

Time Is Not Your Friend

Second, running a business at any age requires significant time and some days you may feel the tug of leisurely activities. When the weather is nice and your retired friends ask you to do something with them, it’s hard to say, “No thanks, I have to work.” In your previous business, most of your friends were also working and they understood not to ask you to go off and play except on the occasional weekend. When you start a second business, the temptation may be more constant.

You can overcome this by disciplined adherence to boundaries. This is something you did in your previous business, but the siren song of “come play with us” is more constant and sometimes harder to ignore. Be prepared for it.

Motivation

The third challenge of starting a business after exiting a previous one is motivation. When you started your previous business, the reason for the business may have been simple and clear: make a living and save for the future by providing a valuable service to customers and clients. Now your motivation could be less clear and not as strong.

I enjoy the challenge of running a business, learning new things, and am curious about a variety of subjects and topics. Financial motivation is much less now than when I started my first business, but the motivation is still there for me. You may find it harder to push through the difficult times if your reason for running the business is not strong. Make sure you ask yourself two questions and be honest:

• “Why do I want to start a business?” and
• “Why is this important to me?”

Listen carefully to what your gut tells you. Maybe share your thoughts with a trusted friend, partner, or spouse. Listen to what they say. Starting a business is not easy and unless you’re 100% committed, you’re 0% committed.

Conclusion

If you’re thinking about starting a new business when you exit your current business, make sure you consider the strengths you bring to the new business, the benefits you’ll receive and the challenges you’ll confront. Check that your motivation is strong enough to carry you along.

What About You?

Are you curious about starting a new business when you exit your current one? Do you have a new business idea that you want to pursue and see what you can make of it? What do you see as the pros and cons of starting a new business after you exit a current one?