Being in distress

Since 2004 I was looking for funds to build my retirement project. You see I had sold my beautiful house in Dubai, which was fully owned, invested some of the money in the consultancy, bought couple of small lands adjacent to each other, and spent all the money that I had on me to build two small buildings, one for my children, a flat each, and the other one will have a flat for us and a couple to rent out so we could spend on our selves; I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any retirement funds or any savings anywhere in this world, and still (at 55) pay mortgage for my existing house, and the consultancy is running on loans. Not very savvy I guess.
Anyway, last year Bahrain had few spectacular changes; and as I have always wanted to have a business school, art school, Cafe and a gallery (my quartette dreams!!) I approached the agency that looks after the improvements in Bahrain and told them about my ideas, which of course they loved.
So I embarked on the business plans, the talk with the designer, the talk with the builder, the talks with the foreign universities, the talks with Cafe franchisers, artists, banks, you name it I was meeting with them. The bank then asked me to finish off few things in the buildings (my retirement funds to be, will be converted into those four dreams)and provide a design for each. Of course all the work requires money, I don’t have Harry Potter's stick to go Woof on those two pieces of junk so they become ready for inspection and for the bank to provide me with the required funds. Thus I scraped money from the three F's, and I took some loans from here, and sent them there. The rest is history. Bahrain had problems, so the bank cancelled all discussions they had with new entrepreneurs, they phoned me after exactly one year and 3 months to say that everything is put into sleep mode, until the situation is better.

So, what happens next? I have to find enough money to pay for all of this? I scratched my head, looked for jobs, searched for new projects, and cannot fire any staff as I need them all, cannot fire myself of course.
Thinking, thinking, till now I am thinking, but what is next?

This blog today is going to tell you on what one needs to do if one is stuck in loans repayments.

Stall the bank
Stall the bank even more
Tell them off for giving you high interest loans, short period for repayments and high charges.
Pay the bank but not the three F's
Work harder
Find jobs that requires minimum amount of investments but have high yield.
Sell your shares and bonds
Liquidate any assets that you do not need (gold, art, carpets)
Change your phone provider to a cheaper one, use free text messaging rather than calls
Stop shopping for unimportant stuff, like cloths, bags, shoes and other accessories
Tell your children to work harder to earn you more money
Stop using one of the credit cards
Spend only on necessary items
Travel only for business reasons and stop leisure travel
If non of the above works, start praying, believe me, even if it doesn’t work, it does relieve your stress a bit.

Of course I did more than all of the above, surely I will survive the crisis in the same way I survived life, so please follow suit, and learn from my mistakes.

If you really want my advice, then don’t ever ever start anything from loans, or start spending unless you are assured that what you are trying to do is definitely going to happen.