Finding your financial feet after a fall in fortunes
In these uncertain times, knowing how to pick yourself up after a financial setback is crucial
5 min
Floods, bushfires, a pandemic, a cost of living crisis and even a mouse plague — there has been a lot to contend with in the past few years which has rocked our financial stability. And that’s before we add in the human elements of relationship and health breakdowns.
But while it may feel like there is no recovering from a bankruptcy, the loss of your home or the closure of your business, the experts want you to know one thing – you can survive a financial setback.
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Sandra Blake has spent decades counselling Australians who have faced every type of financial strain and setback. And since March 2020 — when the Small Business Debt Helpline was established following the 2019 floods in Queensland and the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires in NSW — Blake has turned to helping small business owners.
“Many of our (small business) clients have been affected by multiple disasters — mouse plague, bushfires and drought — but also changes in their personal relationships which can lead to health or mental health problems,” Blake says. “Also, changes in the economy, which has meant their consumer clients have less income to spend, has affected them.
“We speak to suicidal people regularly and unfortunately that seems to be happening more frequently.
“But I want people to take away one message: sometimes it may seem like there are no good options available to get you out of your situation, but there is always a pathway out — always.”
The rate of personal insolvencies — a legal agreement you reach with your creditors to pay an agreed amount of your debt over a period of time if you can no longer afford to pay the full debt — increased in January, according to the Australian Financial Security Authority. There were 772 new personal insolvencies in January, up from 612 in December 2022. Of those, 414 were bankruptcies and 344 were debt agreements.
Mortgage stress, which is considered to occur when 30 to 35 per cent of your household income goes towards the mortgage, is also on the increase. With more than 10 interest rate hikes since April 2022, it is estimated more than 1.3 million Australians face mortgage stress, according to financial services company, Octivo.
A survey by comparison site Finder also reported four in five people were stressed about their financial situation in March.
So, what can you do if you find yourself suffering from debt or facing a financial setback? Finder’s money expert Sarah Megginson says you need to first know exactly where you stand financially before you can find a way out.
1) What is the state of play: “Drawing up a budget can help you prioritise your expenses and allocate your resources effectively,” Megginson says.
2) Ask the tough questions: “Can you negotiate your way out of this by offering to make part-payments or establish payment plans,” she asks. “Are you looking at bankruptcy and if so, what does that look like and what impact will it have on your lifestyle?”
But even those two starting points sound a little easier said than done. Blake says you don’t have to do this all yourself. A financial counsellor can offer free and completely anonymous help and they are highly qualified in the area of financial recovery.
“There are lots of ways we can help; we can help you create a payment plan with your creditor or even enter into an informal debt agreement which in most instances comes with a debt reduction,” she says. “For example, you can negotiate with your creditor to pay $12,000 out of the $20,000 debt in a payment plan.”
She says this is where it’s handy to have a financial counsellor who can negotiate on your behalf.
“A utilities or telco company may not accept a debt reduction plan from an individual, but they may accept one from a financial counsellor because enlisting the help of a counsellor shows that person has a genuine commitment to getting out of debt,” she says.
Jane Monica-Jones is a finance therapist, so she’s a mental health practitioner rather than a financial counsellor, and often works with people who face chronic financial problems. She says the psychological recovery is key.
“A significant hit not only ruptures your financial situation but ruptures your mental health,” the co-founder of the Financial Wellbeing Company says.
“As circumstances change externally, like with your finances, it can wobble your sense of resilience and confidence,” Monica-Jones says.
“I help people fight chronic financial strain, not crisis strain. I try to stabilise them, to help them once they have weathered the immediate crisis, but may find that they’re still not thriving. We build on what is working in their life; I tell them ‘you got on this call today, you got the kids to school – all of that is working.’”
She says it can help to focus on the small picture, not the big one.
“The work I do operates hand in hand with a financial counsellor, we assist different parts of the person’s financial setback.”
Starting afresh
Espen Harbitz’s boutique hotel, restaurant and bar, The Oriana Orange, was open for three years when Covid hit. Like thousands of regional business owners, Harbitz took a financial hit when he had to close his doors for a three-month shut down — not once, but twice.
But the savvy businessman from central NSW, who credits himself with always looking for the positive, took the closure as a chance to re-evaluate his business.
“Having to close the doors gave me the opportunity to re-evaluate my business structure and create a very clear plan for the opportunities ahead of us,” he says. “It gave me the chance to do things that would otherwise have been too difficult to do.
“I had the hotel bathrooms re-tiled and renovated and the outdoor bar space incorporated into the indoor bar area, doubling the space.
“It also gave me the chance to look at how best to celebrate the seasons in Orange and incorporate that into the business, like outdoor fire pits for the garden in winter.”
The downtime risks paid off.
Harbitz was able to expand his business — which includes the 50-room hotel, a bar with two saloons, a 90-seat indoor restaurant and a 200-seat outdoor eatery — and his staff grew from 35 to 50 since Covid.
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Gold miners are emerging as a compelling way to navigate market uncertainty, with analysts pointing to strong cash flows, attractive valuations and rising profit margins. As gold prices stabilize above US$4,000 an ounce, mining stocks could offer investors both downside protection and long-term upside.
3 min
Gold is one of the market’s go-to hedges in rocky times. Don’t forget that gold miners’ stocks are too.
The stock market’s gains in 2026 belie the rocky macroeconomic picture: elevated inflation, heightened geopolitical tensions, and jitters about the artificial-intelligence trade. That backdrop, in theory, should be the time for gold to shine. Instead, the price of the yellow metal has tumbled more than 5% so far, after last year’s blistering 65% rally. In part, the U.S. dollar’s recovery has stymied gold, which benefited from the greenback’s weakness in 2025.
Even with the precious metal’s recent weakness, gold mining stocks could be the best way to profit from this year’s uncertainty.
Gold miners “are a valuable hedge against macro risks that would likely be damaging for equities,” BCA Research’s Noah Weisberger and Rishabh Shah wrote this week.
Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next moves to tackle inflation, the increasingly crowded AI trade, and steep valuations for tech stocks are just some of the drivers that could help gold’s price get on even footing— and lead to even bigger gains for miner stocks.
These stocks’ prices tend to outpace gold’s moves, because the companies have fixed operational costs. So when gold’s price rallies, their profit margins soar, and vice versa. For instance, the VanEck Gold Miners GDX +7.39% exchange-traded fund has fallen 11% this year as the metal has slumped.
Now, gold’s price just needs to stabilize to help miners’ stocks take off, and that seems to be happening. The precious metal has recently found support above the $4,000 level, and has stuck in a narrow range since the end of June. But its price rose ever so slightly in July, ending a four-month losing streak for the metal. Technical analysis also suggests that gold is due for a comeback.
Barron’s recently wrote that the pullbacks for both gold miners and the metal itself are overdone. Senior technical analyst Doug Busch noted that the VanEck ETF is on the “verge of a breakout” and has the potential to hit $11o in early 2027, up more than 40% from its current price.
Gold miners also have more than their role as a market hedge going for them. Their fundamentals are solid, too, says Chris Mancini, portfolio co-manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund.
“Precious metals miners are generating substantial amounts of free cash flow given profit margins of over $2,000 per ounce, and are returning this cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends,” he said in an email.
“Buying the miners is a cheap way to get exposure to the price of gold,” he added. His fund owns Newmont NEM +6.71%, a Barron’s stock pick last year, and Agnico Eagle Mines as top holdings, as well as miners Northern Star Resources, Endeavour Mining, and Kinross Gold K+8.59%.
Miners are better businesses than they used to be, the BCA team added.
“Capex is more disciplined, margins are high and rising…and they are largely independent of the AI story,” Weisberger, BCA’s head of equities, and Shah, a senior analyst, wrote.
That last part is key. AI is disrupting the software industry and many other services and information-oriented businesses, and investors have piled into AI stocks. But ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and other large-language models aren’t going to replace the need to mine for metals.
“Equity portfolios can benefit from exposure to quality that is uncorrelated to AI risk, and gold miners fit the bill,” the BCA team said.
They recommend that investors buy the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, which owns top miners such as Agnico, Barrick Mining ABX +7.24%, and Newmont.
An important bonus for big gold miners’ stocks is that their valuations are attractive after the gold’s pullback, too. The VanEck ETF is now trading at just a little more than nine times next year’s earnings estimates. That’s a big discount to its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, according to FactSet.
What’s more, the ETF is currently valued at a more than 50% discount to the S&P 500 SPX -0.17%, which is trading for about 19 times earnings estimates for 2027. Mining stocks have typically traded at just a 25% discount to the broader market over the past five years. So there is significant upside for the group if valuations move back toward normal levels.
One factor that complicates mining stocks as a market hedge, of course, is if stocks bounce back, which has been the case so far in August.
But both the market and economic outlooks remain cloudy, and investors remain nervous about the Fed’s next moves and AI stocks. Gold miners should do just fine, even if the anxious mood on Wall Street persists.
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