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Minimalism as Self-Care

At its heart, Diamoycle is deeply invested in improving the quality of our customer’s lives through offering support, security, and excellent customer service, even in the most fraught of times.

Given the current climate, we are excited today to offer you a small feature about Minimalism as Self-Care for these pressing times. We imagine your days, like ours, are filled with even great financial, personal, and emotional concerns. As a result, we’d like to offer you the following tips to help you finish your days with a little more zen than you began.

Minimalism in Time

Breathe: No matter how busy you are, you have to breathe. You must breathe! Even in your most jammed of times, attempt to be still by taking three deep breaths. If you can, take three more. Despite the chaos around us, we encourage you to take moments of stillness.
Meditate: If you have a little more time, we highly suggest meditating. Even if it’s just for a minute or two! The military released a study showing that 15 minutes a day of meditation has a profound impact in the quality life of their service men. That said, even if you can’t get 15 minutes – 5 can do wonders.

Some great meditation apps with great free functionality are: Calm | Headspace | Insight Timer
Prioritize & Let Go: If silence in time and thought seem to be beyond you, we suggest and recommend that you prioritize the top things you need to get done today and try to let the rest go. Time is finite. How we respond to it will allow us to find space and calm within it. Here’s a great read on prioritizing and finding space again in your time.

Minimalism in Space

Small Tidies: It’s long been shown that your surroundings can have a big impact in your interior life. If you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, take a moment to clean, organize, and tidy the world around you and you might feel a little more organized inside as well.
Make Cleaning a Game: In Zen Habits, Leo Babauta talks about “Burst Cleaning,” or cleaning in intense bursts for greater impact. For those of you on home-schooling and work-from-homing, we suggest making cleaning a game, or enlisting the help of your little ones to “organize” or tidy one area or space in a very specific way that they can comprehend. In this way, you’re not only focusing the time and energies of your children, but hopefully, you’re cleaning and simplifying your own home as well.
Kon-Mari & Let Go: Kon-Mari is the current expert on “decluttering” and letting things go if they don’t “spark joy.” While Diamocycle is, of course, the honored recipient for any jewelry pieces that don’t “spark(le) joy”- we encourage you to take a whole home audit and take some time to simplify, declutter, and let go of the objects that you no longer want or use. In this time of need, donating or gifting an item you no longer need to a neighbor might be an amazing way to both simplify your life and create goodwill in yourself and your community.

This is a busy time, full of deep pain, anxiety, and concern. That said, we, at Diamocycle, believe in staying focused on what’s important to us, and using it as a north star to moor us in uncertain times. For us, that’s you, our customer. We know that, plain and simple. And in this moment of confusion, we’d love to offer you a few tips towards minimalism as self-care, to hopefully help you heal, focus, and recharge during these long weeks.

We’re here for you.

Diamocycle

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Creating Financial Security in the New Economy: How to Generate Additional Income

Uncategorized / Diamocycle

With the continuation of the Coronavirus pandemic, consumers across the nation are faced with a volatile economic outlook. While there is an eventual end to the COVID-19 crisis, the exact timing and the extent of the economic impact still remains unknown. That said, there are steps that we as consumers can take to fortify our own financial picture despite the uncertainties ahead. This week, we’re excited to offer you a financial framework to help you and your family prepare for whatever may lie ahead for our families, our businesses, and our nations.

As we all know, financial security comes from having more money coming in than what’s going out, and creating automated systems and habits to maintain that surplus. This week, we’re honored to begin to explore ways to help you bolster your income in this potentially destabilizing time.

Diversify Your Income: Expand, Hustle, and Innovate

The first way to make sure that your income expands beyond your expenses is to diversify your income streams. This may mean taking on additional work, adding shifts, or starting a side hustle. While all of these are obviously stressful endeavors during this time, as labor patterns and markets shift, we recommend, as possible, examining what other skills, passions, and interests you may have, and how those might possibly monetize to better assist your family financially.

Reach Out: Apply for Assistance

With the passing of the CARES Economic Relief Act, Social Services and Benefits have never been more accessible and available for workers during this difficult time. There is no shame in asking for help. While some may have assistance available to them through educational priviledge or generational wealth, some may not have such advantage or need additional assistance. Our social services exist for just this cause. During this moment of unprecedented change, we encourage you to examine what federal and national assistance you may be eligible for to help you and your family thrive during this unprecedented time.

Minimalize and Essentialize to Create a Positive Cash Flow

At the most basic level, you may need more cash on hand, right now. While social services and side hustles are ways to create sustainable income, they may not be able to create household capital in the time frame that you need. In lieu of turning to credit card debt, we suggest looking to see what you might be able to sell online via a variety of websites that welcome the resale of clothing, household goods, valuables, and jewelry.

While Diamoycle obviously fits in the latter, we encourage you to take your entire household into stock and see how you might be able to take items that you no longer need or use and find a place for them online to generate additional income. While some of these decisions may be difficult, we at Diamocycle know that family comes first and difficult decisions often come with the privilege of caring for your loved ones.

On our end, we promise competitive prices, compassionate customer service, and a process that keeps your valuables protected and insured every step of the way. You’re part of our family and we’re here to care for you. We wish you all the best during this difficult time and will continue to offer you advice that we’ve relied on ourselves during times of difficulty to keep us all strong, safe, and united as this crisis continues.

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How to Think About Diamonds During a Pandemic

Uncategorized / Diamocycle

In moments of great uncertainty, we often wonder about the security of our assets and the financial health of our households. As part of a lineage of jewelers who have been in business since The Civil War, we at Diamocycle know that times of turmoil can create much emotional instability and financial insecurity. With that in mind, we offer you the following framework to help you assess the financial health of your family and the best steps to take to ensure a successful few months during this unprecedented time.

Step One: Assess Your Financial Situation

Many companies and workers are beginning to work from home. If this is a luxury that is afforded to you, it is likely that your business and your livelihood will be able to continue uninterrupted during this global epidemic. If you are unable to continue earning during this period of public health risk, figuring out how to financially cover you and your family is of the utmost importance.

Step Two: Make a Plan

Given that COVID-19 will spread at an exponential rate, preparation to protect you and your loved ones is essential. Stocking up on a month’s supply of toiletries, medicines, and groceries is ideal. Continuing good hygiene habits such as washing your hands and not touching your face is ideal, as is beginning to take precautions around social distancing.

If your financial picture is not in a place where you feel secure for a several weeks of uncertainty, it is worthwhile to examine how you can support your family and supplement your income, such that you can weather out this strange period. Applying to federal emergency funds, assessing your potential assets, and beginning to create local support networks are all ways to create a new layer of social stability during The Coronavirus Epidemic.

Understanding the uncertainty of the moment, we are more than happy to offer a contingency quote to you regarding your piece, such that if, need be, you would be able to use your assets to better support your family and those around you.

We suggest understanding at what point it makes best sense for you and your family to stock up, access reserve funds, or ask for help for those around you, and until you reach that point, we strongly suggest practicing good hygiene, staying calm, and digitally reaching out to support those around you.

Step Three: Act

Until the conditions outlined in your plan have been passed, stay calm, pleasant and supportive of those around you. Pay attention to changing conditions. As things change, you will more fully understand the situation and when to proceed with your Coronavirus plan. Until your area has reached a noteworthy level of infection, we advocate practicing social distancing, and beginning to create the habits for good hygiene and a low risk of contamination. While we hope your area remains clear of Coronavirus, it never hurts to have a plan.

We at Diamocycle think of our customers as family. If there’s ever anything we can do to help you assess your financial situation, the need for a sale, or offer support in times of uncertainty, we’re more than happy to help.

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