HEALTH PLUS MED­ICAL COR­RE­SPON­DENT

If you are wor­ried about mon­ey, you’re not alone.

Mon­ey is a com­mon source of stress for all adults. This pro­por­tion of stress brought on by in­ad­e­quate fi­nances and em­ploy­ment woes in­creased dra­mat­i­cal­ly in 2020. In fact, ac­cord­ing to the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal As­so­ci­a­tion (APA), 72% of adults re­port feel­ing stressed about mon­ey, whether it is wor­ry­ing about job sta­bil­i­ty, pay­ing rent, or feel­ing trapped by debt. This is pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant giv­en fi­nan­cial stress is linked to so many health is­sues.

Fi­nan­cial well­be­ing: What is it?

This sets the tone for your sense of se­cu­ri­ty and feel­ing as though you have enough mon­ey to meet your needs. It is about be­ing in con­trol of your day-to-day fi­nances and hav­ing the fi­nan­cial free­dom to make choic­es that al­low you to en­joy life.

How­ev­er, af­ter a year when words like “con­trol” and “free­dom” car­ried a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, our fi­nan­cial well­be­ing be­comes an elu­sive goal for 2021. No one could have pre­dict­ed the ef­fect the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic would have on the world, it has high­light­ed the im­por­tance of safe­guard­ing not on­ly our phys­i­cal health, but al­so pre­serv­ing our men­tal and fi­nan­cial well­be­ing as well.

Im­pact on Your Health

Al­though any stress can take a toll on your health, stress re­lat­ed to fi­nan­cial is­sues can be es­pe­cial­ly TOX­IC. Fi­nan­cial stress can lead to:

- Poor men­tal health:

In many in­stances, the link be­tween men­tal and fi­nan­cial health is cycli­cal; poor fi­nan­cial health can lead to poor men­tal health, which leads to in­creas­ing­ly poor fi­nan­cial health, and so on. Sev­er­al stud­ies over the years, have shown that peo­ple in debt have high­er rates of men­tal health is­sues like de­pres­sion and anx­i­ety than those who are debt-free.

- De­layed health­care:

With less mon­ey in the bud­get, peo­ple who are al­ready un­der fi­nan­cial stress tend to cut cor­ners in ar­eas they should not, like health­care. Ac­cord­ing to a study by Har­vard Health, 59% of Amer­i­can adults held off seek­ing pre­ven­ta­tive med­ical care in 2020 be­cause of cost. Though this tac­tic may seem like a good way to keep costs down, de­lay­ing med­ical care can ac­tu­al­ly lead to worse health out­comes and high­er costs, both of which can lead to more stress.

- Poor phys­i­cal health:

On­go­ing stress about mon­ey has been linked to mi­graines, heart dis­ease, di­a­betes, sleep prob­lems and more. Left un­treat­ed, these con­di­tions can lead to life-threat­en­ing ill­ness­es, which can plunge you even fur­ther in­to debt.

- Un­healthy cop­ing be­hav­iours:

Fi­nan­cial stress can cause you to en­gage in a va­ri­ety of un­healthy be­hav­iours, from overeat­ing to al­co­hol and drug mis­use. Ac­cord­ing to an APA sur­vey pub­lished in 2018, 33% re­port­ed eat­ing un­healthy foods or eat­ing too much to deal with stress.

Cop­ing with Fi­nan­cial Stress

Learn­ing to cope with fi­nan­cial stress and ef­fec­tive­ly man­ag­ing your fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion can help you feel more in con­trol of your life, re­duce your stress, and build a more se­cure fu­ture. It starts with first­ly un­der­stand­ing your fi­nan­cial per­son­al­i­ty and then coura­geous­ly mak­ing clear, log­i­cal de­ci­sions with clar­i­ty on your fi­nan­cial goals.

Your fi­nan­cial per­son­al­i­ty

Each per­son has a dif­fer­ent view of mon­ey and vary­ing spend­ing habits. This is based on your fi­nan­cial per­son­al­i­ty. Mon­ey can be a com­mon source of con­flict in the strongest of re­la­tion­ships, so take time to talk through your ‘fi­nan­cial per­son­al­i­ties’. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant if you ex­pe­ri­ence a change in cir­cum­stances such as re­dun­dan­cy, cut in salary or an in­creased de­mand by a health chal­lenge. These changes can chal­lenge your at­ti­tude to mon­ey and sense of fi­nan­cial well­be­ing.

MAIN­TAIN­ING YOUR FI­NAN­CIAL WELL­BE­ING

1. Un­der­stand the debt cy­cle.

Un­der­stand­ing debt is the first step to get­ting your­self out of it. Iden­ti­fy your ar­eas of spend­ing. Jour­nal your ex­pens­es if need be to help this process. Once you have iden­ti­fied ar­eas with­in your lifestyle that in­creas­es your debt, you can then man­age those ex­pens­es strate­gi­cal­ly, with a fo­cus on re­duc­ing un­nec­es­sary ex­pens­es, as your sit­u­a­tion ad­justs.

2. Write down your bud­get

Know­ing your in­come, and dis­pos­able in­come once your day-to-day ex­pens­es are cov­ered, will give you con­fi­dence in your de­ci­sions. If your part­ner or spouse usu­al­ly looks af­ter the fi­nances, be sure to talk the bud­get through with them, so that you both un­der­stand your fi­nan­cial per­son­al­i­ties.

3. De­clut­ter your bud­get.

Since change is the on­ly con­stant, reg­u­lar “bud­get check­ups” are es­sen­tial to im­prov­ing your fi­nan­cial well­be­ing. Take con­trol of your fi­nances by set­ting aside some time to sched­ule, or­gan­ise, and de­clut­ter all fi­nances com­ing in and out of your bank ac­count. The more con­trol you have, the less stress you will feel.

4. Avoid in­come com­par­isons.

Re­search shows that com­par­ing our­selves to our friends or peers re­duces life sat­is­fac­tion. Keep in mind that we all have dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties and find plea­sure or en­joy­ment in dif­fer­ent things.

5. Don’t for­get gen­er­al stress man­age­ment.

As you work on im­prov­ing your fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion, you can re­duce stress by prac­tic­ing stress-re­duc­ing tech­niques and mak­ing oth­er changes to cre­ate a low-stress lifestyle. Re­search in the field of neu­ro­science has shown that prac­tic­ing grat­i­tude reg­u­lar­ly can help to rewire your brain struc­ture. Feel­ing grate­ful stim­u­lates the pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al ‘an­ti­de­pres­sants’ such as sero­tonin and dopamine, giv­ing you a feel­ing of con­tent­ment and well­be­ing. Try writ­ing down three things you are grate­ful for each day de­spite any fi­nan­cial woes.

If you feel that the stress of your fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion is too much for you to han­dle, it is im­por­tant to share your con­cerns and not just keep them to your­self. Talk about your mon­ey con­cerns with trust­ed friends, fam­i­ly, or a fam­i­ly health­care provider. You do not have to go in­to de­tails if you are not com­fort­able with them, but the more you talk about your con­cerns with your sup­port sys­tem, the less iso­lat­ed and stressed you will feel.

Pri­ori­tis­ing at­ten­tion to your fi­nan­cial well­be­ing will re­turn in­valu­able im­me­di­ate and long-term re­wards.