Financial Stress Management
Financial stress is something that all of us have felt at least once in our life. Money flows in and out of our lives across our life span. But financial stress is the bear you carry on your shoulders every single day. Every time you see an ad for something you want and can’t have you feel the stress. Every time you go to get food, water, a coffee. When you don’t have money the financial stress mounts moment to moment of every day.
Everything becomes insurmountable. The bills keep coming in. Your retirement account balance, or lack thereof, is always at the forefront of your mind. It’s a looming deadline that you know you will never reach, but you also know you have to, so the conflict between those two things cause financial stress.
Knowing that bills are coming in and not knowing how you’re going to cover them, what you’ll do when your power gets cut off, when your phones get cut off. How can you make the minimum payment on your maxed out credit cards, your mortgage payment. The kids are sick and it’s another visit to the doctor that you can’t afford and then there’s the chemist for the medication they need.
Then there’s everyone else who are doing so much better than you. You want to be successful but are in this whole of financial desperation and nothing is working and you’re going backwards and you’re trying to keep it all together for your partner or kids or just so you keep a roof over your head and can eat today.
Feeling stressed after reading that? This is where I found myself as well and I had to learn how to manage this financial stress so I could face where I was and then work out a plan to get out.
The first thing I did to manage my financial stress was to admit where I was. I sat down and wrote down everything I owed and earned and faced up to where I actually was – not where I thought I was which was causing me even more stress. You can read about my starting financial position here. Although this was extremely daunting, embarrassing, mortifying, it was also really liberating. I feared and was terrified about being judged. Then I began to think differently about that. Firstly, I know I’m not alone. Secondly, if you’re going to judge me then that’s on you not me. I’m trying to get myself out of a mess and if you want to judge me for being there that’s fine. You haven’t had my life. If you’re successful and able to judge me how about you lend me a hand instead of pushing me even further down? Once I began to feel this way, nothing was insurmountable.
It was excruciating admitting this to myself and mortifying to publish it but something really amazing happened afterwards. The stress dissipated. It didn’t disappear because I still know where I am and where I want to be and the stress is what is keeping me alive and functioning towards a goal I want to achieve.
But the day to day need to crawl into a hole, my constant worrying about everything, started to go to the background of my mind instead of my dominating thought.
Once I knew where I was, it was easier to accept and form a plan and smaller goals.
You’re not going to fix everything overnight – either am I. But I was able to break my financial stress into smaller manageable pieces. It’s going to take me as long to get out as it took me to get into my financial position.
Once you accept this, the stress starts to calm down – at least for me anyway. Admitting you might need some help is another huge factor.
If you really don’t know how to manage your day to day finances, there are many programs and companies out there that do just that. Hand over the stress of managing your day to day to someone else so you can concentrate on what you do best which is hopefully making some money.
If you want to keep managing your own finances, start by making a plan with manageable attainable goals.
The stress occurs because every penny is going somewhere and when something unexpected (or an expected power bill) comes in there’s nothing there to cover it. So the first thing you need to do, is put something aside every week. Even if it’s just $25.00 a week, or putting loose change into a jar – anything – just put it aside. Then when you’re faced with an unexpected expense of $25.00 you know you have it there.
But don’t use that $25.00 you have sitting there. Find it in your other money.
Do this until you have $100 and start carrying that $100 around with you. This is a psychological trick. You begin to feel like it’s all OK because you have that $100 in your pocket. It starts to relieve the financial stress. However, it’s really, really important not to spend it on anything.
You begin to look at things and realise, hey I could buy that because I have $100 in my pocket, but I’m not going to. The knowledge of knowing you can, starts to dominate the stress of what you can’t.
Make a list of all your outstanding bills and start working out a budget to pay them all. The smallest amounts of payments only. Then set them to automatically pay through your bank accounts. For example, I have my phone bill paid automatically every payday. Another $150 goes straight into my bill account so I know I’ll have money there when the power bill comes in and other things that I haven’t factored in to my life.
So let’s say you can only pay $25.00 a week to each of your bills. Have this set up on payday so you don’t have to think about it anymore. Contact your creditors and make a payment arrangement and then set it automatically on payday. This then relieves your brain of thinking about them all the time. It’s automatically happening.
You also have $25.00 (or $100 if you’ve made it that far) in your pocket to spend on anything you want – except you don’t because you’re trying to get out of this mess not put yourself into more mess. Deferring a spending decision does an amazing thing. After a few hours or days, you forget that you wanted it, or you find something else you really, really want. If it’s a need and not a want, then you’ll work out a way to have it.
Once you hit the goal you’ve set for yourself, have a reward ready for yourself. It can’t exceed anymore than $25.00 so you’re staying within your pretty tight budget.
In two months time when you look at your accounts, they are going to look healthier. The bills are being dealt with automatically and you have money in your pocket.
Financial stress management has to be something that you participate actively in. Hoping the problem goes away or robbing Peter to pay Paul is not going to work and it’s only going to get worse and make you sick. Literally. Financial stress is deadly.
Once you start, you will feel better, and will become more able to think about ways to create more income and achieve your goals more easily.
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