Do You Give Your Financial Health as Much Focus as Your Physical Wellbeing?
“A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went” (Dave Ramsey)
A recent study in the UK found that money is the biggest cause of stress for most people. Over a quarter of respondents said that they feel stressed about their finances every single day.
They also reported that this had negative impacts in all sorts of ways. It affected their health, productivity at work, and their relationships.
A 2018 survey by legal firm Slater and Gordon even found that money worries are the top reason for divorce. Couples are splitting up because they are under financial stress and cannot agree on how to deal with it.
Getting healthier
This is the case even though, in other parts of their lives, people are getting healthier. They are eating better, exercising more and losing weight.
Physical wellness has become so important that many businesses now offer wellness programmes for their employees. Sadly, however, financial wellness remains largely neglected.
This may be because many people don’t feel that their finances are under their control in the same way that their diet or exercise routine can be. You can decide what to eat, for instance, but most people don’t get to decide for themselves how much they get paid.
You can also get yourself to the gym three times a week, but you can’t dictate what return you are going to get from the stock market this year.
A lot of people therefore feel that the health of their finances depends on too many external factors for them to ever feel on top of them.
Control the things you can
When it comes to wellness of any sort, however, the principles are really the same.
No matter what you do, you don’t ever have total control over your health. Even if you eat well and exercise regularly, you don’t know what viruses you could be exposed to in everyday life. You could also still get injured in an accident at any time.
The idea behind wellbeing is therefore not to eliminate all the risks. That is impossible. It is about understanding the things that you can control, and managing those in the best way possible.
Four steps
The movie The Greatest Showman told the story of P T Barnum. And he once said that “money is a terrible master but an excellent servant”.
This is what taking control of your finances is about. It requires making a switch from seeing money as something that has power over to you, to being something that you can make work for you.
Achieving this only requires four things:
- Firstly, you need to know where, and how much, you are spending from month to month. Getting that picture will allow you to see whether you are spending your income in ways that are productive and enhance your life. Even if you don’t draw up a strict budget, you will empower yourself by understanding your spending.
- Secondly, set up a savings account for emergencies. Life will happen, and you need to have some protection against unexpected events when it does. If you are living pay cheque to pay cheque, you won’t be able to meet a large, unforeseen cost without taking on debt. And that potentially only creates more problems.
- Thirdly, make sure that your debt is under control. Loans can be a great enabler in many circumstances, but debt is also the biggest financial killer when it isn’t managed.
- And, finally, get help. Even if you are in reasonable financial shape, managing your money can be hard and time-consuming, and still ultimately stressful. The support of a financial adviser not only lightens that load but can also provide the reassurance that you have a professional who is supporting you in reaching your financial goals.
Provided by Vaal Triangle Insurance
© DotNews. All Rights Reserved.