More tips on Money & Mental Health

As I write this, the Strait of Hormuz is closed and we seem locked into oil prices and the price of everything connected with them (which feels like just about everything) continuing to skyrocket. It’s completely out of our control, and we can anticipate being under even more financial pressure and face even more challenges making ends meet in the weeks and months to come.

I’ve talked in the past about the link between financial stress and poor mental health. It’s a loop and one that can be challenging to break.

Worrying about managing finances can impact our mental health, and poor mental health can cause issues with managing finances. So it can become a spiral and that’s very challenging for anyone with issues with anxiety or depression. In that blog I suggested some core things we can do to help us get things in control; specifically creating a manageable budget, separate accounts for essentials and building in regular habits and time to deal with anything financial. But, with world events in mind, what else can we do?

One of the most important things we can do is acknowledge that our mental health matters and is also a priority. We know that poor mental health and financial issues feed into themselves, so our mental health is equally important. What I’m getting at is that there is no point having a rigid financial plan for dealing with our financial situation that badly impacts our mental health. What might a more reasonable, perhaps less puritanical, financial plan look like?

To support good mental health we need the essentials; enough food, enough sleep/rest and enough social contact (at the level that’s right for us). Accepting that, ok we want to be more in control of expenses, what can we keep doing that will support our mental health? For example. What health activities can we do outside of a gym or exercise classes? What else might we be able to do with friends that doesn’t mean spending a lot of money?  Having money issues can mean that we feel we want to withdraw from friends and other sources of emotional support, but closing ourselves off adds more pressure to us and perhaps even does our friends and loved ones a disservice.

Something that comes up regularly when discussing this kind of thing with clients is looking at the subscriptions we have coming out month to month. In days gone by physical media was much more part of our lives and once we bought something once, we owned it. These days our purchases are often tied in with a specific ecosystem that means we lose the license and they effectively disappear if we stop subscribing. Streamers have really taken over the market when it comes to home media, but in recent years they have increased subscription costs substantially and still brought in adverts, which we joined in the first place to avoid. So are our streaming subscriptions still right for us, or can we live without them? Can we dig out our old dvds and rediscovery our local library?

Keeping an eye on our mood and our needs can also help keep our spending under control. Our emotions and our other needs affect our spending. Who among us has had a shock when they did the Asda shop when they were hungry? Spending our way out of emotional discomfort is a short term strategy that can get us in trouble. Things like delaying purchases (giving ourselves 24 hours and checking in with ourselves if we still feel we need it as much then) can help, but it’s also useful to be mindful of what our personal triggers are, prepare for them and be ready to manage our emotions more effectively. Counselling can help with practical tools and strategies for that.

But what other tools are out there that we might be able to look at just now?

There’s some excellent advice available on the Moneyhelper website for anyone who is having issues making ends meet. The Mental Health and Money Advice Service is also full of tips and suggestions for managing money and looking after our mental health, including a dedicated Mental Health and Money toolkit. The mental health charity, Mind, also has some solid suggestions relating to mental health and money as well as some useful signposting for other help and advice.

If there’s one thing I could ask you to take away from today it’s acknowledging that dealing with financial issues shouldn’t come at the cost of your mental health. They are equally important and need to be part of any plan for managing a financial crisis. Support is out there that can help.

If you’d like to work with me on your mental health, you can get in touch with me via the website or drop me a message directly at mckellarcbt@gmail.com