How Money Mindset Impacts Health

Money Mindset and Health

Your money mindset and your financial circumstances can impact your health.

Since you can improve your financial circumstances more efficiently with a positive money mindset, dealing with this must become a priority. 

Written By Tiffany Woodfield, Financial Coach, TEP®, CRPC®, CIM®

What are some signs that financial concerns are impacting someone’s health?

We have all seen how financial concerns can impact someone’s health.

The most common signs that I’ve noticed are mood swings, difficulty concentrating, trouble sleeping, and withdrawal from others. Often, people use self-medicating to deal with these issues. This can be through addictive behaviours such as binge drinking, drugs, gambling and excessive spending. 

Can a positive money mindset lead to healthier lifestyle choices?

A positive money mindset can lead to healthier lifestyle choices.

When we feel abundant and in control of our finances, we feel empowered to make positive choices in all areas of our lives. We choose to make healthy lifestyle choices and are less likely to use food or alcohol to numb out and mask our depression. 

How do financial issues impact health differently across various life stages?

It has been shown that financial hardship in childhood has led to an increased risk of depression and anxiety in adult life. (+)

Much of this is because our relationship with money is established when we are young. So, programming and messages such as “money is for other people” or “we will never have enough” create a pattern of beliefs that the children take as fact. As adults, it becomes essential to work on releasing the limiting beliefs we learned in childhood.

As adults, it’s common to continue the pattern learned in childhood and live in perpetual fear of not having enough. (+)

It takes a conscious effort to create an abundance mentality. Often, people feel they are victims of their circumstances. While it’s true that some people have been born into much easier circumstances than others, spending time thinking about that won’t change one’s reality.

However, cultivating an abundant money mindset and taking action will change one’s reality. 

There are so many rags-to-riches stories that it seems a well-accepted fact that anyone can start life with very little and create a life of abundance. However, pulling yourself out of a thought or behavioural pattern is impossible if you don’t shine a light on it and start questioning it. 

How do you cope with financial stress and protect your health?

• Be aware of your emotions and write down what your fears are. Then, evaluate which ones you can work on first.
• Eat healthy and get exercise daily to help alleviate the stress. Even a walk in nature for 30 minutes will shift your attitude. Any walk will do if you don’t have easy access to nature. Get moving and get the blood flowing!
• Avoid or minimize alcohol intake as it will affect your sleep, and it is a depressant.
• Speak to friends and share how you feel. Remind yourself that you are not alone.  
• Seek professional help, such as a therapist who can provide tools so you can move forward.
• Create a simple budget so you know how much money you need to cover expenses.
• Be honest with yourself and your family about your financial situation. When you share your fears and concerns about money, you create the opportunity to find solutions. Often, people feel guilty and don’t want to tell anyone because they think they will be judged. The thing is that we have all been there.

I remember having a credit card for the first time at university.

I was so excited about this credit card that I spent to the limit. When the bill came in, I panicked! 

I realized I had no money to pay it off. The interest compounded in my head, and I kept thinking about how disappointed my parents would be in me. 

I thought they would never trust me again because I had been irresponsible. 

I decided to tell them, and I learned a good lesson about how to plan for my expenses and live within my means. In the future, I automatically added the interest cost when I wanted something new for which I didn’t have cash. 

I’d think twice if I wanted a new top that cost $100 and I didn’t have the cash.

Instead of costing $100, if my credit card interest rate was 18%, it would cost me $118 if it took me one year to pay it off!

Not everyone has had the opportunity to have these lessons and feel supported by their parents, but you can change now. 

It may take a few steps, but the relief you will feel and the positive impact on your health are worth it.   

Should you use logical or emotional tools when dealing with financial stress?

Financial stress often comes when we have cash flow problems.

We worry that we won’t have enough money to pay our bills—or we don’t have the money to pay the bills. 

We see interest rates increasing. We experience fear of an economic downturn and fear of job loss. 

Financial stress targets two areas: the first is based on logical numbers, and the second is emotional fear. 

The problem is they work together and compound your feelings of financial stress. 

People often wonder why setting a budget or running the numbers and doing a financial plan doesn’t relieve them. This is because it only targets the logical side, and we must also work on the emotions. 

Working on your financial and emotional plans can reduce stress and protect your health even when dealing with cash flow issues.

You need to target two critical areas to cope with the financial stress: 

1. Rational Financial Tools
2. Emotional Behavior Tools

Rational Financial Tools:

There are many resources and tools to help you understand your financial picture and how to keep you on track. To get started on the foundation building blocks, you need to create a budget and look at what is coming in and going out each month. 

Then, you can create a strategy to make sure you can cover the essentials and figure out what expenses you can cut.

Completing a financial plan is very helpful if you have everything in order and are wondering when you can retire, move into a work-optional lifestyle or send your children to university. 

Many financial professionals can guide you through this, and you can find someone who specializes in working with clients in similar situations. Whether you’re starting a business, doing succession planning or learning to budget, financial coaches, planners, and advisors can help you. 

The critical step is to take action!

Open the bill statements and begin understanding what is happening in your financial world.

Emotional Behavior Tools:

Your emotions around money play a significant and often underestimated role in your financial freedom and abundance mindset. A lack of emotional intelligence around money is why you can still be afraid, no matter how much money you have or how solid the numbers look on a spreadsheet. 

You cannot relax and enjoy your wealth or sleep well at night if you haven’t honed the emotional side of money.

EXAMPLE:

Because we are discussing how finances impact your health, I want to use an analogy with a Band-Aid. 

Imagine you have a deep cut on your leg, and you put a band-aid on it to protect it from new debris and infection. It looks healthier from the outside, and you feel marginally better because you can’t see the cut. Unfortunately, you only fixed one part of the cut and didn’t clean the wound or use any antibiotic ointment, so there’s a rotting infection underneath the band-aid.

In fact, you aren’t healed. In order to heal, you need to clean the cut and make sure there is no infection. Then you can put a bandage on top to protect it.

In this metaphor, the band-aid is the financial tool and cleaning the wound is your emotional tool.   

I have written several articles about unlocking your money blocks and negative programming around money, which can help you release the “hold” money has over your finances and emotional well-being. 

The critical thing is to acknowledge and commit to working on both areas so you can relax and release the stress. All the financial tools in the world won’t help you eliminate fear because fear is based on your view of money.

Fear isn’t necessarily logical.

Fear comes from your relationship with money, what you learned about money at a young age, your personal experiences, culture, and upbringing.

Is there a correlation between debt and health problems like high blood pressure or insomnia?

Some research does indicate that there is a correlation between debt and high blood pressure in midlife. In addition, the less you sleep, the more your blood pressure rises. 

Debt & High Blood Pressure

You Can Change Your Situation

Just remember that you can choose to start examining your money mindset and taking positive action.

You don’t have to stay stuck where you are. You can release limiting beliefs and start building a life of abundance no matter what your current circumstances may be.

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