Generally speaking, when people think about the best practices to manage their financial lives, their thoughts will go to things like establishing a good household budget, finding ways to cut out unnecessary luxury expenses, and so on.
But what about the importance of properly managing stress and anxiety, both for your personal well-being, but also as a way of keeping your financial life on the right track, as well?
Life is often stressful and frustrating, and on any given day you may find yourself having to contact a defense attorney to represent you in a legal case, or may have to work around your car suddenly breaking down.
Here’s why properly managing stress and anxiety is essential for your financial life.
Because the more stressed and anxious you feel, the more impulsively you will tend to spend
Whenever you are in a highly stressed and anxious state of mind, you will tend to behave in ways which are based around seizing whatever “resources” come your way, and either using them immediately, or holding onto them desperately.
When you think about it, this is perfectly natural and understandable. If our distant ancestors were experiencing stress as a result of some crisis like a famine, they would have had to be very quick to seize any opportunity to eat, in order to survive.
Today, however, much of the stress we tend to experience is connected to things far less “life-and-death” than that, but being in a chronically stressed and anxious state of mind nonetheless tends to contribute to impulsive spending – partly as a result of an underlying belief that the money will be gone soon, so we need to take advantage of it while it’s around.
Generally speaking, more well-reasoned financial decisions are far more likely and realistic when you are in a calm and balanced state of mind.
Because you may suffer financially as a result of not spending enough, at the right times
While stress and anxiety can prompt impulsive spending, they can also, of course, have the opposite effect and cause you to hold onto your money with an iron grip, even at points where it would be in your best interest to spend.
Being frugal is one thing – but passing up on a golden opportunity, or failing to venture down to a job interview due to the travel costs, for example, is obviously likely to be detrimental.
Knowing when you actually should spend is a delicate art – and it may largely rely on being able to effectively manage your stress and anxiety.
Because your overall health and well-being will be negatively impacted by chronic stress and anxiety
Being chronically stressed is, famously, very detrimental to your health and sense of well-being, in a number of different ways.
In one direct sense, chronically elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol can cause real damage to the tissues of your body over time.
Chronic stress is also known to inhibit the proper functioning of the immune system, and to take a psychological toll on people.
There are obvious financial implications to having your health negatively impacted by chronic stress and anxiety. This is just one more reason why effectively managing stress and anxiety is important for your financial life, as well as for your overall well-being.
