Understanding Your Financial Habits With Your Mental Health
Financial stress is always going to be a huge burden to people and it greatly impacts our mental health. Not being financially stable invokes fear, guilt, shame, feelings of inconsistency, scarcity, and not having or being enough. These are ingrained fears of ours and really push us to feel desperate to change our current state. Sitting with these emotions and experiencing them are painful and uncomfortable. This is why it is super important to reevaluate and reflect on our current financial state, even if it is super stable at this moment, so that we can be moving towards our feelings of control and stability in the future.
That’s really what it is: control. We always want to feel in control. When our money is inconsistent, those feelings of being “out of control” are debilitating. Our anxiety goes crazy and we will do anything to avoid, numb, and ignore these feelings. But, these actions have caused you to become out of touch with your money in the first place. So continuing this pattern will only lead you to this idea of that money is scarce and unpredictable. This doesn’t have to be true.
Like with all emotions, we have to learn to sit with them in order to understand them so that we can ultimately manage and control them. So with these painful emotions described above, we have to learn how to be aware when we are experiencing them and our reactions to them and how that ultimately effects our spending habits.
When we look into our bank accounts and we see a number that doesn’t reflect what we “should” have in there, what kind of emotions run through you? Anxiety? Fear? Out of control? When we start to feel these things, what do you do next? Do we change our spending habits? Do we spend more? Do we ignore it? Do we hope for the best? Do we become irritable with our partner for spending? Do we spend more knowing that the money is going to run out soon? Do we buy things to make ourselves feel better?
What about when we look at the account and it doesn’t reflect what we should have in there but we look at the transactions, hoping to find a bogus transaction, only to find that yes, we did spend like this and that we only have ourselves to blame? Do we feel guilt? Do we hide it from others or our partner? Do we promise to do something different next paycheck? Do we tell ourselves we can’t have the fun weekend we thought we could this weekend and feel helpless, hopeless, shameful, and sad?
What we fail to recognize is why are we looking at our account and not finding the number that we should have in there. Don’t we have control over that? Yes, we do. We have complete control over the amount of money coming in and the amount of money flowing out. Yet, we tend to ride on these feelings and we never sit back and say, “Hey! Why can’t I get my spending under control?”
This vicious cycle of emotions and spending never allows us the opportunity to step back and take control over the things we do. Everyone always says that we “need to budget” and this isn’t necessarily bad advice but we need to go back even further to our habits when it comes to spending and where our triggers are. We can budget everyday but we need to recognize that money has emotional attachment to it. So when we feel certain ways, we are going to react and spend certain ways. This is important to be aware of so that we can ultimately follow the beautiful budget we created.
So I say first, we need to be aware of our emotional state when it comes to our current financial state. You don’t need to wait for the first of the month to start this or your next paycheck, just start right now.
Take out a piece of paper, journal, notebook, and bring up your financial accounts. ALL OF THEM. I want you to journal the feelings associated with the current numbers, debt, and transactions that you have with EACH account. This may seem like it is irrelevant and a waste of time but what you are practicing is sitting with the emotions and not avoiding, numbing, or ignoring the reality of your financial state. This won’t be an easy process.
Now I want you to think about your spending habits that you were “planning” on having for the rest of the day. Be honest with yourself and write them down. So if you are doing this in the middle of the day and you haven’t had lunch yet and planned on going out, write that down. Now, let’s say you are conservative and go out for something cheap and find that they have a cookie sale, 2 for 1. Think about the emotional state you will be in when you arrive. You just went over your finances which you don’t normally do. How will you feel? Will eating the cookies make you feel better or make you feel sad because you want them but know you shouldn’t buy them? Or do you talk yourself into the “deal” you are getting because normally they aren’t 2 for 1 so it gives you the idea of that you are “saving” money? Do your “planned” transactions, journaling your emotions as you move through each one throughout your day, and notice your spending habits.
Journal how you feel about your spending habits. Focus on emotions because they are huge influences on spending.
Now journal your habits and spending for the rest of the week. How much are you spending? Do you foresee anything coming up that may require more money than you intended?
At the end of the week, see how you did. Did you follow your spending habits? Good and bad ones? Were you predictable or unpredictable? Did things happen in your life that influenced those spending habits? Those are triggers. Notice them!
I’d suggest doing this throughout the week. Until you get more skilled at being aware of your habits. Then you can predict a budget for yourself. You might find that doing this weekly is way more manageable than doing one for the entire month. There is no wrong way to budget. Budgeting doesn’t work or is wrong when you don’t follow it. Just notice your emotions and triggers.
You can’t change your habits, or really anything for that matter, until you are aware of them. Understanding them is the next step. This process isn’t suppose to teach you how to budget. That isn’t the point. This is suppose to help you become aware of how, why, where, and what you spend. This may be something that you do for several weeks until you become predictable. I suggest not changing anything for these weeks so you can be totally observant of your habits before sitting down and deciding what needs to change.
Look for upcoming blog posts on budgeting, your relationship with money, and financial intelligence.
