Fix the Cause

How is that "reduced spending on the small things" going? For those of  you that are having a hard time I hope the next story will be a motivator. Rethink the reduced spending amount on the small stuff . Don’t for get to pay down the dept with the extra cash.

I got a phone call from my friend, Karen, the other day.  She told me that a mutual friend, Brenda, had just been diagnosed with cancer. Brenda had suffered several years of a restricted existence due to emphysema. She was a smoker, despite a family history of both diseases. Karen said she just could not understand why a person would do something she knew could cost her quality of life and life itself.

While not as extreme, we can consider our spending behaviours as costing us more than our paycheques: our health and well-being for one. Ask most women how they feel when they think about their present and future financial situation and you’ll hear words like “anxious”, “depressed”, “frustrated”, “distressed”, “overwhelms,” even “scared”. These are not descriptions of mental and emotional well-being. Canadian women cite finances as the number one cause of negative stress in their lives. Fifty-two per cent of us say that stress impacts negatively on our health - and with stress comes depression. At least one in ten of us will be diagnosed with depression at some point in our lives.

It’s not just our mental and emotional health that’s affected by financially-related stress, the stress can actually cause us an early death. A recent study has shown that women exposed to high levels of financial and emotional stress are more likely to die sooner than those who aren’t. Furthermore, women are more prone to stress than men, signifying that women are susceptible to diseases like cancer and heart disease.

And how do we address those stress-related health problems? Instead of dealing with the causes, our finances, we deal with the symptoms, and dealing with the symptoms all too often cost us more money, and so the vicious circle continues! Gym passes, the gym gear, spa treatments, dietary supplements and foods, exotic “cure all” potions, yoga classes, meditation and relaxation courses, alcohol, prescription and non-prescription drugs, “getaway” trips, socializing, retail therapy – the list goes on – may help you feel momentarily good, but your financial situation, the cause of your stress, hasn’t changed.