How to Deal with Financial Stress

Financial stress is a condition reported to affect about 72% of Americans at any one point in their lives. Just like normal stress and anxiety, it’s a feeling of worry that’s often coupled with a response that’s experienced physically.

The condition can afflict nearly everyone, and it’s something that’s easy to ignore until it gets out of hand. Some of the symptoms include weight gain, anxiety and the potential to deteriorate into depression.

This usually goes on to affect personal relationships, with the most common reason for marriage issues is money related issues. There exists a real need to deal with them without them getting out of hand.

Ask for support

What’s possibly the most important step in the whole process is recognizing at what point the problem is to deal with on your own. Financial stress deals such a big blow to the psyche and is very easy to have it overwhelm you.

It is very important to have a support system in place in case the financial stress starts to get to you. A group of friends and family to help you out, even to vent to when everything gets out of hand. If such a system doesn’t exist for you, you might need to seek professional help. It’s often looked down on, but can be incredibly helpful.

Cut down on your expenses

The largest cause of financial stress is spending more money than you earn. This usually ends up getting you into debt, which further makes your financial stress worse. The key to cutting down the amount of money you spend on expenses is listing down all the regular places your money goes every month and trying to minimize them.

Try and categorize them in terms of entertainment, bills and other personal expenditure. After which, it’s now time to try and cut down on the amount you use in every category.

For instance, food is usually a deep money well because people tend to eat out a lot. Start making your food at home if that’s what takes up so much of your income, for example. If a lot of your money goes to gambling or other bad habits, you definitely need to cut them off.

Prepare a budget

It is extremely important to reduce the amount of money you spend every month. A good way to do this is to audit your finances and prepare a budget. List all the sources of income you have every month and all the places where your money comes from. Afterward, subtract all the expenses from the income until you reach zero.

If the amount doesn’t reach zero, then you’re somewhat in the green zone. If it does or goes below zero, you’re spending more money every month than you are making. That’s a bad sign. You need to set viable goals on how much you’re going to spend and save every month and make small steps towards achieving them.

Identify what’s getting you so stressed and deal with it

The next step is to determine what has been getting you into so much financial stress. This is important because it's impossible to deal with the problem without knowing what the problem itself is.

Once you identify it, the next step is to deal with it in the right way. For example, if the problem ends up being a large debt, different steps can be taken towards achieving your goals.

If you falling short on money needed to pay monthly bills or that hefty installment, consider taking a quick payday loan from a personal money network. Some money to stop the bleeding is a big respite in difficult times.