How Do You Deal with Financial Anxiety?

From worries about paying your bills, to stressing over managing your debts, many people face stressors when it comes to money. Those stressors often manifest into financial anxiety, flooding your thoughts with negativity, what-ifs, worry, and irritability. Feelings and thoughts associated with financial anxiety can mirror those of general anxiety disorder, which can be pretty unsettling. Financial anxiety can show up in many different forms- whether it’s avoiding checking your account balances, obsessive saving, thinking of endless what-if scenarios, etc. These feelings can become quite overwhelming and take over your everyday thoughts.

So, how do you deal with financial anxiety? Check out some strategies + tips below 💡

Focus on Today

Anxiety is future ridden. This means that almost all anxious thoughts are worries about the instability and uncertainty of the future - whether that’s tomorrow, next year, or in 20 years. Constantly letting your mind travel to the future will only give power to your worries. However, if you let your energy flow more towards today, then your in-the-moment living will overpower your future worries. Here are some ideas that can help you practice living in the present ⬇️

• Meditation / affirmations 🧘‍♀️
• Write in a journal 📓
• Take a nature walk 🌳
• Visualize your daily goals 👀
• Practice gratitude 💚

Build Your Confidence

The more you in-touch you are with your money (check your account balances, fill out a budgeting sheet, create a debt payment plan etc.), the more confidence you will have regarding finances. Resultantly, that anxiety will start going out of the window! Although it can be scary to rip off the band aid and check your accounts, leaving them unattended is only going to heighten your financial anxiety in the long run.

Another thing that may be helpful is to know that you’re not alone. In fact, statistically speaking, 60% of Americans feel anxious when thinking about their personal finances. We all must understand that the power is in our hands to make our money work for us.

The Catastrophic “What-Ifs”

Those “what-ifs” you find running through your thoughts are pretty startling and can lead you down a deep dark hole. However, a recent study shows that 91% of things you worry about are false alarms. And of that remaining 9% of worries that do come true, the outcome was better than expected 1/3 of the time. We can find a great amount of comfort in that.

An Action Plan

Setting attainable goals that you can easily meet will help you to stay on track and keep your head energy in the right place. By reaching these incremental and attainable goals, you will build momentum and empowerment. When you feel empowered, your motivation will increase and your anxiety will decrease.  Follow these steps to start getting to work:

1. Think about all of your financial worries 🧠
2. Write them down ✍️
3. Think of 3 tasks you can do to ease each worry 3️⃣
4. Rank the tasks from the most do-able to the least 📝
5. Get to work 💪

Remember, your finances don’t have to be so scary. You are destined and capable of getting your money situation to where you want it.