If you’ve ever struggled with your finances, you know how emotionally draining it can be. That emotional stress can lead to physical problems down the road if they aren’t cleared up within a reasonable amount of time.
There’s an old saying that goes, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. That might not have anything to do with the rich tearing down the poor to make them worse off. A lot of it has to do with mindset and allowing yourself to fall into this pit of self-perpetuating misery.
According to research, conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, has found that this cycle of financial troubles and debt impacts the brain in a negative way. It causes stress, their memories suffer, and they end up performing worse at tasks that might allow them to break out of the cycle.
This, in turn, impacts how they view life and alters their financial thinking. Rather than working out long-term solutions, they get laser focused solely on how they’re going to make it next month. If you’re constantly focused just on next month and in a constant state of worry, you’re probably not going to think about months or years from now.
That’s the problem. Fewer and fewer Americans are preparing for retirement, paying for health insurance, and neglect other necessities. They get into this cycle, add debt upon debt, and get so behind that saving money doesn’t even enter their minds.
It gets worse. These stresses transfer to overall health. When someone is constantly stressed, they run to unhealthy habits to make them feel better. They sacrifice their future just to survive today. They turn to drinking, drugs, stop exercising, overeat, and their health takes a hit.
It’s not a coincidence that a new report was also released this year that more Americans were becoming alcoholics and even drinking themselves to death at record rates. Financial struggles directly lead to unhappy people who compensate every way possible. The inability to get out of the cycle due to short-term thinking takes them down the rabbit hole of stress and disease.
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If you’ve spent any time counseling with couples or individuals who are struggling financially, they don’t seem to have a grasp on the situation. They aren’t eager to fall into a plan because they don’t think it will lead anywhere. They become melancholy, even when shown a proven way to become debt free.
Even when you show them there’s a way out, a light at the end of the tunnel, it doesn’t always work to get them active in pursuing those methods. And that’s the major crux of the issue. There ARE paths to financial freedom and to live a debt-free life, yet it almost seems as if people get ‘comfortable’ in their misery and think life simply can’t get better than it is.
If you’re in debt and struggling to keep your head up, don’t give up! It’s never too late to take control of your finances. It will take some work, but you have to decide right now that you won’t live this way anymore. Once that black cloud stops hanging around, life does get better.
That means you need to start thinking about your future and stop neglecting your health. There are government programs out there designed to help you by cutting credit card payments, consolidating debts into smaller payments, and even debt forgiveness. Don’t sit around and mope and let the situation get the best of you.
A much happier future is right around the corner. All it takes is a phone call to get started.
