Do You Need Some Financial Stress Relief?
Are you feeling the stress these days? Perhaps financial stress? You are not alone. Some 55% of women, ages 30 to 55, with minor kids and household incomes less than R60,000 a year, report “high” or overwhelming” levels of financial stress. They are not the only ones experiencing high or overwhelming stress. So what is causing this stress?
Causes of financial stress
In his 2020 blog post, Jim Yih, a Canadian Financial Advisor highlighted seven causes in his blog post,
- High debt levels.
- Low savings rates
- Volatile Stock markets
- Real estate won’t be our financial savior
- Demographics means more fear
- The financial marketplace is increasingly complex
- No formal education on money
Let us examine debt, savings, and education further. Many people have the best of intentions to pay the debt. Unfortunately, many of those intentions were clouded by short-term desires or calamities. After the debt was added, then a breadwinner may have lost a job or a payment was missed while juggling other life issues.
Then ‘wham o!’, the interest rate doubled or even tripled overnight. An emergency fund seems like a nice idea but where would the funds for that come from?
Financial stress is all too common in our society and we need to do something about it. The starting point is a little knowledge but true success comes from action. It comes from taking control of your financial affairs and developing good financial habits.
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