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We all face stress every day, but how much is it affecting your ability to stick to your monthly budget plan?
Being interested in health topics and especially those that cross over into personal finances, last year, I read Will Power Instinct by Kelly McGonigal Ph.D. I learned something interesting in that book, when under stress and your body is releasing cortisol, the brain’s pre-frontal cortex gets turned off…put to sleep. Why is this so important? Well, that is where one’s impulse control is located, so your impulse control gets lowered. Kelly goes into the details of why this happens and I highly recommend the book. How does this relates to busting a budget?
Tell me if you can’t relate to this scenario; you just dealt with a difficult customer, co-worker, ex-spouse, or ex-significant other. Your stress is high but maybe you don’t really feel it or recognize it. Maybe you are so used to that level of stress that you don’t recognize what it is doing internally. So, instead of going for a walk outside to cool off, you shop on Amazon or eat a bag of chips.
That is stress and reducing impulse control in action. In pre-historic times lower impulse control is awesome! Probably not a good idea to sit around thinking about your goals while a large animal is about to eat you. But in modern times every day life can have that level of stress! Which can mean spending more and eating more. (Eating more always affects the budget! Money for food has to come from somewhere!)
So what can you do?
The first thing to do is recognize the stress. Take a week or two and at the end of each day write how stressed you felt and if you made any purchases that were not planned or necessary. After recording this for a few weeks, you may see a pattern. Once you recognize your triggers you can better mitigate what sets them off.
Several past clients were divorced ed single mothers, and when they fought their ex-husband about the kids, they would get stressed and blow up their budget. It happened infrequently enough that it took us a few months to figure it out. Once identified, they took steps to resolve the spending and found healthier ways to cope. In a few cases the client sought the help of a therapist, in others just recognizing it and implementing new habits when triggered was enough to fix the issue.
Mindy Pelz in her book Fast Like a Girl says that body’s hormone oxytocin stops stress hormone cortisol in its tracks. What’s the best way to release oxytocin? Well, my favorite is laughing. One can’t joyfully laugh and be chased by a saber tooth tiger, right? So laughing stops the cascade of cortisol which stops the stress and the impulse spending that can go with it.
So the next time you face stress, look up your favorite comedian and take a 15 minute break to laugh. My favorite clean comedian is Jim Gaffigan- the classic Hot Pockets.