Anger, grief at financial loss

OPINION: It’s OK to be angry and anxious about what the Covid-19 pandemic response has done to your money life.

In the fight to save lives, it’s been close to a patriotic duty to unselfishly downplay the personal impact of financial loss, uncertainty, and even unemployment.

There’s been a kind of wartime spirit invoked, in which the interests of the national struggle far outweigh the personal financial costs.

But throughout my career I’ve learned that the grief of financial ruin is often as keen as the grief at losing a loved one.

Many readers will naturally rebel against this idea, but I say to them: It may be an unpalatable idea, but it’s true.

I recall one elderly woman who lost a fortune to the now long-departed Blue Chip property investment company telling me how ashamed she was that she felt as much grief losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to that awful outfit as she did when her mother died.

I remember another elderly woman, who lost money to the same property sharks, telling me how she would burn her house down before the reverse mortgage company got their hands on it.

She was a woman who had abided by the law for more than three and a half decades, but planned to depart this world as an arsonist.

I’ve spoken to many people who have lost homes and businesses, or been set back decades by leaky buildings, or seen finance companies consume their savings, and none of them will ever get over it.

It doesn’t matter whether loss of income, or home, or savings, is a person’s fault, or not. Shame and grief follow.

Oh, we pretend it’s only money, but it isn’t. We are more than our jobs, our wealth, our homes, but they are a bigger part of our identities than we care to admit.

That sense increases as we age, and is most intense for people with children who depend on them.

Historically, men have suffered far more than women from such losses. It’s felt that’s because women are better talkers, better sharers, and men are still caught up in a masculine hunter-gather narrative, in which failure is weakness, and weakness is not manly.

As well as grief, financial loss and uncertainty can change the way people think. It can consume them, and dominate their thoughts.

I heard it described by a psychologist like this: If you are sitting on your porch, and you see a tiger in the garden, your entire focus goes onto the tiger. Everything else disappears from your mind.

This single-mindedness is survival gold, but only for a short time.

If the tiger is your failing finances, or your inability to find a job, and it doesn’t go away quickly, then single-mindedness can quickly result in obsessive, destructive ways of thinking to the exclusion of other things, such as sleep, health, emotional wellbeing and family relationships.

It also makes clear-minded planning and action hard.

With nearly 110,000 households taking mortgage holidays, people scrambling to repay debt, and unemployment heading towards double digits, a lot of people will be in survival mode.

I’m writing this for two reasons. I want those lucky enough not to be experiencing potentially ruinous financial loss and uncertainty to understand better what many people are facing.

And I want those experiencing it not to despair that people don’t have an insight into what they are going through.

GOLDEN RULES:

* Talk, plan and keep healthy

* Do not be too proud to seek help * Remember, you are not alone

123RF It doesn’t matter whether loss of income, or home, or savings, is a person’s fault, or not. Shame and grief follow.