MONEY WORRIES

Stressing over money is not just an individual problem – it’s a global issue that can also impact your physical and mental health. MiNDFOOD investigates the causes and impacts of the financial wellness trend.

If you have ever lost sleep because of money worries, then you won’t be surprised that financial stress can have an impact on your health. But the extent to which money and health are linked is becoming more transparent.

A 2020 report from Thriving Wallet, an initiative that explores the relationship between personal finance and wellbeing, found that financial stress has a negative effect on blood pressure, respiratory symptoms, physical health and rates of tension. More recently, a study published in the journal Stress & Health found that financial stress can lead to physical pain up to 30 years later.

It’s not just our physical health, it’s our mental health, too. A 2015 report from the Australian Psychological Society found that money stress is the most prevalent form of stress. And, according to Relationships Australia, financial issues are among the most common contributors of relationship breakdowns.

Likewise, a report from New Zealand’s Commission for Financial Capability (CFFC) found that 69 per cent of New Zealanders felt concerned about money and that those concerns often manifested as stress, relationship problems, embarrassment and unhealthy eating habits.

Given the scale of the issue, it’s not surprising that financial wellness, the intersection between health and finance, is becoming one of the most important health movements of the year. The Global Wellness Summit’s 2021 Health Trends Report lists financial wellness among the major new trends. It explores our relationship with money and unearths the deeper issues that may be negatively affecting that relationship.

“Financial wellness is shifting that conversation from the ‘what’ to the ‘why’, from the pragmatic to the psychological,” the report says.

The ideas behind financial wellness aren’t new – so why has it become such a hot topic? It’s probably not a coincidence that the link between finance and health has become a bigger conversation during a global pandemic – a survey by the Melbourne Institute taken at the start of the pandemic found that three in 10 Australians felt financially stressed over the impact of COVID-19.

Jane Wrightson, Retirement Commissioner and Head of New Zealand’s Commission for Financial Capability, also thinks COVID-19 has thrust financial wellness into the spotlight. “The wave of job loss and income reduction last year threw the fragile nature of our household finances into sharp relief,” she says. “Many working families in bluecollar and ‘pink-collar’ occupations [i.e. those traditionally occupied by women such as teaching and nursing] were hard hit.”

Another factor that is bringing financial wellness into the spotlight is a shift towards considering general wellbeing. “There is a general trend to look at our lives more holistically,” says financial therapist Jane MonicaJones. “Although as humans we have had money issues for time immemorial, we are appreciating more and more how challenges with money can seriously affect our health, relationships, mental health, and self-esteem,” she adds.

The very fact that financial therapists such as Monica-Jones exist shows the extent to which awareness of financial wellness has grown. It’s not just something happening in Australia and New Zealand: The Financial Therapy Association, which is building a community of financial therapy professionals, currently has over 300 international members.

Financial therapists acknowledge that our relationships with money are emotional and psychological. They help people to unravel their ‘money stories’ in order to better spend, save and invest. “A ‘Money Story’ is a personal history or narrative about money in our life – it includes experiences, thoughts, feelings, behaviours and beliefs around money. They can be person-centric or generational and are often influenced by culture,” says Monica-Jones.

WE DON’T DISCUSS MONEY

Money has always been an emotionally loaded topic and most of us have been taught that openly discussing money is a bit of a taboo. Monica-Jones notes that cultural attitudes towards money often mean that we don’t seek support or guidance around money. “Not speaking about money in open and frank ways isolates many of us,” she says. “It can be the source of abuse and has created a culture of secrecy where pay gaps and financial inequality can thrive.”

Of all the emotions that are linked to money, shame is the most potent. “There is an evolutionary reason for shame,” explains MonicaJones. “Shame is a psychological mechanism that was developed to trigger the individual to conform to the ways of the tribe.

“So, if we believe we are not conforming to the general norms of the tribe and money, such as the amount we should have, our level of competency in managing it or how we should be earning it, we may experience a sense of shame.”

Shame is a double-edged sword

– it can prevent individuals from seeking financial advice and at the same time it is bad news for our mental health, self-esteem, self-worth and self-respect. “These are immensely powerful and painful emotions,” says Monica-Jones.

Many of us inherit our attitude towards money from our parents. Monica-Jones notes that there has been a lot of research into the impacts of our upbringing on how we relate to and manage money.

“What was modelled in the home growing up will be either replicated or similar, or rebelled against,” she says. “Meaning that if our parents or caregivers were not so great at earning or managing money, we will do the same or become superproficient at it.”

The cultural silence around money means that there are vast sections of the population who are not

“NOT SPEAKING ABOUT MONEY IN OPEN WAYS ISOLATES MANY OF US.”

JANE MONICA-JONES

practising basic money management. A 2018 study commissioned by UBank found that an alarming 86 per cent of Australians do not know how much their monthly household expenses are costing them. The same study found that only one in five feel they are in full control of their finances.

These statistics are a worry to Glen James, host of the hugely popular My Millennial Money podcast. “When I was a financial adviser, I was having the same chats with clients who were 20 years old or 50 or 60 years old about getting their spending under control – it was common of all individuals to not understand basic money management concepts,” he says.

James notes that becoming ‘financially unwell’ isn’t something that happens overnight.

“Financial messes are created with a death of 1,000 cuts – small, unchecked money decisions that build and build,” he says. “By changing your money habits and behaviours you can and will prevent issues and stress in the future.”

It’s clear that there is an urgent need for financial literacy. But who is responsible for delivering it? James thinks we all have a role to play. “It would be great to see more education for young people around money management, too – a lot of bad money decisions would be prevented with better education on this,” he says.

FINANCIAL LITERACY

Jane Wrightson from the CFFC is emphatic when she says that we should be teaching kids about money management: “Research shows that 16- to 24-year-olds are vulnerable to falling into debt that can hold them back.” This can happen through early access to credit cards, high-cost loans, online shopping and gaming. “More than 80 per cent of school leavers told the CFFC that they wished they had learned more about money at school,” says Wrightson.

To help combat this, the CFFC’s Sorted in Schools programme is now active in 62 per cent of secondary schools. “Our learning packages give students the know-how to start their financial journey on the right foot and make good decisions around money. Financial capability is an essential life skill – the earlier people become good with money the better they will fare throughout their lives,” says Wrightson.

Around 1.9 million Aussies carry credit-card debt.

In Australia, financial literacy is incorporated into the curriculum from foundation to Year 10 and is delivered through mathematics, humanities, social science, economics and business. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, there have been calls for personal finance to become a standalone subject. Speaking to the ABC, Financial Basics Foundation Chair Brigid Leishman said that financial literacy is a critical life skill. “It’s about knowing how to manage your money, spending, saving, investing, making good decisions. We know that some schools currently have it built into the economics or business subjects, but it isn’t standalone and it’s not compulsory,” she said.

While school is one way to deliver financial literacy lessons to the next generation, it’s not the only path. In 2020, Nintendo’s popular video game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, for example, the game’s ‘Bank of Nook’ slashed interest rates from 0.5 per cent to .05 per cent to reflect real-life lending conditions.

PERSONAL & BUSINESS COSTS

Teaching financial literacy in schools could dramatically improve financial wellness in the future. But what about the huge swathes of the population who are struggling with it now? One option is for employers to do more.

“The old saying about leaving your personal life at the door when you go to work has got to be one of the most outdated and naive concepts ever to have circulated. I think these days most employers understand this,” says Angela Vale, CEO of NZ’s Footprint Connect, a digital platform that aims to improve the financial wellness of employees. Vale notes that our most basic needs are intrinsically linked to financial wellness – if those needs are not being met or if we’re fearful they may not be met, we go into survival mode. “If we are operating on a day-to-day basis concerned about our most basic needs, then that can have a massive impact in our workplaces. Absenteeism, sickness, reduced productivity, poor customer experience, low quality, reduced morale, lack of collaboration and much more. These things don’t just impact the person who is struggling; it impacts their team, customers and others in the organisation.”

The cost of a lack of financial wellness to business then is significant. Which is why more employers are increasingly looking to include financial wellness in their employee benefits programmes. Vale says that all employers can help change the status quo. “Helping to improve financial wellness doesn’t have to be all about increasing someone’s pay; it can be about supporting further learning, giving them the information, tools and resources to learn and do more.

“These things lift confidence and have far-reaching impacts through to other financial decision-making and to the transference of learning through to other family members and into our communities.”

Monica-Jones, who is also author of the financial therapy book The Billionaire Buddha, says that financial literacy should go even further. “I believe we should be teaching economic empowerment, the ability to act on and stick to our financial goals, by improving our attitudes, behaviours, beliefs, and triggers that may thwart or sabotage our financial goals,” she says.

Economic empowerment, Monica-Jones notes, would cultivate psychological resilience – the ability to bounce back from financial shock such as the loss of a job or financial trauma. Although explicit financial literacy training is important, it’s also vital that we start to break down the wall of silence that surrounds money.

“Get courageous and speak about your money story and often to those you trust,” suggests Monica-Jones.

The younger generations are already doing this – Instagram’s #debtfreecommunity has garnered more than 1.3 million posts.

“Opening up about our money stories is definitely a good thing,” says Monica-Jones. “Not only for individuals and relationships, but for communities, too.”

To the best of my knowledge, Sophie was not a writer. Nor had she ever picked up a paint brush, fashioned a sculpture nor played an instrument. She didn’t sing, act or dance. She was, however, the most artistic person I’d ever met. With a Polish accent thick as borsch and hair the colour of it, and eyes courting mischief, she made sure that when she spoke, you hung on her every word. Like the time we were introduced at a party.

“So, you are a doctor?” she purred playfully. “Then you should know the precise amount of champagne to bring me.”

I wasn’t sure what one had to do with the other, but I obliged dutifully. I, like so many others, had fallen under her spell. And that’s saying something, considering I was a self-absorbed 27-year-old interested only in 27-yearold things, and she was 60.

Soon I was invited over to her house for breakfast. Eggs with toast, she said, but what greeted me was thick, rye sourdough (a novelty back then) cascading with halved cherry tomatoes, sprinkled with basil plucked fresh from her garden, a perfectly poached egg garnished with dill and a nasturtium flower, the entire ensemble perfuming the kitchen like Tuscany in the summer. A breakfast masterpiece.

All her meals were artistry; so was everything she did. For instance, she’d refuse to wear shoes at home, preferring instead to glide across her wooden floorboards on lambswool off-cuts, ‘to polish them,’ she’d say, but then she’d do a little pirouette here, a half-jeté there, a Baryshnikov flourish under the skylight, and I knew it wasn’t really the floors she was shining on.

On her walls hung artworks from friends, famous and otherwise, browning pages of poems torn from books, odd pieces of mirror that cast a glittery light into her lounge room – the salon, she called it – and it was there she held court like an Eastern European Oscar Wilde. And books, hundreds, probably thousands of them lining the walls. One time, picking up a biography on a famous director, I asked if she knew much about him. “Know him?” she purred, all syrupy. “Darling, I slept with him.”

As fate would have it, a house down the road came up for sale and I moved in. From that day on we saw each other constantly and I fell head-first into her world of art and music, Sophie dropping names like

Studies find that when students are having fun, learning can be more effective. “I FELL HEAD FIRST INTO HER WORLD OF ART AND MUSIC.”

confetti and showering me with outrageous anecdotes, my belly aching from laughing so hard and my brain on fire from trying to keep up with her.

Before I’d met her, opera was just for old people. Then she introduced me to Cecilia Bartoli and I fell in love with the mezzo-soprano. Classical music was incomprehensible. Then she played Henryk Górecki, Michael Nyman and Philip Glass, joining the dots of their melodic patterns. The same with paintings from Caravaggio to Mondrian. She was shocked I hadn’t read Kundera or Bulgakov, and keen to make amends, I ploughed through them, mesmerised, and also a little ashamed that my bookshelf groaned only with scientific and medical titles with nary a novel in sight.

Up until then I’d believed science was king, that it would solve all the world’s problems. Art was a pleasant, if somewhat lesser, distraction. But Sophie shook me out of that delusion, teaching me the power of storytelling, and how fiction in particular can reveal greater truths about the world than can equations or molecules. She encouraged me to be playful with ideas and about myself, too.

Putting words in a row wasn’t my strong suit (just ask any of my poor, suffering English teachers), nonetheless she said I must write and – like I said – I was under her spell. So I wrote about the absurd world inside my head, turning my neuroses into stories: what if that pregnancy test the night of the Talking Heads concert had produced two lines instead of one?; my ridiculous spider phobia (well, it’s ridiculous to some people); my tendency to catastrophise (that rattling sound in the car couldn’t possibly mean that the axle is about fall off and kill us all. Could it?). And more recently, the sinking feeling that I’d lost my ketubah, the Jewish wedding contract, the one required for our kids to be married by a rabbi and for which there is no central record. Working these worries into words somehow magically lessened their hold on me and, at the very least, made my friends laugh so I could, too.

Later, I spilled my heart onto the page about my breaks-ups; the magnificence of friendship; the magic of discovering a pod of dolphins in the bay; or an old family photo that had been staring me in the face for years and suddenly realising that I’d become the middle-aged man in the picture and missing my dad all over again.

When I took a sabbatical in the north of Israel, our car didn’t have a functioning radio, so on my long, solo drives, freed from the usual work distractions, my mind wandered. Half-formed ideas, feelings and narrative threads coalesced into words and magically shaped themselves into stories I sent home in long, rambling emails to friends and family. Stories about the wacky gym manager who complained about all the forms he’d have to fill in if my heart were to impolitely arrest on his treadmill (Vovo and I became close friends, though he spoke no English and I little Hebrew); the stray cat the kids adopted and called Aussie; the joyous hurlyburly of the souq (street market) across the valley; and the time we devoured pomegranates the size of melons.

Academics are supposed to return from sabbatical fresh and invigorated, ready to put to work all the intellectual advances we’ve learned in foreign lands, but without doubt the greatest lesson I learnt was this: good ideas need time to play.

To that end, back home I still drive in blissful silence (unless it’s a family trip and then all bets are off). I leave my phone switched off when taking the dog for a walk or, for that matter, as often as I can. And I spend a full half hour between waking up and getting up, giving ideas space to dance around my cerebral stage, a flourish here, a jeté there, just like Sophie.

Now that I’m approaching her age when we first met, she often comes to mind. Setting the template for how I want to be at 60, she evinced a playfulness that resonated with the art that lives and breathes everywhere, from the majesty of a perfectly poached egg to the eloquence of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She created magic from the ordinary and showed me that art needn’t be highbrow; it exists in the simplest of things, and everyone, including an uncultured ingénue like me, can make it.

Everyone knows a Sophie, someone who makes an art form out of their personality, whose playfulness captures us and broadens our horizons. We can learn a lot from them.