Managing emotional health:
This entire Catogory is about managing painful emotions. To avoid repetition, I will give here only the bare essentials; Raise your awareness about your inner emotions; learn to express them appropriately; never let yourself be trapped in a life problem; learn to cancel-out emotions on a daily basis. By managing one’s emotions well, one could effectively avoid all stress related disorders we read about before. Besides good emotional health is essential for us to enjoy life to the fullest extent.
Managing money:
Finding a balance between money for the family and time for the family is the key to managing both. Around the turn of this century most Americans equated raising their standard of living with raising quality of life. As indoor bathroom, a three bedroom home, a car, an attached garage, a refrigerator, a washing machine’. All added up to raising one’s comfort level and quality of life.
Around the middle of twentieth century, raising their standard of living became an obsession with most Americans. Just about everyone wanted to keep improving his lot by owning more and more material things in the mistaken belief that his quality of life would improve by doing so. In fact, the opposite began to happen. Somewhere along the way, quality of life began to part ways with standard of living. There came a time when raising the standard of living invariably caused lowering quality of life.
How did this happen? Well, standard of living has to do with money -money for house, cars, gadgets, vacations, etc. Quality of life has to do with time -time for fun, relaxation, hobbies, family. To make more money to buy all the things one felt he must have, he had to borrow the time which was designated for family. To make more money, one had to work longer hours, take up a second or a third job and sometimes resort to humbug. More and more people are indulging in all of these. The result is that fewer bread winners have time for their family.
As preoccupation with raising the standard of living increased, more women joined the work force so the family could continue to afford things which were not essential but were thought to be needed to improve one’s standard of living. When both parents worked, children had to be left with strangers for their care. Millions of children have grown up and are growing up even today without the much needed parental nurturing and care. Millions were subjected to emotional and sexual abuse by wicked baby sitters and other “trusted” caretakers. A lot of these children ended up with psychiatric problems later in life as a result of these traumas.
When both parents worked, often times they worked different shifts. Parents were too busy to spend time together, to renew bonds, to make joint decisions regarding household issues and children. Millions of parents grew apart, separated and divorced resulting in personal trauma and trauma for their children. These traumatized children grew up into adults and repeated in their own lives what they had learned from their parents. This cycle has snowballed and continued unabated.
To find a balance between standard of living and quality of life, one has to balance between the demand for money and the demand for time. Two simple principles could help us to find this balance: 1) Choose quality of life over standard of living. 2) Follow K.I.S.S.(Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. Here are some basic steps in this direction.
Save money regularly. Saving money gives you the cushion during hard times, but also it give you the ability to walk away from your job and not feel trapped in it; and to solve difficult life problems. Money in the bank gives you peace of mind and also self-confidence. Adequate savings is one of the best medicines against stress.
Live within your means: Be content with what you have. Don’t be envious of others. Envy causes stress. Don’t buy things to impress friends or relatives. Buy only necessary things, not just because you want something or because it is on sale. Prioritize your spending. This means you buy things that are essential. I have lost count of stressed-out people who have money for luxury items but no money for essentials.
Buy a house within your budget: Buy a house just the right size so you don’t have to make big mortgage payments. The commonest mistake newly wed make is to buy an oversize house which leaves little spare money for anything else. Remember, in addition to mortgage, you will have to pay real estate taxes, pay for repairs and maintenance, heating and cooling, etc. Let the house be near your work place so you don’t waste time driving back and forth from work. You could spend that precious time with your family. Have a small yard so you don’t spend a lot of time taking care of it. Before you plant trees and shrubs, read instructions carefully so that you don’t have to do the planting twice. People who buy house ‘in the country’ far away from their job, often have little time to spend in their homes as they are busy working day in and out just to make payments on the house besides being on road a lot. Don’t buy a house costing more than 150% of your annual income. If you do, you will find yourself strapped for cash all the time. And that is stress.
Buy a car within your budget and maintain it well: Buy a small or mid size car that has track record for reliability. An unreliable car is a big source of financial headaches to millions of families. The commonest cause of breakdown of a car is poor maintenance. Have it serviced every three thousand miles. That small amount you spend on oil change could save you a lot of unnecessary expense and stress. If it ain’t broke, service it regularly! Avoid buying luxury car just to impress people or to enhance your “prestige’. If you need a car to enhance your prestige, something is not right.
Debt: Avoid going into debt as much as possible, except perhaps to buy a house and a car. Have no more than one credit card. Pay up the bills at the earliest possible time. Before you buy anything on credit, except your house and car, you must have enough savings in the bank. People who pile up unpaid credit card bills will soon feel stressed-out.
Business: Be aware of your limitations and so curb your ambition accordingly. Don’t get into a business you have no business to get into. Remember: 9 out of 10 new businesses don’t last beyond the first year. Do a lot of research before starting a new business. You must know the inside story about the business you intend to start.
Prioritize spending: You have only so much money and your needs are almost infinite. The main idea is to prioritize the needs. Different people have different priorities. For example, some people might think that owning an expensive boat is more important than paying for their son’s college education. Others might think that spending money on their flashy clothes is more important than paying electricity bill. Most people who have financial problems have their priorities all messed up.