Financial Self-Care
Financial wellness includes taking steps to live within your financial means and planning for, future financial health. Financial self-care can be one of the trickiest domains to work with because we all have stories around money, and they’re often pretty loaded. Part of financial self-care may be working with a therapist or coach to unravel your own “money story” in order to explore how money and finances were talked about in your family of origin and in your culture and society in order to better understand your own relationship with money and finances.
As with the other domains, I also would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that being able to fully embrace wellness within this domain carries a certain amount of privilege. If you have a secure financial base, you may be able to afford to work with a financial advisor, save for retirement, or invest in assets. However, many people do not have this privilege and live paycheck to paycheck or don’t have access to funds in order to meet their basic needs, much less plan for their financial future.
Depending on your financial state, privilege, and access to support with finances, financial self-care and wellness may look different. Please know that your journey to financial health is completely unique to your needs, lifestyle, and access to resources.
Financial self-care may include:
Explore your money story. This is where the other domains of self-care inevitably overlap with financial wellness. What are your feelings about money, saving, and spending? How do you communicate about finances with your family or partner, if you have one? What are your financial goals (do you even have any?)? It could help to work with a therapist or coach to explore some of these questions and develop a healthier relationship with money.
Setting a budget and sticking to it. To do this, you might consider using a free app (here are 8 recommended by Nerd Wallet), or perhaps you pay to use software like Quicken or Quickbooks. If it makes sense for you, you might consider working with a financial advisor.
Plan for your financial future. Again, there is a significant element of privilege that this step requires, however, even if you don’t have a lot of money to spare, you might consider ways that you can increase your savings or planning for retirement. This might include looking into ways that your employer could help you prepare for retirement (such as through employer-sponsored 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, or pensions). Again, if it makes sense for you, you might consider working with a financial advisor to explore your investing and retirement options.
Consider other resources available to you if you are unable to meet your financial goals or need to find ways to bring your spending into alignment. You might consider accessing your local food bank if you don’t have enough money for groceries; perhaps you explore your local library for books and entertainment; you might go to a local thrift store when looking for new clothes or furniture.
If you are able, you might consider donating to a charity that you care about in order to support others who do not have the same financial resources as you.
This list is only scratching the surface of financial well-being. To explore this topic more, you might consider checking out the following articles, which provide a more in-depth study of this topic: