Debt is a difficult topic to broach even at the best of times. Financial insecurity is a stressful and even dangerous situation to find oneself in, and a situation that many more are finding themselves in with each passing month; the ongoing cost-of-living crisis continues to threaten the financial health of millions upon millions of households, and more people are facing serious financial hardship now than ever.
The tangible impacts of finding oneself in debt are naturally those that steal the headlines. Hunger, delayed payments and bailiff involvement are all horrendous things to weather. But less spoken-about are the psychological impacts of debt, and how best to weather the incomparable stress of failing to make the numbers work.
Debt and Mental Health
The negative mental health impacts of debt are well-understood by now, where the stress associated with managing the expectations of lenders, your bank and your household can lead to numerous different outcomes.
Low self-esteem is a common one, on account of the feeling that you are responsible for your own situation. Anxiety and depression go hand-in-hand, too – and in times of serious crisis, we can be susceptible to serious mental health crises. Statistics suggest that as many as one in three people with problem debt have suicidal thoughts relating to their situation. What can be done to reverse this trend?
Paying It Back
The most direct route to tackling mental health issues stemming from financial difficulty is, of course, to address the financial difficulty itself. In many cases, these difficulties, whether failure to pay bills or difficulty affording food, stem from the owing of multiple debts.
Repaying debt is undeniably difficult, but is made unnecessarily more so when spread between lenders. Multiple overdrafts and credit cards mean multiple rates of interest, and multiple repayment schedules to track. Bad credit debt consolidation loans are a simple and smart way to attack this issue, turning multiple debts into a single debt with a single repayment schedule. Doing this also resets the clock on your debt, with your prior lenders having been ‘made whole’; this reduces the amount you might lose to additional fees or hiked rates of interest.
Long-Term Financial Stability
Getting out of short-term debt is only the beginning, though. With costs continuing to rise, and without a meaningful long-term plan, it would only be a matter of time before you fall back into debt and into the stress that results. Finding long-term financial stability is not an easy task, but maintaining course with the resourcefulness that first pulls you out of debt is key.
Just as dieting is as simple as caloric deficit, so too is money management as simple as keeping income above expenditure. Being ruthless with what you spend, even if just for a pound or two, can be essential to building the savings that will give you comfort.
