How to overcome financial anxiety

Find the cause of your anxiety

Finding the root cause of your anxiety and understanding why you’re feeling this way is often the first step to overcoming financial anxiety. Once you’ve identified the problem, you’ll be able to build a plan of action to help structure your thoughts and address your worries. This may be a series of small steps which will help alleviate your anxiety in the short-term, as well as a series of bigger steps that will help you reach longer-term goals.

Your plan should be a guide only and not another cause of concern if you fail to hit unrealistic deadlines or unachievable targets. Any plan should help you become better informed, take back control and know when to ask for help. Talking your plan through with a trusted adult will help.

Familiarise yourself with financial information

You’ll come across lots of different words that you might not fully understand when you’re dealing with finances. Many of these will be found in the terms and conditions that you’ll be asked to read when you open a bank account or take out a loan.

Examples include: APR, balloon payment, capital gain, accrued interest, penalties etc.

Confused? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. 

Ask your bank to explain what these terms mean. Do your research to see if others have asked the same questions and found an easy-to-understand answer. Read finance-related articles to improve your overall financial literacy, and try to learn a handful of financial terms each day. All of these steps will help to ease your worries.

Be positive

The first step to overcoming a problem is actually believing that you can. Take a moment to say ‘I can’ rather than ‘I can’t’ and then set out to prove yourself right.

Even if you don’t know something or don’t fully understand something, instead of feeling defeated and giving up, go away and find out the answer. You’ll be proud of what you learn and will demonstrate good resilience and perseverance which will help in the future.

Finally, write down a list of your achievements (no matter how big or small) and keep these to hand to look at whenever you face a moment of self-doubt. If you’re still struggling to stay positive, try doing stress-reducing activities such as taking exercise, going outside to a park, doing some yoga or mindfulness. 

For more tips on staying positive in challenging times, click here.

Talk about money

Talking about money is never easy. How much do you earn? How much did that cost? How much is in your savings account right now? These are all questions that most of us have been told not to ask or, if asked, not to answer. Money is often seen as a deeply private matter which makes talking about it so difficult, even if we're really struggling. 

But talking openly about money is a really necessary step in taking control and improving your financial wellbeing. Speaking to a trusted adult about your feelings will help you unpick your thoughts and anxieties, and provide another opinion or perspective on the situation. You may have been unnecessarily tough on yourself or you might have been worrying over something that is actually easy to solve.

Most importantly, be prepared to ask for and accept help. There are many organisations and experts that offer free and confidential advice to those that suffer from financial anxiety. You don’t have to be in a serious financial situation or earning a set salary to use these services. So, start the conversations today and you’ll reap the benefits in the future.

For our advice on how to identify and use your support network, click here.

So, what now?

The activities below have all been designed to help you get fully ready to take your next steps - whatever pathway you choose to take. Each set of activities ranges from a short activity which should take no more than 30 minutes, through to portfolio activities, which are longer, project-based tasks. The more time you spend on each activity, the more you'll get out of it, but you should be able to find something each week to fit into your schedule.

Why not start with the short activity first and then work your way through the remaining activities until you’ve completed them all?

Short activity

Find a free meditation app to download or a free online exercise class that you can follow.

• Give it a try now, recording how you feel before and after completing the meditation or the exercise.

• Repeat throughout different parts of the week and see if there are any patterns that show a positive result from completing these activities.

If it doesn't work for you, try something else such as going for a walk or listening to music, and see if this helps to reduce any anxious thoughts or feelings that you have.

Main activity

Using the information you've learnt from this site, create a video tutorial on ‘how to master your finances and wellbeing’.

Be as creative as you like, but make sure to think about the following:

• The style of the video and the audience – people of a similar age to you, who may be worried about their finance

• The appropriate tone/voice - calming, professional

• The length of the video – easy to watch and learn from

• The content of the video - how to master your finances and wellbeing

You may want to discuss a series of small steps which can help alleviate anxiety in the short-term, as well as a series of bigger steps that can help your audience reach longer-term goals. It is entirely up to you.

Talk through your idea with a family member or friend. Perhaps ask them to star in the video or help you edit the final cut.

The video should be informative and fun, helping the viewer become better informed, take back control and know when to ask for help.

Portfolio

Find three ways that you can improve your financial knowledge over the coming year and add them to your calendar.

It could be that you sign-up to receive a daily email teaching you a key financial term per day, read a financial newspaper at the end of each week, or attend a virtual free webinar about student finances each term, and so on.

• Add a clear note next to each idea as to what you hope to gain by completing it e.g. reading a financial newspaper to broaden your understanding of the global business market, and have discussions with friends about how this may impact on things in our everyday lives.

By building your knowledge of financial terms and concepts, you’re more likely to understand what is going on with your own personal finances and what you need to do if you ever face a financial challenge. It can also increase your understanding of wider financial issues that impact businesses, an attribute most employers will look for in a potential employee.

PSHE lesson

Set students a homework task to complete the short activity to find ways to reduce their anxiety.

• After a month, check in with students and find out what they’ve been doing to improve their anxiety levels and how they feel these methods have helped.

You may want to set a community code to create a safe space for open and honest discussion.

Focus on the methods of reducing anxiety, rather than asking for examples of the cause of anxiety.

For example, ask the students:

• What activities/exercises did you do to help reduce your anxiety?

• Did you notice a change in your anxiety levels?

• Was the result immediate or did it take time or repetition until you noticed a change?

Encourage students to continue to explore ways in which they can reduce their anxiety.

If meditation didn’t work for them, for example, that’s completely fine. Perhaps they could try something else, such as a daily run, baking or painting?