Financial stress can negatively impact families and individuals across America. When you’re navigating income loss, you’re struggling to invest, or you’re having a hard time covering certain expenses, you must have resources you can lean on. Otherwise, financial stress is liable to overwhelm you.
Between vetting any potential lenders more thoroughly to finding the right mental health and care services, there’s a lot that you can do to combat financial stress. So whether you’re struggling to navigate monthly expenses or you’re trying to find ways out of debt, here’s what you need to know.
Focus on getting out of debt.
Before you start investing, building a portfolio, or devoting too much money to a savings account, it’s important to focus on wiping out your debt first. Of course, this is much easier to say than to do. That’s why there are options designed to help you consolidate existing debt into a single monthly payment. This can help you pay off loans quicker and help you maintain a good credit score. Similarly, if you don’t have a lengthy credit history, you can use this to help you build credit and show that you’re capable of repaying your existing debts.
Whether this means setting aside more money for your monthly credit card bills or paying more than your car loan’s monthly premium, you often have to prioritize tackling debt. While you still need to have money set aside for emergency funds or rainy days, eliminating your debt frees up much more of your monthly income for other uses.
Work with the right lenders.
Whether you need fix and flip loans for a real estate investment opportunity or you’re working with a hard money lender for specific needs, you must work with a quality lender. The lender can add to or subtract from your financial stresses. As a borrower, you’re responsible for paying back any hard money loan, flip loan, or personal loan that you take out. As such, you want to work with a lender that caters to modern conveniences. This means enabling borrowers to pay online or through a mobile app. You also want to check your balance on the go, schedule payments ahead of time, and choose different payment sources depending on your needs.
Of course, you’ll have to work this all out with your lender. As the borrower, it’s up to you to do your due diligence, whether you’re working with a hard money lender or you’re a real estate-investing beginner. The right lender can make your experience that much better and help avoid any unnecessary financial stress.
Consider alternative investment opportunities.
Sometimes, it’s easy to get stuck in the same investment ruts, hoping for a different outcome but never seeing it. That’s because investing successes have an addictive quality. However, if you find that you’re trying the same tactics over and over again, you may want to switch up your investing style. For many, this means trying cryptocurrency.
While the cryptocurrency exchange isn’t for everyone, cryptocurrency trading strategies can help you take greater control of your investment portfolio and make more sound trading decisions. When you trade cryptocurrency, the goal is always to buy low and sell high, but that tends to oversimplify how complex the cryptocurrency exchange can be. However, with passive crypto mining and automation strategies, you can make low-risk, low-stress investments when you trade cryptocurrency.
Talk to a professional.
If you’re dealing with excess financial stress and unsure what to do, it’s only natural to start by looking at your finances. However, it’s also important to understand the root causes of these stresses and whether they’re causing relationship issues, job stress, and emotional strain. In many cases, it’s beneficial to see a counselor, psychiatrist, or trained psychologist.
With this, you have a few options to consider. For starters, do you want to visit a private practice, or are you more interested in teletherapy? For teletherapy, you can connect with a counselor no matter where you are. However, if you want to see an in-person professional counselor, you need to do location-based searches to find relevant practices. For example, “DC therapists” or “therapy near me” is a better search than “cognitive behavioral therapy,” which, while it is an important topic, won’t help you connect to a psychologist as easily.
When you’re working with a mental health professional or a psychologist, it’s important to understand that finances can exacerbate mental health issues and look for the root causes of these problems.
Use your available resources.
Whether your workplace insurance plan allows you to meet with a professional counselor or you’re conducting fundamental analysis of your finances, it’s important to use your existing resources to the best of your ability. Whether you flip property, manage a rental property, or trade crypto assets, some resources can help you subvert and eliminate financial stresses.