Rising Tide Blog

Why we’re holding a workshop on financial stress

Posted by Matt Hale

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Life can be stressful, there’s no doubt about it.  Often stress in our lives is caused by things that we can’t control – it could be a family issues, health issues or a situation you’re forced to deal with at work.  With all the possible things that can be thrown at you in life, I was genuinely surprised to learn that money is the number one source of stress for Australians.

As someone who has built my career and much of my life around financial management, I find this statistic absurd! 

Take my life for example.  The hardest thing going on in my life at the moment is dealing with my 5 year-old son who was recently diagnosed with autism.  Learning how to navigate and manage his behaviour is incredibly difficult and it affects everything I do in my day to day life.  My mum being diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago was pretty stressful too.  These are the types of things that I associate with stress – not money.

You see, the idea that money equals stress seems absurd because from a financial advisor‘s point of view, money is absolutely something that every person has total control of.  It’s black and white, straight up and down or in a word, SIMPLE.  It’s not one of life’s curve balls that we all get thrown unexpectedly once in a while.

Stress relief is an industry in itself these days.  There are yoga studios popping up everywhere, meditation retreats and mindfulness apps.  The world is obsessed with getting our stress under control!

But I’ll let you in on a little secret:

No amount of yoga or meditation is going to take your financial worries away.  Don’t get me wrong, I find these tools extremely useful for dealing with other forms of stress that are out of my control.  But the reality is that if you don’t stand up and take control of your financial situation, once you snap out of your blissed out yoga state, those financial worries are still going to be there.

We were mulling over this in the office one day and the Yoga For Your Wallet idea was born!  We reasoned that the only way a person can reduce their financial stress is by regaining control of their financial situation.  How do you do that?  You arm yourself with the tools and knowledge you need and then you put it in to practice – straight away.

So that’s what Yoga For Your Wallet is.  It’s a 90 minute workshop we have devised that addresses the main causes of financial stress and provides you with real, actionable strategies to combat them.  We cover:

  • Debt (good debt vs bad debt, how to manage debt, how to get out of bad debt quickly)
  • Financial uncertainty ( asset accumulation, planning and ensuring you have safety nets where needed)
  • Keeping up with the Joneses (understanding of what’s really important and how you REALLY compare with others)
  • Living outside your means (budgeting, goal setting and prioritisation)
  • Dealing with complex finances (multiple assets/debts/accounts/financial obligations)
  • We’re hosting our Yoga For Your Wallet workshops in collaboration with Yoga Tree, a yoga studio in Elsternwick and we’d love you to join us.

Details

Monday, 22 June 7:45pm-9:15pm

Yoga Tree

5 Horne Street

Elsternwick, 3185

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