Beating Anxiety and Stress without Spending Money
Beating Anxiety and Stress without Spending Money
Trent Hamm Jun 1, 2020 Founder of The Simple Dollar
Like a lot of people in the modern world, there is often a constant undercurrent of stress and anxiety in my life. I have a wife and three children still living at home, each of whom I try my best to be there for in a meaningful and focused way. I have a complex career. I have two parents that I love dearly that are older and in declining health. I have a lot of different community responsibilities and obligations.
All of that adds up to a lot of different things on my plate, and when you add to that the worries of the modern world, it can definitely add up to periods where I feel anxious and stressed out.
Of course, the modern world offers up a bunch of solutions to stress and anxiety, but you often end up paying for them. There are services you can pay for that will take some of the tasks off of your plate, from restaurants and take out services to laundry, maid and delivery services. There are endless entertainment options — that you have to pay for, of course — that will take you away from it all for a while. There are expensive hobbies with endless things to buy that can definitely pull your attention toward something more pleasant for a while.
Yet, in the end, those expensive services and products often exacerbate the problem, adding more financial stress to the equation than the other stresses that they take away. If I eat take out food all the time to save some time, it ends up devouring my money. If I throw my money into things designed to distract me for a while, I eventually come back to the same worry and stress and anxiety I had before, except with even more financial stress on my plate.
What’s the solution to all of this?
For me, it was figuring out a set of strategies that helped me manage stress and anxiety so that it wasn’t detrimental to my life. I believe a little bit of stress is positive, as it can nudge you toward doing things well, but too much stress and anxiety is a detriment. I wanted to find things in life that actually dialed down the stress and anxiety to a useful level.
These are the things that have actually worked for me in that regard. These may or may not work for you; I’m merely offering them up as things to try. As I noted above, none of these things cost money — there may be a negligible cost to a few of them, but they’re not oriented around spending, so they don’t contribute to financial stress.
Here are things in my life that I find actually reduce stress and anxiety without financial cost. Treat these like a menu. Use the ones that make sense to you and skip the ones that don’t, because the truth is that some of these things will click with you and some won’t. We’re all wired a little differently. The important thing to note is that there are lots of low-cost options for beating stress and anxiety and that these things work for at least one person out there.
12 Frugal Ways To Deal With Stress And Anxiety
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