Psychological complaints such as stress, sleep problems, anxiety complaints and gloominess may cause you to lose the overview of your finances. It can get in the way of solving or tackling the money problems, which often causes feelings of shame, anger, sadness or loneliness.

People with psychological complaints often depend on benefits, because they are (temporarily) unable to work. Your income that you are used to changes and you will have to make adjustments quickly. But what adjustments do you make? How do you get balance in your bank account and keep that balance?

Step 1: Organize your administration

The first step is that you make yourself a cup of coffee or tea, sit quietly at the table with all your financial records. Grab a notebook and list all your monthly income and expenses in columns. Keeping track of your income and expenses in a notebook is also known as a housekeeping book.

You can think of income as: salary, 13th month, holiday pay, tax refund, allowances, alimony, cost of living in persons or monthly or annual allowance from family. Add up all this income. At the bottom of the column you get one amount for your income.

After you have all the income, you create a column with all your expenses per month: fixed monthly charges, such as mortgage / rent, insurance, gas, water and electricity. Then the monthly costs, such as clothing, gifts, outings, meals, groceries and other expenses. Add up all expenses and you will get an amount for your expenses at the bottom of the column.

You now have two final amounts: 1 for income and 1 for expenses. Try to keep track of this for a few months. This way you get a clear overview of your income and expenses.

Step 2: Overview of income and expenses

Take the overview of your income and expenses. What do you notice? Ask yourself the following questions;

• Are the income and expenses in balance?
• How much can you set aside each month to save?
• How much are you short of each month?
• What do you spend more or less on than you thought?
• On what could you save on?

By asking yourself such questions, you can also adjust your expenses. Write this on your household book! Make adjustments to your expenses and view the results in the following months. Maybe you can save more than you think.

Step 3: Make a money box

You can create a digital “money box” on most savings accounts. I call this a buffer. With a buffer you can overcome unexpected major expenses, such as a washing machine that breaks or a refrigerator that suddenly fails. This will prepare you for unexpected expenses and you will experience less stress.

Step 4: Savings goal(s)

Make different saving goals for yourself with the amount of money you need for that. For example: I want a vacation with my children and husband to a resort in Egypt at the end of next year. Therefore I need € 4,000. I also want to get my driver’s license in two years and therefore I need € 3,000. Divide the amount over the months and see what is realistic to set aside each month.

Is it a realistic and achievable goal? Then you can start saving. Is it not realistic? Then ask yourself the question; what is a realistic feasible time frame for achieving this goal? 

Success in getting balance on your bank account!

Do you need help with setting goals or do you have money problems? Talk about it with your online professional.

Every moment in life you experience things. These experiences have an influence on you and your balance. This can be a positive influence, but also a negative one. Do you feel out of balance? A good way to visualize this, is by making a weighing scale. We will explain in this blog how this looks like, what the purpose is and how you get your scale back in balance!

Weighing scale: strengths versus burdens

On one side of the scale you have your strengths and abilities, and the other side contains your burden and vulnerabilities (see image below). Your strengths and abilities influence how you can “carry” any problems or worries. This could be mental resilience, physical health, good coping, social support and self confidence. The burdens and vulnerabilities entail your worries and problems, for example an emotional life event, a sick family member or problems at work. 

When are you out of balance?

When you have sufficient strengths and abilities, you can frequently handle some problems. But if you do not have sufficient strengths or you experience too many problems, the right side of the scale goes down. Your burdens will weigh more than your strengths and abilities and you scale goes out of balance. You will probably feel this in your stress levels, in your body, your mood or your sleep quality. 

To get your scale back in balance, you can do two things: 

• you can either try to reduce your problems (the problem solving approach), 
•  you can improve your strengths and abilities (the solution based  approach). 

This second option is frequently used, because not all problems can always be solved. Improving your strength and abilities is an important factor for a balanced life. 

How do I improve this side of the scale?

You can improve this in multiple ways! It is everything that gives you strength, energy, trust or resilience. You can try to improve your mental resilience. You can choose a healthier lifestyle: by sleeping enough, exercising and eating healthy. You can take better care of yourself and take enough time to relax. Or you can talk to people in your social network about the things you experience. Need some more help? A NiceDay coach can also help you improve your strengths and abilities. 

What can you do? 

Make up your own balance! What are your capacities and what are your burdens? You can write this down in your NiceDay Diary, or let your creativity run wild and make a drawing, painting or collage. Write down everything that comes to mind, how big or small it is.

Is your scale balanced? 

Balance is not something you find, it’s something you create – Jana Kingsford

When you are in balance, it feels like everything goes the way it suppose to go. You probably can remember a day where this happened. Everything on that day did go fine: you felt happier and you had more energy. These moments are the moments you’re in balance. Rest and balance are both essential to us as humans and to our well being. But what is balance? And to what extent do you feel balanced?

Weight scale
A scale is a metaphor to explain the term: balance. Using the metaphor ‘weigh scale’, you can see two ways of restoring your balance. On one side, the weigh scale contains heavy loads. On the other side, the weigh scale contains the carrying things. By looking what’s on the heavy loads side, you can decide what you have to do to balance those two sides. Also you can look what you need to do to upgrade the carrying side. By balancing those two side you will create more balance in your life.

It is all about balance
A healthy life means creating balance on many levels in your life. For example, creating balance between relationships and yourself, this is about your social life. Or creating balance between effort and relaxation, this is about creating balance in your body and spirit. To get the balance back, it’s good to focus on the disbalance. What can be the reason you’re feeling out of balance these days? If you have long working days, you can create balance by having as a counterpart relaxing activities. To get those areas in balance, you have to act consciously and you have to deal with the energy you have inside yourself.

How do you find your balance?
Think about the disbalance, what is causing this? Also think of an appropriate counterpart to the imbalance, this has to be achievable for yourself. For example, when you have worked hard and long for weeks without any relaxation one day resting can’t be enough to get into balance again. It’s also important to be consciously with the activity’s you attempt. You’ve to feel what a day of resting is doing to you. Observe if you’re actually feeling more relaxed and if you’re feeling more in balance after you did something to create balance in your daily life.

Often people think that stress influences your thoughts, but not only does stress influence thoughts, it also influences your hormones! Stress and negative thoughts stimulate the production of hormones.

Why are hormones good?
Hormones makes sure that your organs and brain communicate with each other. Hormones are like ‘messengers’, they send a signal to other parts of the body. There are a lot of different hormones, each one has another task to fulfill. Like discussed before, stress can activate some hormones such as adrenalin and noradrenalin. Our thoughts and emotions stimulate the production of chemical processes in the brain (hormones), for example, serotonin or dopamine. When you remember a nice moment, you will instantly feel better. This is because of your hormones. Dopamine and serotonin makes sure that you get that happy feeling.

Activating your hormones
Negative thoughts influence your feelings. To feel better it is important to convert your negative thought into positive ones. Also it has been scientifically proven that positive hormones will strengthen your immune system. The opposite of this is also proven, negative thoughts can weaken your immune system.

Hormones in balance
To get your hormones in balance, it is important to relax. Stress influences your thoughts, and this in turn influences your hormones. Your hormones react to your thoughts. When you are stressed, the hormone adrenaline will be released, which makes you feel rushed. This can be helpful when you need to finish something, but it can be bad for you when you are feeling it almost all the time.