single mum finance

Creating the future: part I

/ Gracie Sunderland

I love setting goals. There is a real sense of purpose that comes with thinking about goals, and a feeling that you are creating a meaningful future.

I also love goal setting because it’s free (woohoo) and feels great. Whilst it’s crucial to have a vision and targets, for myself I know I can use thinking about goals as a way of staring off into the middle-distance whilst feeling like I am achieving something.

The last few weeks for me have been around looking at my life with a real focus on creating a plan. Abe Lincoln said “The best way to predict the future is to create it” and right now I’m so inspired by the future I’m predicting that actually starting to go deep into the detail feels like a joy.

Planning for the future with this stunning view in Kampala. Lucky girl!

One aspect of this shift in focus has been consciously trying to engage more with postive energy. Mr Giver-Of-Stars and I had a few days in Kampala and the amount of positive motivation and the influence that has had on my current thinking is immense. It’s obvious, but if you’re feeling stuck then having a fresh persepctive – especially from someone you admire – can get you back on track.

The first thing has been going back to get clarity on my goals. And yes this involved a bit more middle-distance-staring, but if you’re overlooking Lake Victoria then that’s no bad thing. One difference this time was considering HARD goals (as opposed to SMART goals which might be useful but just make me think of poorly-run office retreats). HARD goals focus on more existentialist concerns, and invite you to consider four facets of your goals, the extent to which they are Heartfelt, Animated, Required, Difficult.

There is a lot of evidence that people are more motivated by goals which are difficult: that the challenge is the thing that pushes us to move ahead. Conversely, the challenges have to be achievable otherwise the mountain is too steep. For me, aiming to become an Olympic gymnast for example, is probably a few steps (or a few twirly-ribboned dance moves) too far. But pushing yourself is exhilarating, so set your boundaries as wide as possible and go for it.

Keep going: the sun will rise again

The last two years though have shown how much things can change. As such, the idea of setting goals which are heartfelt and make you feel animated. A deep connection to your goal means that you are more likely not just to reach it but to be able to nimbly react to changing circumstances and continue to work towards it. This malleability also means you can flex your approach as needed: whilst the plan absolutely matters, the attachment is to achieving the results.

So this week I am planning to take all that motivation and energy and head back over to my five-year plan. See you on the flip side!

Courage!

/ Gracie Sunderland

Blimey, what a week. Not much to say other than O. M. G. It just keeps coming – too much work, issues going on with my parents’ health, ALL the world disasters. Things feel slippery and twisting and I can’t quite get a grip on any of them.

I’ve written before about overwhelm and whilst I still go there, mostly at the moment I’m just knackered. Trying to keep all the plates spinning seems increasingly unlikely. I am definitely making some crappy choices – staying up a bit too late, eating a bit too little, drinking a bit too much. None of this to the extent where it’s really damaging, but cumulatively it’s not really helping.

Slippery when wet/tired/gumpy. Photo by Itay Peer on Unsplash

In her amazing book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bonnie Ware, a palliative care nurse, reflects on the most common things that people realise toward the end of their lives. The one which struck me wasn’t ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’ but ‘I wish I had let myself be happier‘. Ware says:

“This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.”

Bonnie Ware on what holds us back from happiness

This week I also read Alexandra Fuller’s ‘Leaving Before the Rains Come‘ about the lengthy unravelling of her twenty year marriage which had some similar reflections. The comfort in habits and ruts, however destructive they are, can feel like the only thing holding us together. There are lots of other truths here – what it means to collapse a life that you have actively participated in creating and the impact that has on others – and realising that change means loss.

Without meaning to sound like a crappy instagram meme: change is terrifying. But refusing to grow, and regretting what you might have missed out on, is much, much scarier.

That light wants to shine on ME? Hell no! Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

Sometimes I recognise that I am afraid to want things – afraid that wanting ‘too much’ or getting out of my lane will just end in ignominy and heartbreak. I get in the way of my own happiness. Which is ridiculous (and frustrating) but also feels like just an ass-hat way of being ungrateful. As well as all the slippery uncertainties in my life at the moment there are some amazing things: things I have prayed for and worked for and believed in. It’s taking daily work just to try and live in those moments, to not hold on too tightly and not so loosely that I drop them. Phew. No wonder I’m knackered.

So, on we go. Back out into the world and the new week with courage and gratitude. It will all work out.

Indeed. Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Self-identity, decision making and FIRE

/ Gracie Sunderland

Apologies for seeming self-obsessed these days, lurching from talking about radical self-care to self-identity. I could argue that it’s because western society is relentlessly individualistic, or that as a single parent there’s a whole lot of me-myself-and-I about my decision making. There are arguments within the FIRE community that pursuing this goal gives a whole load of freedom to redefine yourself: that we are more than our jobs, and can therefore move out of the social expectations which bind us to a particular path.

The question I have been asking myself this week, then, is who is the ‘you’ which is in charge of that decision making?

Who are you at this particular moment? Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Partly this has come up because I realised that my decision making is not consisent but is always based (well, almost) on mindful decision making and therefore being satisfied with the verdict. It’s one of the reasons it’s useful to look back on budgets and approaches to spending with the mindset of who was I being at this moment – what was I prioritising? I can see days where I would buy take-out food, then months where I wouldn’t; months where my charitable giving changed; months where I just seem exhausted and anything went. I’ve been searching for ways to be consistent but I realised I was already being congruent. It’s just that my true north is more like a spin of the globe.

This week I read an article about how to reclaim your children which spoke to a common issue for parents as their kids get older and they start to feel disconnected. I think most parents – indeed most people – notice that sometimes time surges forward in huge chunks and either our kids or ourselves suddenly seem to be in a new and unexpected phase. But this piece articulated for me a more focused consideration about how to show up in each of those moments, and what the benefits or risks might be. The part that stuck with me said:

“This is what I wish I’d understood as a parent; consciously understood,” Maté, 75, says. “Take a 10-year-old child. How many years have you got left with them? When they are still under your roof, under your direction? Well, what is your goal for those years?” Looking back on his life “from above”, he says, he can see that his own goal “was to be a successful and busy and high-accomplishing physician. And that’s how I lived my life.”

Gabor Maté

This resonated with me so strongly. Finding ways to align my goals, or to navigate them in a way which leads to choices which work across the major priorities, is a constant battle. Add on to this public opinion (or just my mum’s opinion which can feel just as loud and is irritatingly better informed) and I’m sometimes amazed I don’t just lie in bed with the covers over my head.

This is where we are all heading, but you are so blessed to get there. Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash

I have written before about recognising the short space of time we have as parents of young children – as well as the fact that those years, as full of love as they are, can feel absolutely interminable at the time. What the quote from Maté also reminded me is that during those years, the me who has been in charge has come from different places of identity. Some core basics have remained the same, though how I feel about them and the extent to which they drive my daily living changes: I am a daughter, a sister, friend, mother. I am also a single mother, a mother whose children have a father with a very different identity, a Jew from a complex and mixed family, a humanitarian, an activist, a senior woman working in a difficult and critical field. During the time my children have been in the picture I have also been a doctoral student (and then able to answer the infuriating question ‘is it Miss or Mrs’ with – ‘oh, it’s Dr’) – a woman struggling with depression, a writer, and an ambitious leader.

On some days though I look at my identity-list and think that actually I’m just an asshole. Those are the days where the other things recede into the middle distance and it takes effort to bring myself back.

As Castenada reminded us, ‘choose the path with heart’: Photo by Noorulabdeen Ahmad on Unsplash

These days I wonder what it would mean to add lover, girlfriend, partner to this list. Could all the other things survive? How, in a world of having to constantly reshuffle priorities and feeling like I am always at least 25% failing, could I head out on these new adventures whilst keeping the responsibilities, joy and care I get from the other aspects? And the reason this matters is not whether this particular fabulous but nascent thing works out but whether I can see another shift in my identity which doesn’t shift the foundation of integrity.

And when I look at my decision making whilst it’s good to be conscious of those issues, that’s not how I should – or do – make choices. I make them with heart, and hope that the congruence across my ‘whole being’ will point me in the right direction.

No less than the stars

/ Gracie Sunderland

So I haven’t written for the last two weeks, which is bad because part of my commitment to this blog was about learning to – well, learning to commit I guess, which might not be my natural talent – but also about engaging with the practice of writing rather than focusing on outputs.

I have been super busy with work and was assuming that was why I hadn’t written, but being super busy with work is a) normal and b) an unacceptable excuse. I loathe competitive busy-ness and everything that comes with it – the toxic showboating; the tedium of having someone spend time that could have been better spent doing the damn thing telling me why they can’t; the letting people down and excusing it away.

Anyway: safe to say that it wasn’t work. I’m not sure at this point what kind of internal transformation is going on but I feel like a snow globe that has been shaken up, and I’ve been busy in anstonishment that my soul is dancing in the glittering starlight.

ALL the glitter: Photo by Luke Besley on Unsplash

I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about how to get through challenging times: the small habits, the next right step, the power of faith and of looking back at where you have come from to really understand how high the mountain was that you just climbed. I know – from my trust in God but also from the data – that brighter days are coming. But I cannot tell you how astonishing it is to find that brighter days are actually here, and I am not sure quite how to react.

Everything I profess to believe, though, tells me to be grateful for it but maybe not be surprised. And not to freak out when something feels too big or good to be true any more than I should freak out when the bad stuff feels overwhelming.

In the words of the Desiderata ‘You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here’. I fully believe this but I would take it another step – you are no less because you are the stars. Science (actual science, not The Lizard Times) agrees, saying that ‘almost all the elements in the human body were made in a star and may have been through several supernovas‘.

Reach for the stars because you are the stars: Photo by Phil Botha on Unsplash

What does it mean (and indeed you might ask, why is this relevant to a blog on FIRE? Though if you are asking that I cannot imagine it’s for the first time…)?

You don’t know what is coming to transform you, nor what you will look like after you’ve been through the fire. And transformation comes in all kinds of guises: from lightening bolts to erosion: from a life-changing medical diagnosis to unexpectedly and outrageously falling for someone.* You can plan for things but you can’t control it all. Yes there is data, both yours and that which comes from research or the world, your friends, the internet or whatever, but it won’t all be applicable. And even if you can know how things will work out, you can’t know what your own metamorphasis will look like. You just have to trust in the process.

So what it means is: I am not afraid. I’m not afraid or ashamed of the bad days, and I’m not afraid of being transfigured by the bright lights either. I can know that God created me and I will go back to Him: the circle never deviates from being a circle, things just look different depending on where you are. All you have to do is turn your face to the stars and marvel. That’s where you came from. Imagine who you might become.

*All examples in this blog are completely random

Health, happiness, peace and prosperity – L’shanah Tovah!

/ Gracie Sunderland

This week we celebrated Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. It celebrates the day the world was created, but also the time of year when G-d writes our fate for next year in the Book of Life.

It’s basically a period of reflection – what did you do in the last year? How did you act and was it in alignment with your values and what you want to see in the world? What do you want for the new year, and how to you acknowledge and make amends for – or repent for – times you weren’t so great in the past?

L’Shana Tova!

The thing I love is that after this process, we all get given another chance. In the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (or the Day of Atonment) there is a time for reflection. Whilst the idea of repentence in a spiritual sense isn’t for everyone, the concept of recognising what we have done wrong, and trying to make amends, is very much part of human transformation. From religious practice to the 12-step programme, asking for forgiveness and making changes are a valuable process.

It got me reflecting on how transformational it can be to forgive yourself. In the FIRE space, as in life, so much of the focus is necessarily on changing behaviours. Whether it’s looking at what matters in your life and trying to live from that place, or finding small habits that you can integrate in to your life, it requires change that starts with you.

Forgiving yourself for whatever has gone on previously can also be a way of taking back your agency and a sense that you are actively participating in everything going on around you. I don’t mean a sense that you control everything, but being able to make changes requires a belief that you are not just being buffeted by the waves.

But forgiveness is more than that. Forgiveness for me means really accepting where I am, and working from that foundation. Or in the words of Lily Tomlin, it means ‘giving up all hope for a better past’.

We have all reached our financial, social and emotional state based on previous circumstances, and our own decisions. I have written a lot about structural inequalities so it’s not like indivduals are equally able to create their circumstances, but we are all players in this game.

For me, I have to keep working on a couple of areas. And it’s something that does require work, rather than being something which is a one off. As with everything there are complex emotions involved so sometimes a trigger sets me off. But the main things are:

  • Forgive myself for the choices which led to being a single parent. I know society blames single parents for pretty much all social evils, but I mean here being ok with the fact that this is where I am. Whilst some people, for whom I have huge respect, become single parents by choice, that wasn’t my hope. And a lot of our struggles are based on being a one-parent, one-income family. But forgiving myself means not hanging on to what might have been, and moving on in a way where I can appreciate the blessings of our set up intead.
  • Forgive my dad for the financial situation I grew up in. So this might be over personal but my parents divorced when I was young, and my father, who was financially abusive, managed it so we ended up with very little. We were made homeless after he sold the house out from under us, for example. Sometimes when I see well off friends being supported by their parents I get jealous: this might be equally true if we just grew up broke since generational wealth is such a key sructural factor, but the decisions my dad made definitely add a layer of bitterness. Forgiving him allows me to just move on from it all, and deal with the hand I was dealt – which is one with so many other privileges that are much easier to appreciate once I moved on from focusing on the past.
  • Forgive myself for other poor choices. Like, I wish I had started a pension as soon as it was an option. I could definitely have started saving earlier and more; I could have worked out how much work my first house needed doing and been better prepared. I could have consistently made healthier choices. But I didn’t, and so I have to work from here rather than ‘what could have been’.
In the words of Frozen, Let It Go. Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

So – what is holding you back, and can you get past it with a bit of reflection and forgiveness? Maybe not, but starting from where you are rather than where you wish you could be might be a much more comfortable journey and one where you can also celebrate what you do have, and all you have achieved. I bet you are amazing. How can you love that about yourself?

Frugal back-to-school planning

/ Gracie Sunderland

Ah September. Even though here in Denmark the kids went back to school in August, this still feels like the real back to school month to me. I always love this time of year anyway, the slight chill in the air but the chance of gorgeous late summer weather, and that brand-new-start feeling.

But it’s also a point where it’s easy to rack up costs, so I wanted to share a few ideas about how to save money.

And off they go! Photo by Deleece Cook on Unsplash

1. Work out what you need

Sounds obvious, but check what you need before setting out to organise it. Look up your school lists of needs and supplies, and check if they are all needed at the start of the year. My kids’ school asks for some strange things like boxes of tissues (and I always think … really?) but they don’t need text books etc thankfully.

2. Shop at home first

A lot of the things you need you might already have, especially if you have more than one child. Especially stationery where I feel like I have drawers full of pens, crayons, rulers and whatnot. You probably don’t need to buy new lunchboxes or backpacks, especially if you had good quality to start with. I saw a post on a FIRE site about a woman whose 25 year old daughter still uses the backpack she bought her in eighth grade – now that’s getting your money’s worth.

3. Then shop second hand

I put posts up specifically on the school Classlist when I need items for the kids, on the grounds that if mine need it, probably someone else’s will have too. My big things in September are rain and winter gear, given that we are in Denmark, and I bought from Classlist last year and from eBay marketplace this year.

Not my kid, but this is what back to school might look like. Photo by Deleece Cook on Unsplash

4. Organise a swap

My son finally has feet bigger than mine, but he seems to go up a size every few months. Since he plays a lot of sport this means new shoes, PE shoes, football boots and rain boots every. single. time. I refuse to buy any of these new but was struggling to find them second hand, so I worked with the school sports co-ordinator to organise a swap. It was really fun – we had all the boys (and it was mostly boys) bring in their old sports shoes and take pairs in their new sizes. It wasn’t great for the eldest boys with the biggest feet, but it was great for everyone else!

5. Use it as a teachable moment

The first part of this is for you to not get caught up in the hype yourself – it really doesn’t matter what ‘all the other kids’ are getting or doing. But then make sure your kids understand this as well: not just that spending wisely is a good idea, but that spending wisely also means caring less what other people think. My son came home last year and told me he was the only kid with a second-hand laptop, and it was a good time to talk through our values on things like consumerism, brands, tech waste, and how we treat our peers, as well as money issues.

6. Plan a budget for after school or clubs and stick to it

Extra curricular activities work differently in every school but dear lord they can add up to a huge expense. If you have to pay for extra-curricular activities, work out what you can afford and then be prepared to stick to it. I have various rules about clubs which the kids also clearly understand: if they sign up to something, you must do it for the period for which I have paid for it; they have to do at least one local club as well as those at school so they make local friends; and they have to do one thing which isn’t sports. But this is definitely the biggest expense for us in terms of new school year.

Photo by Oliver Hale on Unsplash

How has your back to school planning been going? I’d love to hear from you!

The tail end

/ Gracie Sunderland / 1 Comment

I’ve glibly borrowed the title for this post from the brilliant Wait But Why since I’ve been thinking a lot about how time passes. I spend a lot of energy thinking about what to fill that time with – how to make each moment a meaningful contribution of myself to the world.

In reality, I spend a lot more time making a meaningful contribution to emptying a packet of biscuits, or being Just A Little Bit Annoyed.

But this week a few things have aligned to make me remember that our time really is short. Not just short, but not guaranteed. I’ve lost a number of friends in my life and I am reminded that their time was cut short whilst I am frittering mine away.

Time to do…. what?. Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

Paula Pant had a great episode recently with Oliver Burkeman who has written a book called Four Thousand Weeks. Burkeman, who is ostensibly writing abour time management, has recognised that a lot of works about optimising our time – whether that means living mindfully, or getting through your to-do list – don’t recognise the basic fact that time is limited.

My mum always says – you can have everything, but not at the same time. It’s similar to Paula Pant’s ‘you can have anything, but not everything’ mantra. Some things are a finite resource, and time is one of those. Energy is another one: so it’s the number of shits I have to give (as it were).

Burkeman’s point is exactly that. Our average life span is 4,000 weeks which suddenly seems like it just won’t be enough. And he has some great advice about how to live with that in mind, knowing that we will have to miss out on some things, and how not to get crushed by FOMO.

Even if you are immortalised on a building wall, your time is finite. Photo by Mark Neal on Unsplash

There is something about having children which also makes you notice the passing of time, sometimes wishing for certain phases to be over, sometimes desperately clutching on to others which seem to have passed all too soon. It reminds me of Jonathan Fanning‘s poem about parenting: about all the last times we have of doing things, and how oftern we don’t even know it’s signalling the end of something:

The thing is, you won’t even know it’s the last time
Until there are no more times. And even then, it will take you a while to realize.

So while you are living in these times, remember there are only so many of them and when they are gone, you will yearn for just one more day of them.
For one last time.

So – this week I have been trying to live from that place. I stopped work at lunch time and made a bowl of steaming, spicy noodles, sparkling with chillis. I texted a boy I like who made me laugh. I quit the French classes I have taken for five years with the aim of getting a quaification I don’t need for a job I don’t want. I swam in the sea and felt the air turning to autumn. I lay in bed with my kids and listened to the rain. I lived. And I loved it.

You really are. Live from there. Photo by Bethany Stephens on Unsplash

Miracle on 42nd (birthday) street

/ Gracie Sunderland

Ah, here we are – that time of year again. I always have mixed feelings about birthdays – gratitude for the sheer privelige of each passing year, with the nostalgic sense of time moving ahead in a very finite way. And these days I get wrinkles, saggy bits, and bad hangovers. But as my mother would say, the alternative is death, so yom huledet sameach!

Woo! Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis on Unsplash

But this year, something feels different – like everything has changed. I feel centred for maybe the first ever time and it’s causing tiny miracles.

For me the idea of being centred is that my whole self is in alignment. It’s about thinking and acting from a place which is calibrated with who I am. It sounds really obvious, but the magic is the extent to which this reduces tension and stress, because I’m not constantly pushing against myself.

Let’s be clear, I can still absolutlely be a twat, get things wrong, get antsy. But for whatever reason, at the moment that no longer equates to spiralling down a sink hole of guilt or shame. It’s like my mental company has shifted so that my inner voice is full of friendly compassion and not the negative drama queens who played a loop of what I was doing wrong and why it made me unloveable. And when I fail I try ad own it and learn from it, then move on, rather than seeing it as another foundation stone in an exhausting life of failure.

I’m also not totally sure where this has all come from. I’ve written a lot about micro-habits and small steps, and living mindfully, so maybe it’s a combination of all those things. Recently I’ve also been asking myself some tough questions, and trying to act on the answers. Why are you going out for a drink with those people when you always come away from their company feeling bad? Why are you second-guessing something you really liked after someone else was negative? What audience are you playing to here – and what validation are you seeking?

A lot of these are also essential FIRE questions – what decisions are you making, and based on whose opinion? By doing that, what are you denying your essential self either now or in the future? Breaking habits can be really hard, both for you and those around you when you start changing. And it’s a life time practice rather than a destination so it’s not like everything is solved forever.

Right now when the world is burning, it feels like a miracle to have come home to myself. Happy birthday indeed!

Net worth update

/ Gracie Sunderland

Schools have gone back here in Denmark, and even though it’s August it’s clearly heading towards autumn. Maybe September will be beautiful, but there is a chill in the air.

We have settled into the new house, and done the first week of school with the new route and routine, and I am getting to understand all the costs associated with this home (clue – it’s more of a mystery than it should be). I’m getting ready to reset my financial goals and as part of this I wanted to review my net worth. Buying a home definitely made my savings take a hit – some of it went to equity but some also to lawyers, removal men, registration fees and so on.

Whilst I usually do this in either April with the end of the tax year, of December, right now I have that new-school-year feeling so thought I would have a look!

NET worth. See what we did there? Photo by Raghavendra Saralaya on Unsplash

So here are the totals and the comparisons, showing that I have a current net worth of £628,532.

 Value July 2021Value Dec 2020Value April 2020Value April 2019
 Pensions  £                     193,164 £              163,540 £              134,240 £           105,675
 Savings  £                       25,368 £                 83,287 £                 68,500 £             26,000
 House Equity  £                     400,000 £              343,000 £              323,223 £           304,000
 Emergency Fund  £                       10,000 £                 10,000 £                 15,000 £               3,500
  £               628,532 £         599,827 £         540,963 £       439,175

Three of my four pensions are ‘defined benefit’ meaning that increases here come from money paid in to my current work pension (also defined benefit); and money paid in plus changes to investments on my SIPP. The projections for all my existing pensions, those from previous employmet plus the SIPP, comes to an income of around £11,881 per year. In my current job, if I leave before 2024 then I just get my contributions refunded so I won’t include a projection from that until I’ve worked out my time.

Over this time, my house in the UK hasn’t increased in value, and I slowed down additional mortgage payments to prepare for the new house purchase. I also put a solid deposit down on the Danish house, meaning my overall equity in property has increased to £400,000. This feels like a lot in terms of the balance, but as one of the houses is rented out and brings in a net income of around £10,000 a year, I am ok with it for now. The main part of that deposit was pulled out of savings, which is why that went down.

Money, money money. Photo by Jonny McKenna on Unsplash

Either way this shows an increase in net worth of £28,705 over seven months – an average of £4,100 per month. I am pretty pleased with that, especially with the significant amount of money spent on the house purchase, and it also shows me the need to bolster my savings and keep up the ‘set it and forget it’ aspects of my pensions. It also shows an increase of more than £200,000 in a little more than two years, which I am really proud of!

How is your net worth looking these days? I’d love to hear from you!

Anxiety

/ Gracie Sunderland

Trigger warning – this post talks about mental health issues including suicide. If you are having a hard time, please reach out to the Samaritans or someone else you can talk to.

I’m glad to be back after the holidays. Other than the great few days spent isolating at my brother’s I ended up mostly working, it was so important to reconnet with friends and family (and fish ‘n’ chips), and just be somewhere else.

I’ve also been focusing on supporting my son who had his first anxiety attack, on his twelfth birthday.

Not waving but drowning: Photo by Stormseeker on Unsplash

He has always felt things very deeply, and has thought a lot about what is going on in the world. Currently, the world can feel like a pretty scary place, so it’s not at all surprising that the British Psychological Society found recently that one-third of 11-18 year olds are struggling to cope with their mental wellbeing at this time, and would benefit from support.

But he had an anxiety attack so strong and terrifyint that he was rushed to hospital for tests, and spent his birthday evening in a children’s ward. I was very glad for the support and calm care of the Danish health system, and for my boy’s tenacity and confidence in dealing with the episode. It was scary, but there was no shame around it.

My fear now, for both of us, is where this is coming from and what it means for his life. And that made me think about the relationships between fear and action. I should say upfront that I am not a doctor, psychologist or expert in anything other than my family and my opinions – which is what this blog is about. So if anything here triggers issues for you then please do get in touch with the professionals.

Photo credit

Money and mental health have been closely linked for a long time. UK charity MIND found that there is a cyclical relationship – having issues with money can negatively impact your mental health, making you feel anxious, unable to sleep at night or concentrate, and uncertain about the future. On the other hand having pre-existing mental health issues can make you struggle with money, whether through also finding it difficult to find or hold down a job, or to engage with things like communicating or negotiating with companies if you get into debt.

Of course both issues impact people in different ways, but MIND found that people with debt and money issues are three times more likely to have mental health problems. A study from the US found that when these challenges impact people’s lives further into issues such as losing a job or a home, people become 20 times more likely to commit suicide.

The pandemic has massively exacerbated financial stress for so many people. A study in October 2020 found that 70% of UK respondents were stressed about being able to meet rent, bills and basic needs at the end of the month. Many of the temporary fixes of COVID, from furloughs to support grants for small businesses, is coming to an end and we are only just starting to see the new economic landscape and what is possible.

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I don’t know what the answers are. From a FIRE perspective, the impact of the pandemic has made me beyond grateful that I have a steady job, no debt and an emergency fund. But with all the uncertainty it’s a terrifying time for people who are just getting started.

So the advice I leave you with is the same as the advice I am giving myself as a mum who is struggling, and that I have given to my son: be kind to yourself. Do the tiny steps which are open to you now, and don’t worry about those coming up in the future. You will deal with them when they come: you will have built the foundation you need through your small actions and you will be ready when they arrive. You don’t need to be ready now, you just need to be you. Breathe as deep as you can. Know that you are loved. You got this.