How to Deal With Financial Burnout

Burnout has become commonplace in our everyday conversations in recent years, and it’s not surprising. Having dealt with a global pandemic and the Ukraine war, we’re now facing a cost of living crisis and, *checks notes*, yep, the threat of a global recession. Cool, cool, cool.

Burnout symptoms extend to physical, emotional, and behavioral symptoms, including headaches, feeling overwhelmed, low self-esteem, cynicism, low satisfaction, procrastination, and isolation. Traditionally a term associated with employees in workplaces, burnout can extend to other areas of our life, too, including our finances.

While financial burnout may be linked to burnout from other causes, the money-specific symptoms of burnout are worth looking out for.

What is financial burnout?

Financial burnout is a feeling of overwhelmedness, helplessness, avoidance, or stress around your personal finances. Money may keep you up at night, or you may experience feelings of anxiety related to money, and procrastinate completing key financial tasks.

Financial burnout can be caused by a myriad of things, from rising costs to budgeting to mounting debt. Money is inherently emotional, and so our personal finances can often get caught up in other things going on in our lives.

How to manage financial burnout

Managing financial burnout starts with understanding where the burnout is coming from. Is it a byproduct of burnout in another area, for example at work, or while grieving the loss of a loved one or the end of a relationship, or are your feelings caused by money itself?

Next, see if you can identify whether your feelings are linked to over-engagement or under-engagement with your finances. Here’s why:

Some forms of financial burnout come from working too hard towards a goal at an unsustainable rate. For example, if you’re paying off debt and you’ve been living ultra-frugally for some time, financial burnout can ensue from focusing too much on cost-cutting.

Other forms of financial burnout can be caused by or can cause, avoidance of your finances. You may have let expenses pile up without paying them, have last year’s tax return to file, or know you need to clean up your spending habits but don’t know where to start.

Understanding the difference between the two is important for what you do next. If you’re over-engaged, we need to look at ways to step back. If you’re under-engaged, we need to find ways to safely start facing your finances.

Overcoming financial burnout

When you feel burned out, taking action on those feelings can feel draining and impossible, so we need to approach with caution. Start by creating a safe space for yourself without distractions or interruptions. Then grab a piece of paper and brainstorm or mind map the key themes that are causing you to feel the way you’re feeling. Dump it all out onto a page — it can feel surprisingly cathartic.

Once it’s out on a page, walk away. Give yourself some space — don’t immediately try to tackle all the things you just let out. That defeats the purpose!

After a few days, return to your brainstorm and extract some of the key actions you feel you can face starting with. By extracting them from your brain dump, you can gradually take things off your mental plate one by one, methodically by problem, without facing the whole thing as one huge task that’s floating around your mind.

Preventing or intercepting financial burnout

Burnout can happen after a period of consistent stress, focus, or overwhelmedness — but we can stop it in its tracks if we know how. Here are some ways to prevent burnout from occurring:

• Check in with your money regularly. A monthly money date is more than a social media buzzphrase. It really can help you keep on top of things, and giving yourself that regular accountability keeps things small and manageable.
• Set realistic goals. Some burnout can arise from focusing too hard on a goal. This can leave you disillusioned with your finances, and maybe even lead to self-sabotage.
• If you see a mental health professional, mentioning your feelings around money during your treatment can be helpful as it may be linked to other mental health challenges.

Getting support for financial burnout

If your financial burnout is linked to financial hardship or cost of living pressures, there is help available. Financial counselors are free in many countries and can help you deal with mounting bills or debts and feelings of helplessness or overwhelmedness. Helplines for Australians and New Zealanders are listed below.

Australia

• National Debt Helpline: 1800 007 007
• Mob Strong Debt Helpline: 1800 808 488 (free legal advice service about money matters for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples)
• Small Business Debt Helpline: 1800 413 828

New Zealand

• MoneyTalks Helpline: 0800 345 123

Emma Edwards is a finance copywriter and blogger, on a mission to humanize the financial services industry by creating meaningful content that’s accessible and empowering. You’ll find her penning money tips at her blog, The Broke Generation, sharing financial insights on Instagram, or injecting life into content for her business clients.