Debt Can Make You Sick
Being stressed out about your finances can literally make you sick. When you are under chronic stress, it affects all parts of your body. It lowers your immune response so that you become more vulnerable to infection. It increases your heart rate and blood pressure, making you more vulnerable to heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases. it can even disrupt your digestion, making it more difficult to get adequate nourishment from your food even when you're eating right.
And stress that comes from debt is pretty much a perfect example of chronic stress. As the bills mound up and you struggle to make your monthly payments on a paycheck that always seems to be too small, it just gnaws away at you. You're constantly worrying, even when you're not sitting at the table with checkbook and bills. Pretty soon you start lying awake at night, the numbers running through your head as you try to make the money stretch. Pulling in some extra money from casual labor or a small business can actually make it worse, because the occasional nature of the income increases the uncertainty about it. Will the contractor actually get the check out in time to cover the mortgage, or the big credit card bill, or whatever bill is the biggest monster growling in the back of your mind?
There are some obvious things that you can do to help lower your stress response, like exercising regularly (something that's easy to neglect when you're fretting about finding ways to make more money, or make the money you have stretch further) and eating right. You may also find serenity in meditation or religious ceremony.
But all of these are means of maintaining your equilibrium while dealing with the problem of your debt. Ultimately you need to gain control of your finances so that they are no longer a locus of ongoing stress for you.
Every person's debt is different, so what may work for Uncle Charlie or the guy down the hall at work could be a disaster for you. As a result, it may be wise to talk to a professional. There are a wide variety of financial advisors who can offer help on various aspects of personal finance. If you have a good relationship with your bank or credit union, you may want to talk with a personal banker or the like at your institution. They can offer suggestions for courses of action or people who can help you.
You may want to look into debt consolidation. Instead of having to keep track of five or ten bills, you have a single monthly payment, perhaps at a lower interest rate. However, if you choose to go this way, you must make sure that the payment will be affordable and that you will be able to pay it off in a reasonable amount of time. You don't want to exchange a number of small problems for one huge one. Additionally, you must make sure that you do not continue to accumulate new debt. If you go the consolidation loan route, you will want to make sure to close the lines of credit you're paying off so you can't just accumulate more debt.
You may also want to look into credit counseling. However, if you do, make sure that you go with a reputable service and not one that simply tries to maximize their profit on fees or effectively functions as a collection service for your creditors. If your debts are truly unmanageable, you may be better off talking with a bankruptcy attorney and making a fresh start, or at least getting rid of the debt you can discharge so you can concentrate on the debt you cannot.
As long as you are in debt, it will always be there at the back of your mind, at least until you get it paid off. However, if you can get it under control so that it's not constantly causing you stress, it will no longer endanger your health.
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