In this episode, Warren Ingram explores the critical link between mental health and financial stability post-pandemic with insights from Stian de Witt CFP from NMG Benefits. We discuss the importance of 'mental fitness' akin to an emergency fund, the financial impact of mental health issues, and the push towards normalizing mental health support.
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Have a question for Warren? Don't forget to voice note your questions through our WhatsApp chat on (+27)79 807 8162 and you could be featured in one of our episodes. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Financial Freedom content: @HonestMoneyPod
In this episode, Warren Ingram explores the critical link between mental health and financial stability post-pandemic with insights from Stian de Witt CFP from NMG Benefits. We discuss the importance of 'mental fitness' akin to an emergency fund, the financial impact of mental health issues, and the push towards normalizing mental health support.
Questions/ Topics:
For more valuable insights from the 10X team, click here.
Have a question for Warren? Don't forget to voice note your questions through our WhatsApp chat on (+27)79 807 8162 and you could be featured in one of our episodes. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Financial Freedom content: @HonestMoneyPod
Welcome to Honest Money. We're doing something slightly different today in terms of a topic. It's not pure investment. It's not pure discussion about asset cost returns, etc. We're talking about something that's pretty close to my heart, and it's about mental health and how that fits into our financial planning. If you thought mental health wasn't a big thing to deal with in financial planning, you probably have a different view in a post-COVID world, where many of us kind of struggled with mental health and the impacts of big events on the world and on our lives. I'm bringing in some backup today to help me discuss this, because it's a weighty topic. I'm very pleased to introduce Steve Undervitt. He's the Executive Head of Financial Planning at NMG. Nmg I'm not going to do too much about that, but just to say it's a very high quality financial planning business as well as doing a whole lot of other things. I'm thrilled to have you on the show, steve. Thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 2:Let's kick off In my intro talking about COVID. For me, it was probably the first time where it was almost acceptable for people in a collective to say, gee, we're not coping here. Life is not all okay all the time. It's not like mental health just arrived in a post-COVID world. It was something that was impacting a lot of people for a long time before. But it just felt to me, if there was one, it's very hard to say there's something positive out of a pandemic, but if there was one positive out of a pandemic, it made it acceptable to bring this out of the darkness into the light and for people to talk about it. But it did have real it did and does have real financial planning consequences.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head on that one, and what we've also seen on our side I think you've probably seen it on your side as well is that it is actually scary how many people that sort of tried to keep it under wraps the whole time, didn't talk about stuff. It came to the fore and the problem is they say it treats known by its fruits, but also through its roots. So the challenge here is the fruit that came out is things like people not having proper mental health, depression, anxiety, even people secluding themselves completely out of this, and then one of the other things that really came to play that I saw as shocking is how many people got divorced through COVID, and that's also a part of mental health. Is just waking up one day saying I don't like this person next to me or I don't like myself, and it's became a major, major issue, and I think, as you say, it's important that people understand that there are issues around that and it's okay to talk about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's okay. And I actually almost want to say it's critical that we do. You know, it's critical that we don't feel ashamed or embarrassed about this. You know, if you feel you know, if you're listening to this and you think you know what are they talking about, you know I'm fine all the time, then probably the bus is about to hit you. Just I know it. Yet, because we can't operate as human beings at 100% capacity, whether it's physical, emotional or mental, all the time. And so just you know I can't remember who there's one of these pop songs where she says this thing is, says it's okay not to be okay, and it sounds like a throwaway phrase, but actually, for once, a pop song is kind of powerful.
Speaker 2:It's important to say if I, if I can take stock of where I am and then I can do something about it, I can, I can actually. You know, whether it's just talk to a coach or talk to a friend or, you know, talk to a therapist, it doesn't matter. But then to take stock, rebuild and go like we were okay Most of us to go to say to our friends gee, I'm not fit, I'm going to personal trainer. But somehow we felt it wasn't okay to say I need to go and get a coach, or I need to go and get a therapist to help me get mentally fit, to get mentally rebalanced or reorganized, and so you know it's. I mean, you know we're not, we're not sitting on our psychologist's car, we're having a real business conversation that actually impacts many as well, and so I think it's yeah, it's a powerful thing, but I kind of want to jump into it. So how would you incorporate this? You know, if we're talking about something that's important, how do we incorporate it into financial planning?
Speaker 3:What I think for us I like to approach things like this is is that you know, the first thing is that sometimes education is is one of the major aspects of this, and it's like you had the analogy of a coach. Now you know, it's great knowing, okay, I need to get fit, but what's the steps towards this and getting fit, getting losing weight, getting your blood pressure down, getting your cholesterol in, in in play and in check those are all lagging indicators or that we're calling business terms or results or something you've done. So sometimes the, the mental fitness it's called mental and financial wellness fitness is a result of something you've done prior to it, in the beginning. So, for instance and I'm busy with an actually a credible book your Money, your Marriage, by a lady called Sherry Lowe. Her and her husband wrote this together and it's actually an analogy about finances and your sex life, but that's another topic. But one of the things that she mentions, which she described it so nicely, is she talks about margin and having margin in our life, and that talks to things like an emergency fund, because I think that's also one thing that's really important If you, if you living on the edge the whole time and there's more month left at the end of the money, by the 20th of the month.
Speaker 3:Then then you're stressed. Then you know I've had some knowledge in my life. We, we, you know I went into a bad business deal or something like that, and it has an effect on my, on my marriage, but also my emotional relationships around me, on me not be able to sleep. So so that one simple thing like having emergency fund, having a budget, making sure you're not living on the edge the whole time, but and creating a bit of margin in your life, to me that's, I think, one of the most important things that we can do to alleviate that financial stress, to help us to, to, to navigate through it.
Speaker 2:I saw a survey of employees of large companies a little while ago and I think it was stress about money, stress about relationships and then for the parents which is a lifetime condition stressing about their children and so depressurizing your life in a way, which is, I guess, what you're saying. Having margin means that if you've got a proper emergency fund we talk about a lot and honest money you know, if your emergency fund is somewhere around three to six months worth of your expenses, you know that's a quality emergency fund. Just remember, it's not the holiday fund, the handbag fund, the deposit on a new car. It's an emergency fund. It's the things you haven't planned for. But I guess you're right.
Speaker 2:So if you've got that and something happens, you've got capacity to financially deal with it. Obviously, there might be an emotional consequence to whatever's gone on, but you don't have the added pressure of now saying, well, I've got to go and apply for a personal loan or overdraft or rack up my credit card even more. You've got capacity. So I think that you know it's actually a key point. Maybe I'm just thinking on the fly now, but the follow up to that is, of course, you know then follow manage your credit cards, manage your personal loans, your overdrafts. You've got to get those things down so that you do have the ability to breathe at the end of every month and take control. You can't be at the mercy of the banks. You're demanding all of your salary to repay the debts that you've accumulated.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I sat with one of the largest insurance companies in December and the CEO spoke about one of his staff members that came across this HR explained this to them and alluded to this that this individual earning I think it was 21,000 a month that take home pay was 1500 grand because it's all garnishing orders and debit orders and forced debit orders here and there and people taking money off her salary, and you can't live like them. Then you go to loan shocks and then you go to family and here's another point Now you go to family, you borrow money from family and that has the potential to destroy that relationship as well. So now your financial stress carries over to your relationships, because now you're saying, sorry, I can't pay, and now this individual is angry with you because they can't pay and they want to pay. So it starts becoming a manipulative game and that's one of the major influences of not having that emergency fund or margin impacts relationships as well and that has a major impact on your mental wellness.
Speaker 2:You know I'm thinking about a lot of our country. The people working in our country earn a salary, are often breadwinners for multiple people and the pressure on them is enormous because they know they've got lots of close family friends that are relying on them as well. And I'm just thinking about it as you were speaking now that pressure on the breadwinners is multiple, more than when you're just looking after yourself. Now you're responsible for 10 or 12 people, maybe not entirely, but for some of their well-being. That's a very hard place to be and I think if you're in that position where you're struggling financially and you need to talk to the family about money, one of the things we tend to do is to actually have the conversation. It's an uncomfortable, horrible conversation to have.
Speaker 2:We try and hide it and try and do something about it on our own, and I'm thinking that if you're in a position where you're struggling, one of the first things to do is have a very honest conversation with the people that either you need to borrow from or that you are supporting, to say, okay, this tap is dry and I can't, and this is why it's not just keep going. I think if we look at suicide in South Africa. It's very hard. And you look at suicide rates among salary earners you are earning well, it's actually particularly high and it's for this reason, because they're in a position where there are so many people dependent on them, they don't want to let anybody down and they're not coping. I always think about sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 3:No, no. I just wanted to say another thing to add to that is the term status. And I heard a very interesting phrase the other day say status is buying things you don't need. With money you don't have to impress people you don't like and that has a just keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up with the status quo. And the scary thing is one of my friends, I sat with him. He grew up in Soweto, very, very prominent businessman, and I said to him so why do the black individuals in Soweto, why are they so obsessed with shoes? And he said, when we grew up we couldn't allow, we couldn't drive a vehicle we didn't have there was no foresight of any vehicle.
Speaker 3:So, like you guys have a status in the, in the suburbs, of driving a BMW or a fancy car. Our status is our mode of transport and that's our shoes. So and so what I want to say with that is it's regardless of whether you earn a lot of money or not a lot of money, be careful of status, because now you buy 10 pairs of shoes with overdraft and credit card and debt and we can't afford the things that we want to impress other people with, and rather say let's downturn on our lifestyle to make sure we can achieve that, that budget we need in order to have that wellness, and end of the month say, okay, there's money left. Because the other thing that comes to this now is the next combination of this is now I'm starting to stress about retirement because I haven't saved for retirement and all of this because my budget doesn't have any margin in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So so, stan, we're on. We're giving our listeners two concrete actions so far. One you have to kind of have a plan for how you spend your money. Figuring out what's coming in every month is kind of easy, but what's going on, you have to know, and if you're spending more than what's coming in every month, that is your reality and it's important to be honest with yourself and then start to figure out what is it that you can do to create a bit of a gap. What can you do to start to reduce that overspending and get to the point where you're actually starting to save and then get the emergency fund going? I think those are two key points. Are there others that the listeners should be following on?
Speaker 3:Well, I think it's important to educate yourself, whether you do it through friends. But there's a lot of books out there, some great books, books like the richest man in Babylon, psychology of money, how to think and grow rich. So there's a lot of self-help educational books, some of them very practical, and a lot of times our challenge is that our parents didn't teach us certain elements. And we've had this conversation you probably had as well, where you sit with a medical specialist and he says but why didn't anyone tell me how to do a proper budget, because I'm earning hundreds of thousands of months but I can't make ends meet because no one sat with him with the budget. And it comes back to education, and it's important that our listeners educate themselves and whether, through friends, get a mentor. There's so many help. The internet is full of it Books. You can buy, some books you can even download for free. So I think that's also something that's critically important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I must say I 100% agree. I think the one thing I'd say with the internet is there are some fantastic high quality financial websites and financial education websites out there, but please don't get your financial literacy from social media, because social media is full of influences that are in much worse financial trouble than you. All there are is very good with a camera, and so they'll go and stand in front of someone else's car and take a photo and say living my best life, and stand in front of an apartment somewhere or on a hill somewhere and this is my garden. All of that stuff's mostly garbage and so influences and social media are really destructive to financial education. So I love the book the Richest man in Babylon. I think what I really like about it is it's very short.
Speaker 2:So if you're not a big reader, I'll challenge you to say anybody can read that book. It's not an academic thesis. It's a very common sense, very simple book. I think anybody from late junior school, early high school onwards can read it. You don't need special financial literacy and it's powerful. The message is key. And then my current kind of favorite book of the moment is from Morgan Hussle and it's called Same as Ever, and it's maybe not 100% about nuts and bolts of how to invest and how to save, but it helps you understand the brain and it helps you understand how, over hundreds and thousands of years, we haven't changed. Our brains are exactly the same and you can't predict the world, but you can predict that humans will be unpredictable and you can predict that we'll be exposed to fear and greed always, and fear of missing art, the FOMO thing. All of those are very old, hard-wired responses we have. So it's a great book to add to the ones that you've suggested already.
Speaker 2:I'm going to ask you one more question, but before that I'm going to give you a time to prepare for the last thing I'm going to ask you. We'd like to ask all our new guests that are new to the show one question, which is and so you don't answer it now. I'll give you a bit of time but if you had to meet your 19 or 21 year old self, what would be the one lesson that you would love to impart with the benefit of the experience you've got now? What would be the one thing that you would want to tell yourself at that time? One life lesson or can be about money, can be about anything else, so you can start thinking about that.
Speaker 2:But before we get to that, is there anything else you want people to know about this? I mean, I think it's a powerful topic. I think it's something we've barely scratched the surface on this, but I think it's like if there is a summary from my perspective just telling people it's okay to be struggling, it's okay that you're finding it difficult pretty much everyone else is as well. What's not okay is to bottle it inside and to do nothing about it. You need to take action and you need to talk to people. It doesn't need to be paid professionals. It can be a, as I said, it can be a religious leader, it can be a friend, it can be a mentor. But use the resources that you have to just talk things out.
Speaker 3:One of the things that a lot of people might not know that they have at work, and a lot of corporates have this, where they call it employee assistance programs, where they actually pay an organization to assist you with issues like this. Because, remember, if you have a challenge with your mental health because of your finances, your work suffers in the process and it's to the detriment of your employer if you work for someone, so it's in the best interest of employers to actually help people with their mental health and with that type of scenario. So I also want to say the last resource you want to go to when it comes to financial stress and mental health is go to a debt counselor. A debt counselor is not someone that counsels you on debt or to stress less about your debt. They're actually there to take you through a process, and I'm not fond of debt counselors. They are a place for them in the world, but it's a last resort. So rather, talk to your employer and say, listen, do we have some employee assistance programs here that we can utilize? Your medical aid might also be able to help you on that basis, and say they have some help in that.
Speaker 3:But I just want to reiterate I think it's important to identify if you have a challenge. If you wake up three o'clock in the morning, you can't sleep, that's a symptom of saying you can't function. If you can't go to sleep properly because you're stressing out your money, if you snap at your spouse or your children because you're stressing about money, those are all telltale signs that you have to go and say I need to go and get help. So I think I want to reiterate what you're saying is get help, don't do this alone. You're not an island and no man is an island.
Speaker 2:I 100% agree. Thank you, Stan. And so we're out of time and I need to ask you that question. So if you had to meet the young Stian now just starting out work or just finishing varsity, what would be the one life lesson you'd love to teach yourself?
Speaker 3:Okay, the one life lesson is to focus and not do too many things at once. And do one thing, do it well and do it with excellence before taking on another project, because sometimes we take over too many projects and one of the one of the I miss misunderstood the term diversification. And diversification start one business and then another one and make sure you have seven businesses, or anything like that. That is only applicable once the first one is really successful. And that, just that lesson, listen, I think would have saved me five to seven years of hard. I can paint with that if I, if I did that brilliant.
Speaker 2:It's a brilliant point. Thank you, steanna. I must say I always tell my wife you know, I'm nearly 50 and and took me a long time to realize that I actually am only a man and a man can only do one thing at once, and once I learned that I like I've got a lot better for me. So I have to agree. Steanna Vit from NMG, thank you so much. It was a pleasure to have you on the show and I think you brought us a really important topic, that that we need to think about a lot. So thanks for for being on the show with us.
Speaker 3:Thanks for joining me. I appreciate it.
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