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October is the Depression Awareness month. And I am wondering why it has to be October! Probably because it’s the time of year people sadden with the less daylight, which could also trigger the Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD). During October, the stock market trend has more volatility; people’s moods tend to be more impatient during that time and it means that there are higher chances to drive each other crazy! When I reflect my “statistic” from the past 8 years of marriage, I know that J would become more anxious and her emotion fluctuate quite a bit when it’s the fall season. However, I was not aware of the sign of depression and I was denying the fact that she may have depression when I encounter the episodes during the first 5 years of our marriage.
What is a depression?
We react differently when we face stress or a life’s event. If someone feel worry, nervous, hopeless, restless and sad, showing pattern of lack of interest, withdrawal from friends and family, and these symptoms persist for more than two weeks, that is a signal for a watch out for anxiety and depression. Despite the fact, many of us do not recognize the early symptoms. For example, physical illnesses such as catching a cold or fever, the person coughs and squeezes, that person would know he may begin to be sick, and when more obvious signs of headache or sore throat, he probably should take some cold medicine and get some good rest! If a high fever is developing, your body temperature is over 103+F, they must see a doctor or go to ER immediately to treat it.
The point is, there is no obvious sign for people who has anxiety and depression, However, if you play attention closely, unable to concentrate and having trouble falling to sleep, feeling sad and tired all the time, losing appetite and significant weight loss, there are leads for the illness. Yet, a lot of us are reluctant to seek help or choose to ignore it, especially in our Chinese culture, we don’t feel comfortable to share and let other know about any mental illnesses.
Even if we wanted to seek help, it was hard for us to talk about what we are going through. Here are some the common questions people asked me or J when she was battling her depression:
“What is wrong with J?”
“Why are you depressed?”
“What are you upset about?”
“Don’t you have self-control?”
In a Christian circle, these are the comments we heard:
“Because you are not spiritual enough, that’s why you are depressed!”
“Did you not pray hard enough to God?”
“Being a Christian, you SHOULD be joyful!”
There is no right or wrong in these comments/questions, yet, I wonder whether these are what people would say to their friends if their friends got physical injured! Perhaps a “speedy recovery” is the most needed!
I don’t want to include other judgmental comments in this blog post, but some comments were hurtful to J when she had no energy to neither explain nor defense herself. Thankfully there were a few very good friends who really cared, and understood the condition we were in, all they do were just being there, no question were asked! That action of acceptance made a different in both of our life. During the valley of life, we come to know who our true friends are.
Why did I spend so much time on highlighting the depression experience? And, how does it related to personal finance?
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, our family budget was very tight during our early stage of marriage, it required two incomes to gap our expenses. Then, J lost her job and that even tighten our budgets. Though the road of recovery was long, J managed to find another full time job in six months after she was recovering. Our family budget became a little bit relaxed and cash flow was able to start with a positive sign.
Fall of 2009, three years after J’s first depression episode, she was going through a similar cycle again. Her signs of depression came back when she was triggered by several incidents at work. This time, it shocked me much harder because I was planning to save up money to buy a single house (aka “the dream house”) and we were planning to have children, too. With my knowing that J may have “a possible episode,” we had to put a pause on my goal and I certainly don’t want to go through the painful cycle again! I negotiated with J and hoped she was able to suck-it-up a little longer or switch to a new job instead of quitting it. Unfortunately, things went downhill in just a couple weeks, her depression aggressively tears her down, she was not able to work anymore and she had to take a short-term leave and eventually quit that stressful job, and we went into the same cycle again - tighten our belts, and to give up on buying a new home nor to have kids.
Beside medication and therapy, we reached out to our church pastor, we discussed our family situation and he brought up a good point of down-sizing! How could we down-size when we didn’t seems to have much left?!
He asked us a good question: “Did your family ever taken a financial stress test?” He continued, “Given with J emotion situation, have you consider downsizing from your current apartment and to find a cheaper place to live with a single income?” and “if J is recovered and able to work, it would be a bonus! It would be nice! However, if she can’t, we would still able to survive.” Our pastor also used his example on how he managed to have a single income for a household of five. We are blessed to have some guidance.
After hearing his advice, my clouded mind got cleared up all the sudden! The reason I felt so struggled was because I did not want to let go on our current comfortable living style. And I admitted that I had put higher priority on money, and early retirement over J’s health. After the conversation we had with our pastor, I went home and begun to calculate my financial planning on how to downsizing our living.
God opened an opportunity around that time because J’s parent would like to move out their own condo and find a bigger home that has more outdoor space (like the real American living.) So, I suggested that we could find a 2-family house or single house with an in-law suite and we can live together. We can share the overhead cost of utility and mortgage.
Thus, we were able to afford a nice home together in a not so wealthy town and my financial burden was eased out a lot. Since J’s second depression, we learned that it is better for J to work a part time job and I am okay with her decision. Although her work situation turn tough from time to time, I am able to calm myself down and can talk her with open heart - if you want to quit your job, you may do so and don’t need to feel struck. There are options and alternatives for sure.
As an audience, do you think I have a pretty tough life huh? In fact, after going through all these troubles, it helped me to recognize which are my priorities and together with J, we are able to let go some other less priority things. After all, I love J as who she is. We have a stronger marriage that we know how to appreciate each other’s love.
What is a stress test and how does it apply to our family?
I learned the term “stress test” when the stock market crashed around 2008. Many banks were bankrupted or merged with other giant banks. The market was continued to plunge and most of the major banks were unwilling to lend loan. It was a good time for any financial institutes to do the stress test to reflect/examine their financial health, credibility, liquidity and risk level. Likewise, we can apply this measurement to our family financial health.
If one of your family member is unable to work due to illness, how many months of expense can you cover? And what if it will take a year for that family member to fully recover, what kind of action you can to take to lower the monthly expense so the family can survive with one less income in that 12 months? In my opinion, you can consider selling a car if the family has two cars, cutting the TV cable, or even moving out the house and find a place with a lower cost. The goal is to bridge the gap between income/expense.
Nowadays, we all heard stories about either husband/wife lose the job; yet, they do nothing to react to the financial change and use credit card to cover their monthly expenses. This is not a wise idea but allowing themselves to dig into a bigger financial trouble.
Flexibility and contingency plan are important lessons for personal finance.
What kind of car do you or the family need?
What kind of house do you want to have?
What kind of lifestyle do you want to live?
Certainly, when you earn a good amount of income, you can afford up to certain level of car/house/lifestyle. Let me ask you this - do you really need that big house and luxury car? Or buy a new phone whenever the newer version rolls out? Or you rather choose to live with less. It is very important to differentiate “needs” and “wants.”
I recalled a book that I read a long time ago, it called "The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy" by Thomas Stanley. The book compiles a research on a group of millionaires and decamillionaires. He also identifies two different groups of people: UAW (Under Accumulator of Wealth) and PAW (Prodigious Accumulator of Wealth). It was an interesting book. One thing I learned from the book is the two ways to increase net worth:
EITHER by an increase on income/salary OR decrease on expense/liability OR do both.
Have your family done any stress test? Do you have a contingency plan if there might be any catastrophic event happens to your family?
What is a depression?
We react differently when we face stress or a life’s event. If someone feel worry, nervous, hopeless, restless and sad, showing pattern of lack of interest, withdrawal from friends and family, and these symptoms persist for more than two weeks, that is a signal for a watch out for anxiety and depression. Despite the fact, many of us do not recognize the early symptoms. For example, physical illnesses such as catching a cold or fever, the person coughs and squeezes, that person would know he may begin to be sick, and when more obvious signs of headache or sore throat, he probably should take some cold medicine and get some good rest! If a high fever is developing, your body temperature is over 103+F, they must see a doctor or go to ER immediately to treat it.
The point is, there is no obvious sign for people who has anxiety and depression, However, if you play attention closely, unable to concentrate and having trouble falling to sleep, feeling sad and tired all the time, losing appetite and significant weight loss, there are leads for the illness. Yet, a lot of us are reluctant to seek help or choose to ignore it, especially in our Chinese culture, we don’t feel comfortable to share and let other know about any mental illnesses.
Even if we wanted to seek help, it was hard for us to talk about what we are going through. Here are some the common questions people asked me or J when she was battling her depression:
“What is wrong with J?”
“Why are you depressed?”
“What are you upset about?”
“Don’t you have self-control?”
In a Christian circle, these are the comments we heard:
“Because you are not spiritual enough, that’s why you are depressed!”
“Did you not pray hard enough to God?”
“Being a Christian, you SHOULD be joyful!”
There is no right or wrong in these comments/questions, yet, I wonder whether these are what people would say to their friends if their friends got physical injured! Perhaps a “speedy recovery” is the most needed!
I don’t want to include other judgmental comments in this blog post, but some comments were hurtful to J when she had no energy to neither explain nor defense herself. Thankfully there were a few very good friends who really cared, and understood the condition we were in, all they do were just being there, no question were asked! That action of acceptance made a different in both of our life. During the valley of life, we come to know who our true friends are.
Why did I spend so much time on highlighting the depression experience? And, how does it related to personal finance?
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, our family budget was very tight during our early stage of marriage, it required two incomes to gap our expenses. Then, J lost her job and that even tighten our budgets. Though the road of recovery was long, J managed to find another full time job in six months after she was recovering. Our family budget became a little bit relaxed and cash flow was able to start with a positive sign.
Fall of 2009, three years after J’s first depression episode, she was going through a similar cycle again. Her signs of depression came back when she was triggered by several incidents at work. This time, it shocked me much harder because I was planning to save up money to buy a single house (aka “the dream house”) and we were planning to have children, too. With my knowing that J may have “a possible episode,” we had to put a pause on my goal and I certainly don’t want to go through the painful cycle again! I negotiated with J and hoped she was able to suck-it-up a little longer or switch to a new job instead of quitting it. Unfortunately, things went downhill in just a couple weeks, her depression aggressively tears her down, she was not able to work anymore and she had to take a short-term leave and eventually quit that stressful job, and we went into the same cycle again - tighten our belts, and to give up on buying a new home nor to have kids.
Beside medication and therapy, we reached out to our church pastor, we discussed our family situation and he brought up a good point of down-sizing! How could we down-size when we didn’t seems to have much left?!
He asked us a good question: “Did your family ever taken a financial stress test?” He continued, “Given with J emotion situation, have you consider downsizing from your current apartment and to find a cheaper place to live with a single income?” and “if J is recovered and able to work, it would be a bonus! It would be nice! However, if she can’t, we would still able to survive.” Our pastor also used his example on how he managed to have a single income for a household of five. We are blessed to have some guidance.
After hearing his advice, my clouded mind got cleared up all the sudden! The reason I felt so struggled was because I did not want to let go on our current comfortable living style. And I admitted that I had put higher priority on money, and early retirement over J’s health. After the conversation we had with our pastor, I went home and begun to calculate my financial planning on how to downsizing our living.
God opened an opportunity around that time because J’s parent would like to move out their own condo and find a bigger home that has more outdoor space (like the real American living.) So, I suggested that we could find a 2-family house or single house with an in-law suite and we can live together. We can share the overhead cost of utility and mortgage.
Thus, we were able to afford a nice home together in a not so wealthy town and my financial burden was eased out a lot. Since J’s second depression, we learned that it is better for J to work a part time job and I am okay with her decision. Although her work situation turn tough from time to time, I am able to calm myself down and can talk her with open heart - if you want to quit your job, you may do so and don’t need to feel struck. There are options and alternatives for sure.
As an audience, do you think I have a pretty tough life huh? In fact, after going through all these troubles, it helped me to recognize which are my priorities and together with J, we are able to let go some other less priority things. After all, I love J as who she is. We have a stronger marriage that we know how to appreciate each other’s love.
What is a stress test and how does it apply to our family?
I learned the term “stress test” when the stock market crashed around 2008. Many banks were bankrupted or merged with other giant banks. The market was continued to plunge and most of the major banks were unwilling to lend loan. It was a good time for any financial institutes to do the stress test to reflect/examine their financial health, credibility, liquidity and risk level. Likewise, we can apply this measurement to our family financial health.
If one of your family member is unable to work due to illness, how many months of expense can you cover? And what if it will take a year for that family member to fully recover, what kind of action you can to take to lower the monthly expense so the family can survive with one less income in that 12 months? In my opinion, you can consider selling a car if the family has two cars, cutting the TV cable, or even moving out the house and find a place with a lower cost. The goal is to bridge the gap between income/expense.
Nowadays, we all heard stories about either husband/wife lose the job; yet, they do nothing to react to the financial change and use credit card to cover their monthly expenses. This is not a wise idea but allowing themselves to dig into a bigger financial trouble.
Flexibility and contingency plan are important lessons for personal finance.
What kind of car do you or the family need?
What kind of house do you want to have?
What kind of lifestyle do you want to live?
Certainly, when you earn a good amount of income, you can afford up to certain level of car/house/lifestyle. Let me ask you this - do you really need that big house and luxury car? Or buy a new phone whenever the newer version rolls out? Or you rather choose to live with less. It is very important to differentiate “needs” and “wants.”
I recalled a book that I read a long time ago, it called "The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy" by Thomas Stanley. The book compiles a research on a group of millionaires and decamillionaires. He also identifies two different groups of people: UAW (Under Accumulator of Wealth) and PAW (Prodigious Accumulator of Wealth). It was an interesting book. One thing I learned from the book is the two ways to increase net worth:
EITHER by an increase on income/salary OR decrease on expense/liability OR do both.
Have your family done any stress test? Do you have a contingency plan if there might be any catastrophic event happens to your family?