Stress is the silent killer. Looking back now, I realize how much stress I endured throughout my 22-year career in the military. Now, that I am almost completely stress-free, I can genuinely identify the stress in my past and what created it. Trying to live a middle-class life was my biggest stressor.
Many times we do not even feel the stress that is upon us. We may have $2,000 in savings and everything is going well. However, there is always a fear in our gut of “What if the car breaks? What is the A/C goes out? What if I need to travel to see the parents?”
How do you identify if stress is controlling your life? There are many ways to see the results of stress in your life. 1) You do not want to go to work. 2) You do not want to come home from work. 3) You have a short fuse with your family. 4) Your vices are your only pleasure. 5) You do not enjoy beautiful days. 6) You never have enough money. 7) Nothing in your life is good enough. 8) You focus on negative world news.
How I Beat my Mid-Life Crisis
Middle-class life demands that we spend our earned income on liabilities, kids’ sports, private schools, and vacations. It is a never-ending pursuit of bigger and better furniture, rings, cars, boats, RVs, homes, and vacations. The more we spend, the more we need our jobs. The more we need our jobs, the worse they treat us at work. The worse they treat us at work, the more stressed out we are at home. This leads to relationship stress, the worst kind of stress. But there is another way.
The only way to truly get yourself out of a stress bubble is to build a solid foundation. There are 3 types of stress that we need to be hyper-aware of. Remember, the list above is the result of stress, not the underlying factors. We have to find the underlying factors in order to effectively mitigate the damage. Most times it is a combination of these stress factors: financial stress, work stress, and relationship stress. I will review each of these and give my input on how to build a solid foundation in each.
Financial stress. The biggest of them all. I believe that financial stress leads to stress in all other regions of a person’s life. It is an all-encompassing factor in everything we do. “Everything costs something”. When you are not in control of your finances, your job has complete power over you. You are a work slave to the job because money fear is always on the top of your mind. How can you have a successful relationship if money is always a negative factor? My wife and I both grew up poor but even we had lots of stress over middle-class spending. Who doesn’t want to be able to provide a nice car, nice furniture, and nice vacations for their family? Sometimes we stress ourselves out trying to live a middle-class lifestyle when all we need is to live below our means.
My Grandkids: The Reason I Will Never Work for Anyone Ever Again
Financial foundation. It is vitally important that we understand finances, preferably before we marry. Having a detailed budget is a must. We also need to know our exact cash flow. We cannot let money stress us out so much that we don’t have fun. We need to have a “fun” budget built into our overall money system. Even if it is $200 a month, having fun and creating experiences is one of the top ways to relieve stress and build a united family. “I Will Teach You to be Rich” by Ramti Sethi, is a great place to start. Identifying all outlying debts will actually relieve more stress than we believe. Once we have all our debt laid out neatly, we can start the journey to paying it off. Seeing the results of your middle-class life may be very shocking. The sooner we record our spending, the faster we can improve it. “What gets measured gets managed.”
Work Stress. Most of our work stress comes from the fact that we do not have the option to leave when we choose. Being financially stuck at a job then allows our bosses and peers to leverage control over us. Have you ever seen someone who has “family money” at work with you? They do not have a care in the world. They know that whatever happens, they have a secure life. We need to get to this point. We also need to manage our own stress reactors. Every hot tasker that comes down for leadership, may not be that hot. We need to internally filter these items and decide which ones are worth getting stressed over. Not many are.
Work foundation. The best way to relieve stress at work is to become work-optional. This means to identify the exact amount of money we need for our expenses and then create enough income, from sources outside of a job, to cover those expenses. For example, if we need $3,000 a month to live, we would create passive income to cover those expenses. As we start to learn how to build our passive income portfolio, we will realize that our job isn’t as important as it seemed before. Then we notice that the stress we feel around us is just randomly created. There actually isn’t much to stress about at work. Passive income is the key to defeating work stress. The book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” is the most important book that you can read.
What is Your Rich Life?
Relationship stress. I believe that the first two stress factors are the leading cause of relationship stress. The other factor is that people were never taught how to love for the long term. We all have a period of “puppy love” that we go through. After this period, things such as work, finances, kids, family, etc… start to take away from our love phase. We actively have to rekindle and maintain our love. I recommend reading the book “His Needs Her Needs” by William F. Harley Jr. This book teaches us how to treat our significant others. This book will be invaluable to our relationships and the sooner we read it, the better.
Relationship foundation. Along with reading “His Needs Her Needs”, setting out on a journey towards financial independence is the best thing for a spousal relationship. It will solve our work and financial stress issues. And if we learn how to treat each other nicely and truly appreciate each other, becoming financially free will be the icing on the cake. Going on this journey is a life-changing event, and who better to arrive at our new destination with than our spouse and family?
This may sound like it is an easy task to identify and correct the stressors in your life. The easiest questions to ask yourself are “Am I happy?” “What will make me happy?” These questions will start you on your path of stress reduction.
I never knew how much stress I was under all these years. My wife and I always considered ourselves middle class, but once we really started to focus on debt reduction and creating multiple streams of income, our lives completely changed. Our $30,000 car was just a huge liability. Now it is paid off and the $500 a month goes into investments. These are things we are not taught in the mainstream media. Trying to live a middle-class life is probably the most stressful concept in the world.
Living below your means, increasing your income, eliminating liabilities, and investing in passive income is the road to less work, financial, and relationship stress. Avoid the middle-class trap. There is nothing at the end except working until age 65, missing our grandkids, and lots of stress. Let me be clear, there is a steep learning curve to becoming financially independent, and that is why most people do not do it. However, after that initial learning phase, you will see everything in a new light. A brighter light. A more stress-free light.
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https://www.pinterest.com/kingmarine/military-family-investing/Disclosure: I am not a financial advisor or money manager, and any knowledge is given as guidance and not direct actionable investment advice. I am an Amazon Affiliate. Please research any investment vehicles that are being considered. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
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