It’s that spooky time of year again, and if you’re reading this after dark, you can expect a knock on the door from ghoulies, ghosties and long-leggedy beasties (and hopefully a few cute toddlers dressed as pumpkins).

So naturally we got to asking ourselves what scares us most about money? And how can we work towards exorcising those horrible finance ghosts?

According to recent research presented by the Money Advice Service, one in five of us feels like we’re drowning in debt, with half of everyone in the UK owing an average of £4,000 in personal loans or credit cards. 

And the cost to our mental and physical health is high: an estimated 49 minutes per night is lost to worrying about money, and a further hour of our daylight hours is spent stressing about our debts. And around 20% of us report that money problems affect how well we get on with our loved ones, and also our relationship with those double-edged comforters, food and alcohol.

So let’s break it down and see how we can work on these problems.

DASTARDLY DEBT

For most people these days, debt is a reality. Sure, there are those crazy finance bloggers who have achieved a debt free life by 40. But can we mere mortals ever do that? Well guess what, those extreme-sounding bloggers are mere mortals too. Often ones who have been in terrible trouble with money in the past. So let’s heed their advice:

1 - be honest with yourself about what you owe

2 - set a budget, and focus on paying off the most expensive debt first (usually a credit card)

3 - attack the situation with your partner if you have one, so it becomes a team project rather than a source of individual resentment or fear

4 - reach out to a debt counsellor, financial therapist or online advice tool to help simplify your re-payment schedule, and don’t forget the mental health charity Mind and their money worries expertise 

THE FIRGHTENING FUTURE

Sometimes our anxieties are about how we’d cope financially if something awful happened. This isn’t helped by scaremongering ads asking us stark questions like “who would look after your family if you couldn’t work?”. If you have dependents, you probably think this to yourself quite frequently enough, thank you very much. How can we counter this existential dread?

1 - accept that life is unpredictable. You can’t stop random bad luck. But you can stop your attitude to it sending you round the bend

2 - set a time aside each week to deal with your finances and try to forget about them the rest of the time. When a money worry or query pops up, tell yourself you’ll address it at your weekly check-in session

3 - consider insurance. Those scary ads might be offering a service you could actually use to put your mind at rest, like payment protection plans for if you can’t pay your mortgage

4 - imagine the worst. OK, so this doesn’t sound like caring advice, but our fears are often based on the panic of not knowing. Imagine how you’d actually cope if, say, you lost your home. Homeless and insane forever until you die alone in a ditch? Or taken in by family and given time to slowly re-build your life with those who love you? 

SPOOKY SPENDING

It really is spooky how money can just fall through our fingers. One minute it’s Monday morning and you’ve meal-planned for the week, the next thing it’s Friday night and you’re drunkenly buying a £300 handbag online. Is there any hope for us?

1 - don’t ban all treats. Set aside a pocket of your budget for frivolous spending, but remember - don’t do it on credit.

2 - enforce a cooling-off period for shopping online after dark. Our night time shopping habits are very different from what we’re prepared to do in the cold light of day, and so are online marketers’ techniques, unfortunately. So never hit “buy now” until the next morning.

3 - add up how much of your precious cash you shed on magazines, tv subscriptions and takeaway coffees in a month. Could you put those treats on hold, say, until Christmas, to generate some more money in the kitty?

4 - be kind to yourself. Imagine what you’d say to a friend if she rang up crying admitting that she’d just spunked a grand on a pair of shoes she will never wear. You wouldn’t shout “You idiot! You’ll never get out of debt, and what’s wrong with you that you always, always do this kind of thing! You’re so useless.” Yet often that’s exactly how we talk to ourselves. That kind of negativity won’t help you grow and change, so use every mistake you make as an opportunity for self-knowledge and a bit of self-care.

We hope that armed with some of these ideas – and fortified by the positive and un-scary vibes we’re sending your way this October 31st! – you’ll soon be able to sort out your money-related mental health woes, and save some extra pennies too.