Do you experience any of these symptoms when thinking about your personal finances:

• Budget dizziness – when trying to create or even think about budgeting

• Debt fever – when reviewing your outstanding debt and wondering how you can eliminate it

• Sweaty emergency fund palms – when trying to determine how much is needed in your emergency fund.

• Late fee hair pulling – when you open your account statement and see that late fee charged to your account.

• Banking knots in your stomach – when trying to reconcile multiple account statements or trying to keep track of multiple banking relationships.

• Retirement savings rash -when trying to determine how much you will need to retire and when you will be able to retire.

If you experience any of these symptoms when you think about your finances, I am not a doctor but I believe you have what is called financial overwhelmedness.  Financial overwhelmedness is the inability to make a decision regarding your finances because you have so many questions and not sure what decision to make.  You are afraid to make a decision because you don’t want to make the wrong one so just don’t make a decision at all.

Since I am not a medical doctor I am not able to prescribe any medication to help cure this.   But here are some tips that will help you overcome your financial overwhelmness and hopefully helps you simplify your financial life.

FOCUS ON THE THINGS YOU CAN CONTROL in your financial life.  Do not spend time worrying about things that are out of your control its a waste of your time. Deal with the things you can control.  For example, you can control how much you spend and save each month. You can control how you allocation your retirement and non-retirement assets but you can not control the stock market or the price of gold.

TAKE ONE STEP AT A TIME As I always state at the end of my post take one step at a time to simplify your personal finances.  I truly believe this.  You must take one step at a time if not you will overwhelm yourself with the information and decisions.  So instead of trying to tackle multiple financial task at a time break them down into simple task or steps to make the process less overwhelming.

ASK FOR HELP If you feeling overwhelmed ask for someone to help you.  I am sure you can someone a friend or family member who has dealt with your situation that is overwhelming you.  If not there are many personal finance bloggers who can provide you with a solution.

TAKE ACTION do not just sit there and not do anything or say to yourself I don’t know where to begin.  Even if you are overwhelmed you will have to begin at some point so why not now.  Take action by take that one step at a time as was identified earlier.  You will only be able to cure yourself by take some action even if its one tiny step.  It’s much easier to tackle one situation at a time then to try to tackle them all at once.

What are some other ways that you have overcome financial overwhelmness?

Til next time take it one step at a time to simplify your finances.

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