Does a healthy account balance reduce your stress level? Part I

Yes and No!

In 2018 a couple of years into my dream job, I moved into my dream apartment.

Life had seen its highs and lows in terms of money by then. There had been times when I lived paycheck to paycheck and struggled to pay my bills. The stress of a depleting account balance had a cumulative effect, in that, it kept me tied to a stressful job and added to the stress of living in an expensive city.

All that changed after I got my dream job. After getting a pay hike and a sizeable bonus I started feeling the bliss of a steadily growing bank balance. The reduced stress from my finances brought in a huge spurt of quality into my life and existence.

But my needs and wants kept growing. I was not satisfied with a stress less existence. I wanted more- more money in my bank, better apartment, better life.

So come 2018 – 1.5 years into my dream job I moved into a fancy new apartment. It was bigger, more beautiful. With a bigger apartment came bigger aspirations.

I wanted better furniture, fancier things, fancier people in my circle. With it came added bills and added frills to my existence.

And with these added bills my bank account went back to a steady depletion.

A year into a fancier life, I realized – I had gone back to living a stressful life. The stress added to my work. And what was once a dream job felt like a dreadful place again.

So did a healthy account balance reduce the stress in my life? You tell me.

The lesson I learned from this was simple – stress is pretty man-made. A bank account mostly adds to it. A healthy way to deal with stress is to deal with the intricacies of being human and learn the lessons coming from a lived experience.

For more about life and its intricacies follow me @kjgupte