You can add details about the info here. You can Save your work at any time and go back to it. You will see below what it looks like.
This information is about the specific health area mentioned above. It comprises a combination of textual and video information, on our site and on external sites. We will be adding new specific health areas and further information continually.
The idea is for you to understand more about the health area you are addressing before you get too far building your action plan.
According to the CFPB (the US based Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), financial wellness is defined as: “A state of being wherein you have control over day-to-day, month-to-month finances; have the capacity to absorb a financial shock; are on track to meet your financial goals; and have the financial freedom to make the choices that allow you to enjoy life.”
Financial wellness is critical for all people because it can help lower your stress levels. Stress related to money can affect every aspect of your life. Your personal and professional productivity could potentially suffer due to financial worry. It’s the result of successful expense management.
What are stages of financial wellness?
We like the 7 stages outlined by Money Coaches Canada, which is a framework people can use to identify their feelings and behaviors towards money, assess their current situation, and focus on the right things to improve their financial well-being, giving a clear and measurable way forward. The stages are shown in the diagram below and there is a link to the site for a fuller explanation.
How do you get financial wellness?
If you’ve been looking for 7 easy steps you can take to achieve financial wellness, here they are!
Dimensions of Wellness believe that Financial wellness is an intricate balance of the mental, spiritual and physical aspects of money. This unique combination is an ideal to strive towards in our dealings with money.
Financial wellness is having an understanding of your financial situation and taking care of it in such a way that you are prepared for financial changes. Maintaining that balance consists of being comfortable with where your money comes from and where it is going.
There is information available which will help you formulate your action plan – both on our site and on external sites.
You generally cannot create financial wellness if you don’t have any cash. All businesses need some form of start up cash. Debt or borrowing isn’t the smartest way to start.
SavingsDrive shows you how to save money and then develop a plan for wellness.
So do we really need to save money? Attitudes have changed. We hear about old people living in run down large houses, wearing clothes from a charity shop and yet when they die you find out they have left millions in a will.
Insurance !!! a horrid word, or is it?
Well Insurance sounds horrid in the original context of selling or buying insurance and the way it is done. But we all need it. Its sensible to protect what we have.
We insure our cars because we know its costs a lot of money if we crash. We insure our homes because we know how much it costs to rebuild or repair.
Statistically we always under insure ourselves.
If you found a golden goose which laid golden eggs would you insure it against theft of illness to ensure it continued laying golden eggs, of course you would. Most people in life build financial wellness through working in some form. if you are unable to work your wealth would stop.
If you’re NOT financially well and perhaps you’re in debt, then you’re probably feeling the pinch.
This is the mantra of the Financial Wellness Group, a UK based company which helps people get out of debt. They will deal with all aspects of your debt.
Breeze have a 5 minute blog article on financial wellness explaining financial wellness – there is an extract from it below, To go to the full article, hit the link.
You probably have never had anyone ask you directly, “How is your financial wellness doing?” It’s an odd question, but one that would be very helpful if someone did ask you.
A possible reaction you may have to that question would be, “What exactly do you mean by financial wellness?” Let’s address that question in this article, as well as some steps you can take to ensure your financial well-being.
Put simply, financial wellness is your overall financial health. It encompasses all of the areas of your life financially, including:
Self-evaluation and education are two of the tools you will need to use to help determine your level of financial wellness.
Honestly evaluating your financial situation can be both liberating and painful. It can bruise your ego if you don’t like what you see. Perhaps you feel that you should be further down the road financially than you are for your age. Or maybe you are just getting started creating a financial game plan and are feeling discouraged because of the size of the mountain you have to climb. When it comes to our finances, fear and trepidation are not unusual feelings.
Education plays a significant role in your financial well-being. There are many free resources online to help you better understand what the areas are you need to concentrate on, as well as in-person workshops you can attend, which are often sponsored by banks and investment firms. You’ll quite likely have to put up with a sales pitch, but the information presented can be invaluable.
Sometimes the owner of a video will not allow the video to be played on external sites. If you see the video is unavailable on the left just click the ‘WATCH NOW’ link on the right and the video will play in a new window.
This very short US video says it all.
Financial wellness does not mean pots of money. it means been able to live your life stress free and secure. be able to pay your bills and live your life as you want to. Strange thing is many people can have total financial wellness if not for their inability to break their habits. Breaking personal habits and creating your goals and make them happen can make all the difference.
In order for you to assess what you know about this health area, we suggest using a questionnaire. This might help you understand your situation in this area, or taking it might improve your understanding of the area.
You may be able to take this questionnaire online – either here on our site or on an external site – or download it and complete it on paper – it depends on copyright (and whether we’ve managed to build it on our site!).
The ways you can take a questionnaire:
You can take a questionnaire on our site. This will score the questions automatically and give you a summary showing what your score means.
Our questionnaire is taken from the Dimensions of Wellness – only 10 multiple choice questions.
You can take this questionnaire on at least one external site.
Fidelity do an online personal financial wellness score. If you fill in the blanks you see how you are performing across four major financial wellness domains; budget, debt, savings, and protection, and get personalised tips for how you can improve your overall financial wellness.
There is a US based financial questionnaire from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which gives 10 generic questions (drawn from a databank) which then tells you how you’ve scored compared the the US average – it provides different averages based on types of people.
You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!
You might think that physical, financial and mental health are quite separate, and for some people they are. However, often a problem in one area has a knock-on effect on others. Losing your job can lead to anxiety and depression, which can turn you to drink and impact your health.
You might have a severe issue in one area but that can lead to problems in other areas, and the people treating you for the first problem won’t be equipped to deal with these linked issues.
For example, doctors and nurses can treat you for a physical problem but can’t advise you about your job or finances. Nor for the anxiety that comes with it, apart from prescribing some drugs, which might or might not be the best solution.
We encourage you to take a holistic view – we look at all areas and offer support across the whole spectrum.
Even this view of health is simplistic, as you’ll discover later if you go down that route. You might want to consider overall health, or wellness or wellbeing, which include additional types of health, such as occupational health (how you are in your job). Then there’s happiness and quality of life – how do these fit?
If you’re interested in that, click the link here to see more information.
You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!
We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about. The first level we call health domains.
We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.
1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community
Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle. Within each health area, e.g. Depression, we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area. You can create your own Action Plan to address this area, and see
Emotional: Anxiety, Compassion Fatigue, Depression, Gambling, Laughter, Narcissistic, Personality Disorder, Sleep, Stress
Environmental: Environmental Issues, Greenness
Financial: Debt, Family Finance, Financial Planning, Financial Wellness
Intellectual: IQ, Personality, Procrastination
Occupational: Jobs for Different Personality Types, Retirement Income, Work Life Balance
Physical: Alcohol, Disabilities, Dizziness, Drugs, Fitness, Food Preferences, General Health, Healthy Ageing, Illness, Nutrition, Sleep Apnea, Smoking
Social: Communication Skills, Communication Styles, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Love Partnerships, Mental Abuse, Parenting Styles, Sexual Addiction
Spiritual: Are You Sensitive, Mystical Guidance, Spirituality
Each health area has supporting information and its own questionnaire.
You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!
One definition of health is:
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
The NHS define health as: ‘We use a broad definition of health that encompasses both physical and mental health, as well as wellbeing. This means we are not only interested in whether or not people are ill or have a health condition, but also in how healthy and well they are.’
We believe we also have to consider financial health, as this can easily impact physical and mental health. Click the button to see an example of how these are connected.
It gets more complicated…
The Active Wellbeing Society (TAWS) define Health as a state of the overall mental and physical state of a person; the absence of disease. They define Wellbeing or wellness as a way of life that aims to enhance well-being and refers to a more holistic whole-of-life experience which also includes emotional and spiritual aspects of life. We expand on this definition of health to include financial health and mental health, to make it synonymous with wellbeing or wellness.
You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!
We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about. The first level we call health domains.
We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.
1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community
Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle. Within each health area, e.g. Depression, once you have subscribed we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area.
You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!
Having established that we use 8 domains, you need to understand which you should concentrate on.
The 8 are:
You can take a questionnaire, which scores you in each domain. You can decide which domains you are strong in, and which you need to improve.
Another analysis shows which domains you should look at, but also which domains you want to look at.
You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!
People look at things differently. Some people believe things happen to them, while others believe they can influence what happens to them. Technically this is called the ‘locus of control’. People can have an Internal or external Locus of Control
Psychology Today have a 15 minute test which gives you a summary of your position you can buy the detailed results if you want to.
My Personality Test have a 10 minute test which gives you a summary.
People tend to take more responsibility (locus gets more internal) as they get older. However, external isn’t always bad – for example if you are physically unable to do some things you can accept it and focus on the things you can do. This American video explains the concept and gives examples of how this can affect relationships.
You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!
No matter how healthy you are at the moment, the chances are that there are some areas you could improve. It may be that you have a real problem in one or more areas, and you would like to make some improvements.
At YouDrive we accept that there are many different degrees of ‘not wellness’ in a large number of different health areas, ranging from physical illness such as covid-19 through mental illness such as anxiety through to financial problems like debt. We try and help where the problem ranges from ‘slight’ to quite bad’ – after this expert help and intervention may be needed.
However, especially in these times, we have to try and make these changes ourselves, possibly with some help from others, whether remotely or face to face.
The thing is, to make an improvement we have to change some things.
This involves changing our behaviour in some respects, and that’s not always easy.
Henry Ford, the creator of the assembly line, is quoted as saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.
Another way of looking at this: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – attributed to Albert Einstein.
Consequently we need to make some changes. The problem is that we have already developed a lot of habits, some of which we need to break and replace by better ones. Some of our bad habits have become entrenched, and the bad results they create in turn engender further bad habits to develop – in effect the bad habits can feed on themselves.
We need to understand how we can make changes and stick to them, and that’s what this part of your health profile is about.
It will involve some learning, through reading, some videos and some additional information and also seeing how you react to change currently.
It will also ask you to consider whether you feel you are in charge of your future, or whether you feel it’s all fate.
You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!
At YouDrive we try and help people improve their health. We use ‘health’ but we understand there are other terms such as wellbeing or even happiness that reflect how we are doing in our lives – if you’re interested in the different definitions and ideas see our page on the subject.
We want to help whether you have a particular problem – physical, financial or mental – or if you just want to improve some specific part of your life or just make some improvements overall.
You’d be surprised, but there has been a serious amount of scientific work done in this area over the last twenty years.
So first we allow you to assess your current health (or wellbeing, or happiness). We do this by questionnaire. Which one is determined by the type of person you are:
By the way, we take your privacy seriously – we collect information that you choose to provide but we de-identify it as much as possible and will never share it with anyone without your explicit consent.
You can then drill down into some specific areas and there are more questionnaires to see your situation in these particular areas. We provide you with specific information and refer you to other potential aspects of help. Our next step is to build a personalised action plan – for now we will make a suggestion for you to develop your own plan and then after a time you can see whether this has had a positive impact by retaking the test.
In future we will be engaging with medical and behavioural specialists to devise action plans for individual people with specific situations.
We have an overall questionnaire which you can complete which will assess your current state.
You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!
We all have our beliefs, attitudes and values – these have developed throughout our life based on who we are and what we have done. Let’s look at what these are.
The University of Reading explain: “People’s values, beliefs and attitudes are formed and bonded over time through the influences of family, friends, society and life experiences. So, by the time you’re an adult, you can hold very definite views on just about everything with a sense of “no one is going to change my mind”.
The combination of your personal values, beliefs and attitudes are your moral principles that guide you in life and affect your behaviour. However, your views can wildly differ to others and in an institution such as a school, these beliefs may be counter to the values of the school, child development or indeed the law.”
Let’s look more closely at the differences between beliefs, attitudes and values.
These come from real experiences – we think our beliefs are based on reality, but in fact our beliefs colour our experiences; also, an original experience e.g. when we were a child is not the same as what’s happening now. Beliefs can be moral, religious or cultural and reflect who we are. They can be rational (‘it gets colder in winter’) or irrational (‘I am never going to make something of myself’).
This is an immediate belief or disposition about something specific. It is a recurring group of beliefs and behaviours aimed at specific groups, people, ideas or objects. They will normally be positive or negative and we will always behave that way to the target group. Examples of attitudes include confidence (I can or can’t do something), grateful (I an entitled to / grateful for XXX) and cheerful (I am generally happy / miserable).
These are things (principles or qualities) that we hold in high regard or consider to be worthwhile or right / wrong. They are formed by a belief related to the worth of something – an idea or behaviour. Some values are common (e.g. family comes first, the value of friendship) or cultural (which the whole community have – see video at Study.com here)
Expectancy Value Theory suggests you balance your beliefs about something with the value you attach to it. The Theory of Reasoned Action suggests that beliefs and evaluation about behavioural outcomes determine attitudes, and intentions lead directly to behaviour.
Expressions of confidence – can change over time
Learned predispositions to something – are subject to change
Ideals that guide our behaviour – Generally long lasting and often need life changing experience to change
Iceberg demonstrating implicit and explicit bias – from Owlcation
Times of change can be a challenge, no doubt! Whether it’s a relationship breakup, job loss, or being diagnosed with a serious health issue. Or you may WANT things to be different, but it feels a little scary or overwhelming. The butterfly reminds us change can be beautiful, even necessary, in order to realize our full potential and live our best life.
