In my book Money Moments: Simple Steps to Financial Wellbeing, I recounted the time when I was facing financial difficulties many years ago. Now I want to make clear, I had enough money to feed and house my family, but there wasn't much for anything else. And I had a lot of debt weighing me down.

Despite (or perhaps because of) my financial predicament, I decided to start making regular charitable donations of £25 a month. It wasn't a lot, but it was a start. I decided to use a charity account because that allowed me to accumulate charitable funds and defer any decisions about making donations until I had a more meaningful amount.

A listener of my Real Money Stories weekly podcast, let's call her Chloe, recently got in touch. Chloe asked for my help in dealing with a difference of opinion between how she and her husband handle money. In her email, she wrote:

"My husband and I have totally different views on money. I am motivated by money and have money goals that I would like to achieve. However, my husband has very little financial wisdom. So much so that it was very early on in our marriage that we decided separate bank accounts were the way to go…”

Some experts think that the mental and financial wellbeing implications of the Coronavirus pandemic may overshadow the physical health impact. 

Social isolation and lack of human contact can clearly harm our mental health. But being unable to make ends meet, because your income has stopped or fallen off a cliff, can equally make you miserable. 

Money has always been a primary source of stress and anxiety, which can lead to unhappiness if left unchecked. And if your financial problems seem enormous or impossible, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and discouraged.  

Do you feel in control of your spending, able to cope with life's curveballs and a sense that you're building a solid financial base? Or are you living payday to payday, wondering where your money goes each month? Would one unexpected expense cause a financial meltdown? And are you facing the prospect of working until you drop?

Many people live a rich life in the sense that they spend a lot of their income on consuming and acquiring 'stuff'. Income disappears in a succession of daily contactless card transactions and one-click online purchases. 

There are many definitions of what it means to live a good life. Having enough money to avoid the misery of poverty is a key priority. But so is being able to choose how you spend your time and afford things that make more varied and exciting. While the news is full of tales of woe about how hard it is for people to get ahead financially, it rarely discusses how to build wealth.

The media is full of doom and gloom about the global economy arising from the COVID-19 induced economic lockdowns. Whether it’s rising unemployment, the prospect of further mass layoffs, house sales/values stalling or the leisure, hospitality, and travel sectors being on life support, things look bad and are likely to get worse.

It was my birthday the other day and I reflected on the half century that I’ve been alive.

I’ve experienced stockmarket crashes, a property slump, recessions, almost going bankrupt, being up to my eyes in debt with no income, a stressful exit from the business I founded, and losing money on a number of other business ventures.

Despite living in rural Suffolk, on the edge of a village with only a handful of houses nearby, last night (Thursday) it was great to hear our distant neighbours join my family in applauding those essential workers who are working long hours to keep core services functioning.

Most people who are either working from home, have been furloughed or sadly seen their work dry up, now have a lot more time on their hands.

There is an old saying that there is no fool like an old fool.

We all know people who never seem to learn from their past mistakes. Whether it’s choosing unsuitable romantic partners and suffering emotional heartache, doing the wrong job and not being happy or not controlling spending and failing to build financial resources, we all make mistakes. There is no shame in making mistakes, as long as you learn from them.

If you’re stressed about meeting the basic daily costs of living – food, housing and basic bills - you can feel mentally under siege. And that can make it almost impossible to make rational financial decisions, leading to you being trapped in a self-reinforcing poverty loop.

Some people have a strong character or experience some good luck, which enables them to escape grinding poverty, but many people don’t and so can’t.

There is an old saying that if you don’t know where you are going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else. And when it comes to your relationship with money and your overall financial wellbeing, it helps to know what good looks like. Otherwise, how will you know what changes you need to make and how will you measure progress?

One of my favourite TV programmes is the Channel Four series SAS: Who Dares Wins. Each series follows a group of men and women on a condensed version of special forces selection training.  

Each day the selection process gradually weeds out those who are unable to cope with the physical and mental stresses and strains of the course. Participants can voluntarily withdraw at any time, but each day the weakest individuals are removed from the course by the directing staff (known as the ‘DS’).

When I was a teenager in the early 1980s, I loved watching the quirky 1960s series The Twilight Zone. In the episode A Nice Place to Visit, small-time gangster ‘Rocky’ Valentine is tired of missing out on the good things in life and never getting the breaks that he feels he deserves.

After being shot by a policeman during a robbery, Rocky dies and arrives in the afterlife. Once there, all his whims, desires and wants are met. Beautiful women are at his beck and call.

At a basic level, humans are motivated by the desire to avoid pain or to gain pleasure, and research shows that our desire to avoid pain is twice as much as our desire to gain pleasure.

But when it comes to spending money there are so many temptations and opportunities that can cause us to lose control of our day to day spending, which can lead to the very pain we are keen to avoid.

People are often described as pessimists or optimists – the proverbial bottle half empty or half full. How you see things - whether a life event, opportunity, obstacle or external messages - can have a big impact on how you react to and deal with them. Where one person sees a problem, another sees an opportunity. Where someone sees enjoyment, another sees boredom.  

At a basic level we are all are motivated to achieve one of two things – to avoid pain or to gain pleasure.

But psychologists say that human motivation is also closely associated with each person’s sense of personal identity – of the person you think you are, or that you want to become. All the actions we take – what motivates us – is in pursuit of that identity or sense of self.

When he was 19, Michael Carroll won nearly £10 million on the lottery. Today he earns £10 an hour chopping wood and filling coal bags for a fuel merchant in Moray, Scotland, having spent all his winnings on cars, jewellery, parties, drugs, new homes and generous gifts for family and friends.

He told The Sun “My £10million vanished in just 10 years and I don’t have a home or a car to call my own. But I’m not bitter. Easy come, easy go. Going broke was the best thing that happened to me.” And he said he’s “never been happier” since returning to work.

In a 2003 study called “Do Pretty Women Inspire Men to Discount the Future”, young men and women were asked to choose between a cheque dated tomorrow, versus a cheque dated for a larger amount that could be cashed at a later date.

Each participant was asked to rate photographs of people and cars. The pictures of people were taken from hotornot.com, the website where people submit photos of themselves and are rated for attractiveness on a 10-point scale.

situation, as well as a tool to help you work out the value of professional advice.

Understanding Money

Finimize (in which I am an investor) provides millennials the financial news in < 3 mins in the form of a daily email or via their interactive app. Visit their website or the app store.

Having high financial wellbeing means money doesn’t cause you stress and worry, you can make choices to enjoy life from day to day and you are financially secure when you can’t or no longer wish to work for money.

Here is my 5 point checklist of actions you can take to maximise your own financial wellbeing in 2019 and beyond.