Tag: depression
There are 3 entries that are tagged depression. Now displaying reults 1 - 3.
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A Look Back At 2008
Posted on January 09, 2009 by Him
Whew, 2008 was quite a year. For us, it will forever be remembered as the year that we got married! But what else happened this year for us financially?
Life
To cut expenses, we cut Netflix out of our life. We also cut back on weekend trips. I was officially diagnosed with depression and learned some of socioeconomic aspects of dealing with it. After we were married, our first fight was about...money. It wasn't as bad as the financial infidelity that Her's brother went through.
Budget
After much trial and error, we finally made a budget that we stick to.
Housing
Our crazy but generous landlord increased our rent a whopping $8 per month.
Saving
We started a Big Dreams Savings Fund with the spoils of our wedding and related showers. We've decided that 2009 will be a balls-to-the-wall savings year.
Debt
The biggest news was the huge gift we received that wiped a good portion of the student loan debt. We even succeeded in not taking any more debt for the wedding and the honeymoon. As newlyweds, we've decided that tackling the student loans will be our first financial priority.
Taxes
This year taxes got crazy. I had a hard time dealing with them early in the year but somehow figured it out. But, at the end of this year I went back to a dumbfounded state about taxes. We didn't know if we would have to pay taxes on the student loan gift payment, but it turns out that we didn't have to.
In 2008 we were light on the posts, especially the meaty financial ones. Our main focus was on the wedding and not much else. Since we now have a future together to plan for we have a lot of financial stuff to talk about in the upcoming months. Stay tuned!
Depression and Finances: Socioeconomic Status
Posted on May 16, 2008 by Him
First off, I'd like to thank everyone for their support and warm comments regarding my newly diagnosed depression. I'm still learning much about it and how to effectively treat it, and welcome your stories and comments.
My psychiatrist gave me a document that outlines depression, from the etiology to risk factors to complications to treatments. It is an interesting and eye-opening read, and is also available on the web. In it, I found an interesting tidbits on depression and social/economic status:
The role of society and economics has specific implications for women. Being in a low socioeconomic group is a major risk factor for depression in anyone. Money, of course, allows greater access to good medical care, but this factor does not fully explain the higher rates of depression in impoverished people. People at any income level are likely to be depressed if they have poor health and are socially isolated. Some studies suggest that Western cultural attitudes that link income to social status may play a significant role in the connection between poverty and depression:
- In one British study, actual poverty or unemployment increased the duration of any existing depression, but it did not appear to play any important causal role. Feelings of financial insecurity, however, both caused and prolonged depression.
- Another study reported that Mexican adults who immigrated to America had half the psychiatric illnesses as did Mexican-Americans born in the U.S., regardless of their income. But the longer the immigrants lived in the U.S., the greater their risk for psychiatric problems. Traditional influences of Mexican culture and social ties appeared to protect newly arrived immigrants from mental illness, even when they were poor. Eventually, however, the consequences of Americanization added to poverty and led to feelings of alienation and inferiority.
It is indeed interesting how finances and social/economic status contributes to mood. When Her realized that she was on the path to financial hell, she suffered from anxiety and loss of sleep. Since we've managed to clean up our financial act, she sleeps much more soundly.
Her and I have seen how finances affects our moods both ways: Our finances have affected our mood, and our moods have affected our finances. Hopefully we will be able to get all of this in check.
Depression is Expensive, Denial Much More So
Posted on May 14, 2008 by Him
I'm depressed.
There, I said it. Not just depressed like in a bad mood or someone just kicked my puppy, but actually clinically depressed. This has actually been a recurrent theme in my life, and I suspect that it's also tied in with Seasonal Affective Disorder as well, because this NEVERENDING CHICAGO WINTER has sucked the life out of me and the other few million Chicagoans around here. The thing that was different about this time is that it has never been as bad as it has been the past few months.
Since this is a financial blog, I'll go about how dealing with depression can affect one's finances. Let me correct that: I'll go about how trying to thwart depression by doing everything except getting treatment can affect one's finances.
One of the crappiest symptoms of depression is losing pleasure or interest at things that used to offer them normally. When I first started feeling pretty crummy, I thought to myself, "Maybe if I go out with friends/eat at a nice restaurant/buy myself something I've put off for a while now that I'll feel better." I actually chose all 3 of those routes: I went out with friends more, went out for more meals, and bought myself a used Nikon D200
A few months ago, Her and I agreed that my depression started to affect our relationship; there's no money in the world that would be able to magically fix that. So I decided to go and see a therapist that I saw a few years back.
Seeing the therapist isn't cheap; when I saw her in prior years my out of pocket costs were about $75 a session, with the rest taken care of by my insurance company. Now that I have an HDHP/HSA I have to to take care of most of the fee out of my HSA account. Since there really wasn't anything going on in my life that could have been causing my depressive state, I was referred to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist proceeded to prescribe an anti-depressant for me. Due to the way that payment is handled with the HDHP/HSA account, the costs of both seeing the psychiatrist and the meds will be revealed to me at a later time. I've just started on the meds, so only time will tell if this particular one is worth the money.
Depression sucks. Other than the obvious joy-deflating and relationship straining properties, depression can have major financial ramifications as well. Therefore, if you're feeling depressed or just not right, there's no shame in going to a psychiatrist/therapist/someone who loves you to talk about it. My method of "self-medicating" by blowing all sorts of money got me nowhere (well, I do have a sweet camera). The depression also messed with my concentration and sleep, making it difficult to focus on my job, this blog, our finances, and my life in general. If went unchecked, a lot of stuff could possibly have been messed up.
Right now I'm grateful for a few things: insurance for making all of this vastly possible without completely breaking the bank; the availability and acesss to great healthcare providers; and most importantly, Her, for sticking with me, offering her support, and remembering that we're a team.
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