Ruth's Two Cents: Navigating Work Burnout and Financial Stability

Hi Ruth,

I’ve been working non-stop for years and am starting to feel the heavy weight of burnout. I’ve realized that I desperately need some time away from work to mentally and emotionally recharge. However, the thought of reducing my hours or potentially taking an extended break makes me anxious about my finances. I have some savings, but the uncertainty of the future holds me back. How can I find a balance between prioritizing my well-being and ensuring I don’t jeopardize my financial stability?

Gosh, that’s a tough one. I’m sorry you are feeling the impact of burnout. I have felt burnout symptoms myself, and you more or less feel like a deer in the headlights, trapped and looking for a way out. It sounds like the pressure has been slowly and steadily mounting. For this particular stressful episode, time to financially prepare may be short for you. You might be at an absolute breaking point right now, meaning you may need to cobble together a financial strategy to get you through as best you can. But, hopefully, you have a little more time on your side. You can learn from this vulnerability that you are currently feeling and work on building a rock-solid financial foundation that will make future stressful episodes easier to work through.

It’s an opportunity to truly reflect on your job satisfaction

Reflecting on my life, a tipping point always seems to arrive, and I’ve had to make a considered choice about how to react, which is not always easy when the pressure is building. I’d like to address your work first, then move on to the money side if that’s okay. In my experience, it is okay and perfectly normal to be “over” your job. Think of the people you know who have moved through many careers in their working lives, often into vastly different roles and sectors. Why do they do it? One day, just like you, doubt crept into the job they were doing. When this happens to me, I think to myself that I have three choices:

1. Zip my lips and put up with it
2. Change the things that I don’t like
3. Leave

Each method has varying results:

• I’ve zipped my lips, but the pressure and dissatisfaction grew bigger
• I’ve attempted to change the things that I didn’t like, with varying degrees of success and failure
• Leaving is radical, but it has always led me to something different or better

However, from the tone of your email, I don’t think it’s the job itself that is the issue (you don’t say you hate it); it’s just that, for whatever reason, it’s all becoming too much. Therefore, the first step is to get clear about what is not working, then approach your manager at work and discuss this with them. They may be unaware of your state of mind and the rising sense of reaching burnout, but they should be ready and willing to discuss options with you. That begins the process of changing things that you don’t like about your job. It will hopefully lead to a good outcome for you and help you settle back down so that you can address the financial side of the issue.

But it is also perfectly okay to change your job and let life take you in a different direction.

A solid financial foundation can withstand all sorts of stress

From the financial perspective, my thoughts may come too late; it depends on how close you are to breaking point.

I wrote a blog post called Begin at the Beginning: Step-by-step Path to Financial Independence. In that post, I talked about the journey you go on with your money to set up a solid financial foundation so that when both opportunities and crises occur, you can pivot and deal with a situation. Put simply, your money is in the right place to help you cope with whatever life throws at you.

Creating this rock-solid foundation can take some time. Without knowing your financial position, I thought it best to share with you how I’ve set mine up and how it has become helpful time and time again when I, like you, get burned out. I’ll share below what I do and why it comes in useful:

What I do: I track our net worth every month. I note down the value of our assets (and liabilities, if we had any).
Why this is useful: It removes anxiety around my finances. Often, we are doing better than we realize, and in an instant, I can see our financial position. Instead of thinking the worst and guessing that reducing hours or stopping work will financially negatively impact us, I can see in black and white numbers what it might do.

What I do: I budget our income and spending using PocketSmith.
Why this is useful: I know what it costs to run my life each month. Therefore, I know how much income I need to cover those costs. I can also clearly see what spending I can instantly stop if I know we need to conserve cash for something like a break from work.

What I do: I have an emergency fund, which, if required, could cover 3-6 months of income if, for whatever reason, I stopped working.
Why this is useful: If I woke up in your shoes and needed an immediate break from work, this fund would cover those lost wages. The thought of reducing your income is making you anxious because of the money you will miss. An emergency fund removes that worry.

What I do: I pay into my retirement fund.
Why this is useful: It creates peace of mind that when I reach retirement age, I will have money available. Currently, you are young, yet you feel scared about stopping work because you may not be able to support yourself financially. Paying into a retirement fund will prevent the exact same feeling at retirement when you are forced to stop due to age and health.

What I do: I became debt-free.
Why this is useful: By getting out of all consumer and mortgage debt, I can earn less if I choose to or stop working for a period of time. Not having to answer to a lender gives me a greater sense of control over my life.

What I do: I invest in assets outside of my retirement fund.
Why this is useful: Creating wealth, other than retirement funds, creates a financial buffer between me and life. There have been times when my work has become untenable, and I’ve been able to take the time away that I need without feeling financially vulnerable. This is the stage I want you to get to.

What can you do right now to start addressing your burnout issues?

• I need you to get clarity around your exact financial position as it stands today. That will give you direction, purpose, and actual information to help you cope at work while you plan your next steps.
• The next important step is to reduce your spending to the bare minimum to keep the lights on at home, the fridge full of food, and all essential needs met, including debt servicing obligations. Anything else is surplus and can be paused.
• As fast as you can, using that now freed-up income, plus the savings you already have, build up your cash buffer or emergency fund so that it represents enough money to cover those basic expenses for a while. Three to six months is ideal.

Taking charge of your finances this way will bring a sense of control to your whole situation and put you in a much better position to have those conversations with yourself and your employer about precisely what you need to change at work. Whether you amend your role, the hours you work, or seek to change jobs entirely, having control of your money removes one stressor from you and will allow you to see the future more clearly.

This phase will pass, but we all face stress, and it will come back in another form later. But with each episode, we learn to put some coping mechanisms in place to adapt and deal with it each time it happens.

Got a burning money question for Ruth? Send them through to [email protected]!

Ruth blogs at thehappysaver.com all about how she and her family handle money. What’s the secret? Spend less than you earn, invest the difference, avoid debt and budget each dollar that flows through your hands. She firmly believes that if you can just get the basics right, life becomes easier from there on in.