DoctorOz: Stop Money Stress & Improve Your Health with Dr. Oz & Ric Edelman

We are literally worrying ourselves sick over it. Just how sick? Well, I teamed up with personal finance guru and a member of my core team of experts, Rick Edelman, and we sent our entire audience through my credit clinic. Rick and his team assessed everyone's money health, and my medical team assessed their physical health to see just how closely the two were related. I sent my audience through my first ever Dr. Oz credit clinic to assess just how big an on their health. Do you have a 401k or a retirement plan? Personal financial advisor Rick Edelman and his team gave them a money checkup where they completed a financial checklist and had their credit score calculated. My medical team gave them a health checkup, taking their blood pressure and pulse and measuring their waistline. Finally, we had them step up to my money stress scale where they ranked just how stressed they feel about their finances. My medical team noticed Michelle's blood pressure was elevated and called Rick over. So, I imagine you're feeling some stress? Yes, I'm under a lot of stress lately. How come? Money. My 26-year-old daughter just moved back home, and my paycheck is being stretched with the burden of her being there. The money, it comes in, it goes right back out, and I'm worried about my retirement. I'm hoping one day that I can retire. Well, I think, you know what, we're going to be able to help you with that today. Sandy also set the stress scale pretty high. Super duper high. Oh my, that is about as high as it gets. So, tell me, what is it that's causing all that stress? Right now, I'm up to my ears with $20,000 credit cards that I feel like whenever I'm trying to save, there's always something coming up. Kids, there's something breaking in the house, car problems, you name it, it just comes about. And I imagine there's no cash reserves, no rainy day fund that you set aside. No, I don't have anything. So, at the same time, though, I imagine you have some goals. Yes, my major goal would be to save for my kids' college fund. How old are the kids? My kids are 10 and 9. Okay. So, I'm really glad you're participating in this today, because I think we're going to be able to give you some strategies between Dr. Oz and myself that can really help you out today. Awesome. Can't wait. So, Rick talked to a lot of people at our credit clinic and saw firsthand how they're So, first off, what do they need to hear about this issue of overwhelming stress? Well, we need to take a break. We need to give ourselves the permission mentally to realize, you know what, the world's not coming to an end. It is within my control much more than I realized, and if we just take some positive actions, small steps, but very surely, we're going to be able to get through this. You've had a lot of experience yourself being in exactly the shoes of so many of our audience members. We really have, and I really can relate to folks that are up at night worrying about this. When my wife and I were young and getting started out, we didn't have any money either. We had a lot of credit card debt as well. We went for four years without owning virtually anything. We sold our television, because we needed to come up with cash to be able to live day by day, and we realized that, you know what, materialism doesn't really matter. Stuff doesn't matter. What matters is our relationship and what we're trying to get and our goals that we're trying to accomplish, and by working together, my wife and I realized that in a relatively few short years, we were able to get ourselves turned around and living the life that we enjoy, and so I understand when people feel that they're struggling, but you know what? You can do it too. So here's what we teamed up. We're going to address the physical problem that you're causing for yourselves, and we're going to address the actual money that is a problem for a lot of you. You can do them together, and they actually work together. So let's talk to Michelle. Michelle was sort of surprised when we took her blood pressure. How are you? Hi. You can stand right here. How are you? Hi. Hi, Michelle. So we heard about your money stress. Yes. And you're not alone, feeling the way you do. What has been the biggest hurdle for you? Well, it's been very overwhelming with my daughter coming back home from school and trying to help her out so that she can, you know, get a foot up, get ahead, and when the check comes in, you know, and you pay Peter, you're robbing Paul, and it's just not enough money. So what you just said, I completely empathize with, and I know it happens every day all over the country. But I'm going to take you one step past that. We actually checked your physical health. Because as a doctor, I care about the money, because I know it makes you miserable when you're not in the right space financially, but I care much more about the impact on your body. And hear me clearly, you can have money woes and not let them affect your health, which is half the solution. If you get rid of the money woes, then there's nothing to threaten your health. But you lose them both together, it's a problem. Your blood pressure was through the roof. When you saw that, the impact that this was having on your health, did that influence you at all? Yes, I couldn't believe it. I mean, I think I need to really just step back and just let go of the stress from the money and just, it is what it is, and continue on with just, you know, going day by day and trying not to think about it so much. You're saying the words, and I like that, but I want to take it a little deeper if it's okay. Okay. Are you willing to share your blood pressure? Okay. I know it was high. Yeah, I actually don't know the number. I know it was high, though. What is the number? You know what? I don't know the number. It was... Does anyone have the number? 183 over 114. It was very high. When I see a number that high, I start getting worried about bigger problems. Things like strokes, heart attacks. You know what the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is? What? The health problem. The number one problem, because, you know, if you have your health, you can usually get yourself out of a jam. But if you don't have your health, getting past bankruptcy is really difficult. And the bills will make you bankrupt. Now, I'm saying that only because you can have the exact same financial headaches, but if you can deal with this health issue and you get your blood pressure down in any way you can, at least you'll be there tomorrow to fight. Stay on the playing field. I want to be there to fight. All right. So, you're not alone. I trended... They're all applauding because we're all in this together. So, this same trend, I should point, I'm talking to everyone now, and I'm sure it's for folks at home as well. It's, we see it with everybody. People who rank money stress high are more likely to have high blood pressure, big waist circumference, you know, the things we fight against all the time. And see that curve? Look at that. That's literally a curve. Money stress correlates with blood pressure, waist, and a lot of other health problems. That's why this mind-body connection is so important. So, I asked someone, his name is Corey Mosquero, who's an expert in the mind-body connection, to help us out. A solution for what to do when we are stressed out. When our daughter's got an issue, we got bills coming in, and we know our blood pressure's high, which is, right now, just one more stress for you. I'm going to take that off your platter. Take a listen to what he has to say. It's called breath mapping. Okay. So, next time you find yourself stressing over money, I want you to do something called breath mapping. You see, we have two kinds of breaths. There's a worry breath, and there's a mindful breath. Worry breathing occurs up in the chest and the shoulders, and actually exacerbates stress. Mindful breathing comes from deeply engaging the diaphragm, and it's soothing and calming. So, what I want you to do is gently place the hands on the belly like this, and if you notice that the belly is sucking in as you inhale, and the shoulders are coming up, that's a worry breath. Instead, allow the belly to relax, and practice inhaling so that the belly is gently inflating like a balloon. If you do this for one minute each time you find yourself stressed over money, you should notice that you start to feel a lot calmer. So, let me turn you over to Rick now. Now that you've got at least a reasonable solution for how to deal with the stress you feel from money, what does she actually do about the financial problem itself? Well, we have to recognize that you're trying to do too much. That's really what it comes down to, and I'm going to lay a lot of this, frankly, on your love for your daughter. Your daughter's 26 years old, a college graduate, who says, Mom, I want to move back home so I can go back and get a graduate degree, and contribute nothing economically to the household. So, your daughter's living for free, demanding that you come up with the money for the rent, the food, HBO, whatever it happens to be, and the sense of entitlement that your daughter's experiencing no one else on this planet would do for her what you're doing for her. And not only is it hurting your finances, it's destroying your health as well. So, we basically have to do a turnaround on your daughter's frame of mind to say, Sweetheart, I love you, but literally, you're killing me. When you graduated college, they stamped adult on your forehead, and you need to start contributing to the household, because that's the way life is. And you need to get a grip on this situation, and don't feel that you're letting her down with your parental duties and obligations. You've already accomplished all of it. You raised a wonderful daughter. You got her into college and through college with a degree, and now she has to start contributing to the household. And you'll discover that when she starts to do that, both of you are going to be so much better off. I think we can go to disserting, I think. Yeah. Well, dissertation also. And don't remember this. The stats are important. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Sandy, let me get you up while you're standing. So in our clinic, we heard a little bit from you and some of the fears you were having, the anxiety you were sensing as you were going through your bills. Literally keeping you up at night. Is that a sort of accurate assessment? Very accurate. I just sense a lot of anxiety, feel very overwhelmed, and I just feel so trapped. I just can't get out of it. When I'm lying in bed, I just feel like I'm just running different scenarios through my head to come up with a solution. And next thing you know, I have to wake up for work and my day starts all over again. How many of you have sleep problems that you think are related to finances? Thank you for putting your hands up because it is ubiquitous because we're supposed to process stuff at night. And money is so much of the safety we sense that it's the kind of thing that does keep us up. So Dr. Shelby Harris has a solution for anyone who has worries that keep them up at night. Now pay close attention to this. Money stress keeps many of us awake at night. So one quick and easy technique to help you fall asleep faster would be to set aside worry time every single night. About three to four hours before you go to bed, I want you to take out a piece of paper and sit somewhere outside of your bedroom. You're going to make two columns. On the left side, you're going to list your worries. On the right side, you'll write the next step towards a solution for each worry. So for example, if your worry is that you just don't have money to pay the bills, maybe the next step solution would be to make a budget. Take that piece of paper and put it in the drawer next to your bed. If you find yourself worrying in the middle of the night, remind yourself that you have a plan in place and there's nothing you can do about it in the middle of the night. This will hopefully help you sleep in no time. Once we're able to get to sleep, how do we tackle the underlying financial complexity? To recognize we have to stop driving ourselves crazy. You know, a lot of us are so obsessed with our credit scores, for example. Forget about it. You're not going to change the credit score overnight. All you want to do instead is focus on your behaviors. If you change your behaviors, the credit score will fix itself all by itself. For example, a lot of us go get a cup of coffee every morning because, you know, it's a great way to start the day. That cup of coffee every morning for 40 years, that's $400,000 you won't have in retirement. $400,000? Yeah, a cup of coffee a day at our favorite little coffee shop is $400,000 by the time we reach retirement. We don't recognize that. We think, oh gee, it's only a cup of coffee, what difference does it make? It's the pennies that add up to huge amounts of money. So if we change little behaviors on a regular basis, all of a sudden the big issues just melt away. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss out on new videos to live the good life.