Nursing Our Financial Health: Financial Habits for Overall Well–Being

By Aileen Ramos

The negative impact of financial stress on a person's overall health is well documented. Despite this knowledge, health care professionals lack the formal training and expertise to help patients address and manage financial stress, while financial experts may lack the understanding of the physical and psychological ailments contributing to a patient’s financial stress.
Combining the author’s knowledge of nursing and personal finance, Nursing Our Financial Health attempts to address this deficiency within the health care sector to promote the value of financial health upon a person’s overall well–being. Aileen describes her prescribed personal healthy financial habits. Practiced in her daily life, they positively influence her physical, mental, and social health. By sharing her experience, Aileen seeks to inspire others to acknowledge, understand, and manage their financial stresses to yield financial well–being.
Temper the desire to be wealthy; instead, aspire to be financially healthy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662929342

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Schedule Routine Financial Health Assessments

Healthy Financial Habit

Financial health assessments provide insight into your current financial health status and help identify opportunities to improve your financial well-being. Performing financial health assessments routinely promotes financial well-being because it serves as a progress report as to your ability to attain and maintain financial health.

Life Inspiration

Many of us go through life with a sense of naivety toward our health. Our physical and mental health are often an afterthought and typically do not become a focal point until the clinical manifestation or inadvertent discovery of a disease. My mother’s experience with colon cancer is a prime example of this situation/mentality. One late summer day, she started complaining of severe abdominal pain. I took her to an emergency department, and her providers discharged her for what they thought was a urinary tract infection. The next morning, I came home from work (at the time, I was working night shift) and found her in bed in fetal position because of excruciating pain. I told my dad to take her to a different hospital. My dad later called with news that altered my life forever—my mom had cancer. A biopsy confirmed that she had stage 4 colon cancer as it had already metastasized to her liver.

At the time of her diagnosis, my mom had never gotten screened for colorectal cancer. She was in the age group in which her first screening should have taken place several years prior. Unfortunately, it was not until the year prior to her cancer diagnosis when my mom took greater interest in her health, and by that time, it was too late. My mom tried to live and eat healthily, but she was also averse to going to the doctors. Perhaps it was something she never was accustomed to, growing up in the Philippines. Whatever the reason, I will never know, but her experience with cancer taught me the importance of taking the necessary steps to take care of my