Being debt-free is good for your brain

( Natural News ) Constantly worrying about your finances can cause stress. To improve your mental health, the results of a study suggests working hard to settle your debts and reduce your anxiety. The study appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and it involved researchers from the Social Service Research Centre at the National University of Singapore (NUS). For the study, scientists surveyed 200 low-income participants. The questions involved the volunteers’ decision-making skills and anxiety before and after they managed to settle their debts partially. The results suggest that debt relief helped reduce the “mental burdens of the poor” that used to prevent them from making better decisions. Debt and mental health The volunteers were given debt relief worth at least 5,000 Singapore dollars, an amount equal to about three month’s income per household. The charity payments were used to settle a fraction of their utility bills, municipal debts, and mortgages. The researchers gave all of the volunteers the same dollar amount of debt relief, but not all of them had the same debt levels — some of the participants more debt leftover after the charity donation. The volunteers were then instructed to take a survey that measured their anxiety, cognitive functioning, and financial decision-making. They took the survey before they received debt relief and three months after they partially settled their debts. The scientists discovered that the volunteers’ average error rates in cognitive function tests decreased from 17 percent to only four percent after they partially settled their debts. (Related: Preppers save for a rainy day: Why financial planning is crucial for surviving an economic downturn .) Discover how to prevent and reverse heart disease (and other cardio related events) with this free ebook : Written by popular […]

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