Financial Planning for Recovery: Build a Bedrock for a Brighter Future

Most people open a bank account when they’re fairly young and then go through life without thinking about how well their bank is working for them. If your addiction has drawn your attention away from your finances for some time, one of the best places to start is reviewing banking or fintech services with an emphasis on easy wealth management and high interest savings opportunities.

Substance misuse problems can have a serious impact on your ability to budget and control your outgoings. If you’re looking to manage your outstanding debts, the first step is to list them all, creating a comprehensive list of all the amounts you owe, who you owe them to, and the terms of each individual debt.

Rent or mortgage payments, utility bills, gas, public transport fares, subscriptions and food should all be accounted for here. Try to account for all your usual outgoings and make estimates where necessary to get a ballpark total.

Your regular income, your savings, if any, and any vehicles or similar big-ticket items you own, should all be accounted for under a list of your assets.

The small little expenditures add up quickly. So much so, that oftentimes we realize that a cup of coffee a day  is costing us hundreds of dollars a year. Gather some helpful tips on keeping your pockets tight so that you can save on the little things.

Public addiction recovery treatment centers are part of Canada’s free healthcare system, covered by OHIP, if you’re in Ontario. This means that if you’re a citizen or a permanent resident, and you’re in need of professional support while recovering from your addiction, you’ll be able to access public addiction recovery services for free. Other provinces or territories in Canada have similar systems and access to addiction recovery; they are just governed under their own provincial rules. 

The fact that there’s no cost to access public services is an attractive prospect when you’ve been struggling with your finances, but choosing to go down this route isn’t without its challenges. 

Based on recent data, it’s thought that 21% of the population, or around one in five people, will suffer from a substance use disorder at some time in their life. With the need for rehabilitation treatment being so high across the nation, those who opt for the public healthcare route will have to prepare for delays and limited resources, as well as healthcare providers who simply don’t have the capacity to give you treatment that’s personalized to your unique struggles.

Treatment providers in both the public and private sectors are trained to high standards, and countless people have made successful addiction recoveries through both avenues. However, if you’re looking for a particularly efficient mode of treatment, or you’re experiencing circumstances that call for a treatment that’s attuned to your specific needs, it may be harder to find a treatment that meets your expectations using public resources.

For more personalized treatment, and a higher chance of access to the medical resources you need, recovering through private healthcare providers is the way to go.

If you’ve been lucky enough to avoid hospitals for most of your life, then the term “private healthcare” might make you instantly assume that you don’t have the means to access this kind of treatment. However, if you’re in the United States and have sufficient healthcare, there are many rehab centers that accept Kaiser insurance to help get you into a course of treatment.  North of the border and into Canada, making the transition into sober living is just as accessible. 

Talking to your insurers or family doctor about addiction treatment can be a daunting prospect. However, it’s important to remember that your insurer deals with these kinds of claims more often than you might think, and that the benefits of your policy are put in place to make healthcare affordable and accessible when people have health problems, including substance addiction.

There are various different kinds of addiction treatments available through most good healthcare insurers, including:

• Medical detox
• Impatient rehab programs
• Outpatient care
• Detox with co-occuring mental health treatments
• Maintenance medication to help with long-term sobriety

Each of these treatments will be better suited to different needs, and aimed at equipping you to tackle different challenges. Look into your policy documents and talk to your insurers to understand the specifics of what your plan covers, and you’ll soon find a course of treatment that’s right for your unique situation.

Stress is one of the most common triggers for relapse, so identifying your key sources of stress and finding healthy ways to counteract them should be a top priority when managing your finances.

While effectively budgeting and building a long-range view of your finances will help prevent stress affecting your recovery to some extent, everyone deals with some kind of stress every day, and finding healthy coping mechanisms to deal with this stress will help your chances for long-term success.

Doing some manageable exercise routines in response to triggers of stress, learning to meditate, and joining a community of people who are facing similar challenges to yours, are some of the most commonly-recommended ways to manage stressful situations for addicts in recovery, alongside dietary changes like getting more fiber and fatty acids.

If you’ve let financial management fall by the wayside for some time, then organizing your financial goals and adjusting your budget may feel like something of a chore.

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with finding financial management tedious, but being able to come back to it with consistency and diligence will help maximize your potential for long-term success.

Whether your most pressing financial goals are wiping your debts, building an emergency fund, getting back to school or anything else, finding a routine that keeps bringing you back to examining your saving and spending habits will be the best way to achieve the goals you’re aiming for.

Whether you use alarms, a personal Google calendar, or simple notes left around the house, designating a specific and regular timeslot for working on your finances will make you far more capable of achieving those longer-term goals.

With a set amount of monthly income and regular expenses that aren’t going anywhere, sometimes it can feel impossible to make the changes necessary to get your finances back on track. However, most people have relatively small recurring expenses that they take for granted, but which can make all the difference to their overall financial flexibility.

As you itemize your outgoings, make sure you’re not forgetting to sweat the small stuff, like ordering out when you could cook, sticking with a phone contract that doesn’t give you the best deal possible, or subscriptions to streaming services and apps that you aren’t using often enough to justify.

No one’s suggesting you should try to live without any luxuries whatsoever, but most people’s personal finances can be improved drastically through a harsh appraisal of their outgoings and a few well thought-out sacrifices.