Financial fears send nation's stress soaring

Tag : Emergency Call

As a nation, we are struggling emotionally to digest each day'sdour economic news. Record home foreclosure filings — morethan 2 million January through August. The stock market's Dow Jonesindustrial average down 18.4% this year. Retirement and collegesavings crumbling. Then there's that looming $700 billion bailoutfor the financial industry.
"The feeling of self-failure is tremendous," says Levy, a familyphysician for 28 years. "Some people feel that at least if theyhave a real heart attack or stroke, they have a good excuse not tobring money home."
The credit crisis of recent weeks — and economic decline ofrecent months — is pitting clients against brokers orfinancial advisers. It's making workers feel insecure in theirjobs. And it often leads to quarrels among spouses with differentviews over how to handle their finances.
Unlike many other forms of stress — such as an upcomingpresentation at work or a visit from the in-laws — financialstress doesn't go away quickly.
Often, a plummeting portfolio or free-falling 401(k) results inbehavior that touches an entire family. Fewer family treats. Lessfamily time. And that inner inkling to turn to vices.
"We've never had this much activity, not even after 9/11," says AnnClark, CEO at ACI Specialty Benefits, a national employeecounseling service. "Everyone is asking for help."
Calls for financial-related consulting to the company are up 85%compared with this time last year, Clark says. Until last week,holiday stress was to be the topic of the pamphlets, brochures,newsletters, Internet seminars and podcasts the company planned forOctober. That plan has been scrapped for a series of new material:Coping During Difficult Financial Times.
"People don't want to hear about the holidays," Clark says.
'Hope has been taken away'
USA TODAY talked with readers about how they're coping. We askedpsychologists, counselors and family doctors what people should doto rise emotionally above the flood of depressing news.
"The dream is gone," says Steven Berglas, an executive coach andgraduate business professor at the University of California-LosAngeles. "Hope has been taken away."
Few know that better than Rick Shultz, who oversees leasing at aGeneral Motors dealership in Medina, Ohio. The 55-year-old and hiswife, Denise, semi-retired a few years ago to a dream home theydesigned and built by a golf course. Shultz was forced to return towork this year after his investment portfolio hit the skids.
On Sunday, over a breakfast of sausage and gravy, Shultz and hiswife made the toughest decision of all: to put their dream home upfor sale and move somewhere less expensive.
It was the retirement home they'd designed together. It's 50 stepsfrom the 10th green at the Fox Meadow Country Club and has nearly20-foot cathedral ceilings. There are speakers in every room, somusic carries throughout the house. There's a hot tub adjacent tothe master bedroom.
"We cried over it," says Shultz, who admits he cried the most. "Itwas a very emotional decision."
Since the Wall Street meltdown, emotion seems to be playing a bigrole in many financial and non-financial decisions by USA TODAYreaders:
• Landscaper Thomas Tilden of Auburn, Pa., was mowing a lawn lastweek when he got a frantic phone call from his 80-year-old mother.She had most of her savings in a Merrill Lynch brokerage accountand feared it was about to disappear.
"It took a good 20 to 25 minutes for me to calm her down," recallsTilden, who assured his mom that the brokerage with her moneywasn't disappearing but being merged into Bank of America.
Before the call, his mom was so upset, Tilden says, "She went tothe bank and took a bunch of money out, just in case."
• During a recent Wednesday night poker game, Tim Baer was asked howhe felt about his life.
The information technology sales specialist from Alexandria, Va.,recalls he ducked the question, in part because the economy has himso worried. Baer and his wife, Wendy, have good jobs with heartypaychecks. But, he says, "What's worrying me is that I'm not doingenough. I feel powerless."
So much so, he says, he has an "irrational fear" that some day alltheir money will be gone and they'll be living out of a cardboardbox.
"I'd feel great about my life if not for this stuff going on in themarket," Baer says. "It's zapping my energy."
•For Air Force retirees Barb and Scott Ellestad and others intheir community in Mesquite, Nev., the financial meltdown haschanged the way they socialize.
Several friends of the Ellestads who live in their retirementcommunity have pulled back from getting together in recent weeks astheir stock portfolios have shrunk. Friends who used to go out withthe Ellestads three times a week now join them once — or notat all.
"They're isolating themselves because they've lost so much money instocks," Barb Ellestad says. To help maintain the friendships, theEllestads host more dinners at their house.
• The night after the stock market suffered its first big drop,Howard Miller, a marketing consultant from Irvine, Calif., camewithin a whisker of selling all of his stock mutual fund shares andswitching into cash investments.
He sat with his wife, Sandely, in their home office and posed thestomach-churning question: "Should we sell everything?"
They ultimately opted not to, but the stress hasn't gone away.
"My oldest daughter has noticed that I'm more anxious," Miller saysof 13-year-old Kimberly. "She looked at the expression on my facethe other day and told me to chill out."
• Tonya Macklin is a single mom in the Boston area who works twojobs, seven days a week. She lost her home last year when she nolonger could afford the payments and filed for bankruptcyprotection. Shortly after, she was hospitalized for seven days forexhaustion. "That was really hard on my daughter," Macklin says ofher 10-year-old, Jade Ashley Brooks.
Macklin has trouble sleeping at night. "I just put it in God'shands. I go to bed praying each night that things will someday getbetter."
Anxious, fearful clients
So are some financial planners.
Peggy Cabaniss, president of HC Financial Advisors in Lafayette,Calif., figures she was on the phone about 10 hours a day last weektrying to calm her 150 clients after big stock market drops.
One anxious client, in his 50s, cashed out of all of hissecurities.
"I normally try to talk clients out of doing anything thatdrastic," she says. "But after losing so much money in real estate,the stock market was his last straw."
She's receiving referrals from psychiatrists — as she didafter the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 — to help theirpatients develop financial plans.
Scott Ford, founder of Cornerstone Wealth Management Group inHagerstown, Md., is hearing from fearful clients who never beforephoned him. "This is where we really earn our money," he says. "Wehave to hold our clients' hands through this."
No more so, perhaps, than doctors, employee counselors,psychologists and psychiatrists.
A woman supposedly seeing Levy for a physical exam this week spentmost of the time crying about her husband losing his analyst job atLehman Bros. They plan to move back to Texas, and she's not readyfor that.
"She used up an entire box of Kleenex," says Levy, who foundnothing wrong with the woman during the exam. "She simply needed totalk."
Nancy Molitor, a Chicago psychologist, has been in practice for 20years and can't recall a time like this. "The tendency is tooverreact and make poor decisions or underreact and do nothing."
One of Molitor's clients, a retired woman in her 60s, has become agambling addict in the midst of the financial crisis.
One couple Molitor sees have stopped having sex. The wife is angryat her husband because she's suddenly being forced to go back towork for the first time in 30 years, Molitor says. "If you don'tknow who to blame, you tend to take it out on the person you livewith."
Children aren't immune to the stress.
Clinical psychologist Rosalind Dorlen is seeing a client in Summit,N.J., whose son is terrified he'll have to leave his private schooland stopped sleeping.
Mary Alvord, a psychologist in Rockville, Md., is seeing a couplewhose 6-year-old daughter accidentally overheard her parentsarguing about money. The panicked girl burst into tears.
A fuller explanation eventually came out, Alvord says: The girl hadmisinterpreted her parents' argument and thought they no longercould afford to buy food.