Liz Koh: Financial wellness is worth its weight in gold

Don't let your finances overwhelm you.

Professional and financial success often go hand in hand. It's all very well to build a great career, but if your finances are a mess, your career may end with little to show for your effort.

Too often, people engrossed in their careers have negative associations with money and therefore don't pay enough attention to it.

Financial wellness is just as important as physical wellness. According to Amanda Clayman, a New York-based financial therapist, there are three dimensions to financial wellness:

-Attention. When you look at your finances, do you feel overwhelmed, confused or bored? Do you feel frustrated with your past financial performance and your lack of achievement of goals or wishes?

-Intention. Are your financial goals an attempt to please, reassure or impress someone else? Do you wish another person would come along and just take care of it for you?

-Action. Do you repeatedly fall short when trying to improve your financial life?

Financial wellness is about having a conscious and positive connection with money. It is also about having goals that relate to your own life purpose

Many financial problems have a psychological base to them. Issues include problems with managing cashflow and debt, chronic under-earning or overspending, and allowing money to become a source of conflict in relationships. Your level of financial literacy is no indicator of your financial wellness. In Clayman's words "understanding compound interest will be of little help in treating a shopping addiction". However, financial literacy cannot be separated from financial therapy; they go together when building financial wellness as a combination of having the right information and the right behaviours.