Is your bank account secretly damaging your brain? In this eye-opening interview, Dr. Jacques Wells breaks down groundbreaking research revealing that financial hardship isn’t just stressful — it may be a direct driver of cognitive decline. We explore why the feeling of money worry can be more harmful than your actual income, how constant financial stress crowds out the mental “brain space” needed for protective activities, and why decades of accumulated hardship take a measurable toll on your mind. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by bills, this conversation will change how you think about the connection between money and your mental health.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And joining me now is Dr. Jacques Wells. Dr. Wells, it’s great to see you. Thanks for joining us in the program this morning. Thank you for your invitation, Jeff. Very happy to be in your program.
And I’m very happy. I love this research. You know, doctor, financial hardship can hit you in the wallet and in the pocketbook, but based on your research and your study, it can also hit you in your cognitive abilities.
Tell us about that.
Jacques Wels, PhD.,, University College London
Yeah, it hurts your brain, actually. And we didn’t know that before. So it’s not only financial hardship, but it’s actually the accumulation of this hardship over your life course.
So if you pour all over your life, it has a huge effect on your brain. If you pour a little bit over your life, the effect is less strong. So it’s really the accumulation of this hardship over time that has effect on brain and huge effect actually.
So it really leads to cognitive decline. That’s what the study showed.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So did you get a sense from the study that it was a specific type of financial decline or hardship? For example, can’t pay my bills, credit card debt, stock market going up or down, or going down, excuse me. Did anything in particular trigger the cognitive decline?
Jacques Wels, PhD.,, University College London
Go ahead, doctor. Well, yeah, no, we didn’t look at so much detail, but we had two variables. So, you know, we’re using a study where we track people over time.
So it’s what we call a cohort. So it’s a group of people who were born in the UK in 1946. And we got, I mean, I wasn’t born there, but we gave them questionnaire all over the life course.
And we have information about their financial status at different time points throughout their lives. And we had two main questions we were really interested in. The first one is household incomes.
So we just got information on how much the household got. And we can see, actually we created a variable where we look at the lowest income. So people earning less than 20% of the population incomes.
So that’s one of the variable. And the other one was, I think, an even more interesting variable and with even stronger results, but it’s self-reported financial hardships. How do you cope in general?
And if your answer is no, and if you answer no over your life course, so over and over and over again, huge connection with cognitive decline. So we really have two measures. One that is more objective, money, household money, and the other one that is more subjective.
How do you feel about money? And both have an effect, but the huge effect is really on the subjective variable.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So is some of this, does some of this have to do with expectation? So for, you know, and I don’t know how you, if you could even test for this, but if I have an expectation that I’m going to get X, Y, and Z in terms of my finances, therefore, if I don’t get X, Y, and Z, I’m going to be disappointed. And therefore I’m going to, you know, be all down and shrug my shoulders and all that kind of stuff.
So does that, does expectation play a role here?
Jacques Wels, PhD.,, University College London
Well, as you said, we were not able to test exactly the mechanisms that explain that. We just see an association between money troubles and worry about money and cognitive decline. So you can make different assumptions.
So there’s two assumptions we actually made, but we didn’t test them. I need to be clear about that. The first one is about behaviour.
If you poo all over your life, you’re likely to have different kinds of health behaviours. We know that poverty is linked to alcohol consumption, smoking, et cetera. And all these behaviours might have an effect on your cognitive decline.
So that’s one set of explanation. The other set of explanation, I think related to what you said, it’s worry. So actually, if you worry all over your life about paying your bills, to speak frankly, if you’re worrying about paying your bill, you have less brain space to think about something else.
You know, as I explained to someone recently talking about this study, if you’re worrying about money all the time, you have no time to play chess. You know, you don’t want to spend one hour on evening thinking, okay, I’m going to think about chess. No, you’re worried all the time and you have less brain space to think.
And actually, we really know in other research that you’re actually using your brain, doing interesting things. Chess is a very good example. Prevents against cognitive decline.
Less space, less prevention. So it might be connected. But again, I repeat, we didn’t test actually for the mechanisms.
Further studies should do that in the future. And if there are researchers in your audience, and I’m sure there are, I encourage them to really look at the mechanism that explain this relationship in death.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So is the lesson about coping? Because when you go through life, I mean, I’m 54 years old, and it’s not a straight line. There are ups and downs.
So is it about learning, maybe I’m a Gen Xer, maybe my generation didn’t learn to cope as well. So is it maybe about learning to cope with some of these ups and downs that will help you long-term? Again, I know you didn’t test for this, but I’m just trying to draw some distinctions and tease out maybe what we can take away from this if we’re trying to be better.
Jacques Wels, PhD.,, University College London
No, that’s a very good question. And I think learning to cope is definitely important, but to what extent can you cope is another question. I think what the study shows, and I think that’s an interesting point, is that most of these in the past looked at two things.
They look at genetics. We know that genetics, having a certain gene explain cognitive decline. So a lot of studies looked at genetics.
A lot of studies, as I mentioned, looks at behaviour. You smoke, you drink, you have an unhealthy life. You can, okay.
So the pressure was on genes. You cannot do anything about genes, right? You cannot decide about, yet.
The other one was about behaviour. You can do something on your behaviour. So we had this dual explanation and we just offer a third way, which is a societal impact.
Saying, okay, of course it’s a behaviour. Of course, it’s our genes explaining our cognitive decline. But it’s also about what we experience as human being.
We don’t have grip on. And I think that’s a good point. So coping, yes, it’s important, but it’s also a policy message saying that very simply, uncertainty over your life might have a negative effect on your brain.
And we can do something on this uncertainty. Another question, and it is a political and very open question, is who should deal with this uncertainty? Is it an individual thing we need to deal, to cope with, or is it something the society needs to think about?
My point being that if we want to prevent cognitive decline, there is something we can do, which is not only in terms of behaviour, but that is also in terms of how can we protect people over the life course.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So let’s talk about that. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of, we picked up a story about the research. I’m sure you have had policy makers.
You’re in right now in London, but you typically teach in Brussels. I’m sure you had people reach out to you. What are policy makers, are policy makers asking what can we do?
Because candidly, doctor, whether it’s the States, whether it’s Europe, whether it’s Asia, we have an ageing society. This is a issue that will continue to pop up because the world is ageing. We’re ageing, we’re getting older.
Jacques Wels, PhD.,, University College London
Well, that’s a very good, I mean, that’s a very broad question. And as you said, I’m in Brussels, I’m in London, I’m working with Japan. So we see that this is an issue that exists everywhere, actually.
And I mean, if you look at London and Japan, it’s very interesting because not so much in Brussels, and I’m sure it’s the same in the US. If you look, there’s a real debate about needs. I don’t know if you heard about that.
So that’s people not in employment, education and training. And we actually see a dual relationship, again, that is of the same nature. People with poor health are more likely to be in need, and people being in need are more likely to have a poor health.
And this reinforces over the life course and has dramatic effect over the long run. So it’s something politicians think about, and there’s a lot of policy discussions. My point, I will say, that I’m a little bit afraid that policy discussions are very often about behaviours only.
As I’ve said, it’s a triangle where we have genetics, behaviours, and what the society does for you. And a lot of the debate is only about behaviours, how we can make people behave better, drink less, smoke less, et cetera. Years ago, if you look at Europe, for example, there was a debate that is very updated.
You probably don’t know that, you’re too young, but about something called, yes, you are, about the flexibility. So there was a debate, at least at the European Union, on how we can create a labour market where there is flexibility. You can move from one job to another, you can take risks.
But at the same time, if you take a big risk, you’ll get a net. You’ll be protected if you fall too low. And I’m afraid that this net doesn’t exist that much anymore.
The debate about need that I was talking about in the UK is a lot today about reducing social benefits, for example. So my point is that if we reduce social benefits, we actually reduce the net. What is the effect over the long term?
It can have huge effect, and that’s what the study shows. It’s actually, if you’re poor, if you don’t have that security, it damages your brain. So yeah, I would say that the policy issue, according to me, is that there’s a lot of focus on behaviour, very important to focus on behaviour.
We can do a lot about our health, but we need also to have a more society perspective on health and try to understand how society shapes health independently on our individual behaviour. I can quit smoking, I should. I can quit drinking, I should.
But if I’m poor, I’m poor. And quitting being poor is quite hard. You would agree with me.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, and I would also add, in addition to financial hardship and other hardships, now you’ve got artificial intelligence that I think is creating a lot of angst among people. So that only adds to the burden. Dr. Wells, we’re gonna have to leave it there. It’s a great study. Thanks so much for doing the work and for joining us on the program. We look forward to having you back on the program again soon, sir.
Jacques Wels, PhD.,, University College London
Thank you for the interview, Jeff. Thank you very much for your time.
