Creating headspace to think clearly and make better decisions

To mark Financial Awareness Day, Clare Briggs from RXBridge shares her insights into how our finances can affect our wellbeing, and practical steps we can take to build healthy fiscal habits.

Clare Briggs is Sales Director at RxBridge, a leading capital provider for pharmacies across the UK. She’s also completed the Cache Level 3 award in counselling skills and theory and is a volunteer mentor for the Surrey Care Trust, with a keen interest in wellbeing and empowering individuals with the knowledge and skills needed to make sound financial decisions. To mark Financial Awareness Day, we chatted with Clare about the role financial confidence play in our overall wellbeing and how can people start building it.

Thank you for chatting with us, Clare. Our charitable mission is to support the wellbeing of our pharmacy family, something we know you’re passionate about too. How would you define financial wellbeing, and why is it such an important part of our overall health and wellbeing?

Financial wellbeing is a mix of feeling in control of your money and actually having the security to back that feeling up, so you’re not lying awake worrying. For pharmacy owners in particular, business and personal finances often overlap, so stress in one area can easily bleed into the other. Financial security also creates the headspace to think clearly and make better decisions, both personally and professionally.

At Pharmacist Support, we understand that stress and anxiety can ‘diffuse into other areas of our lives’. How do financial worries affect the way we think, behave and make decisions in everyday life?

Money worries can push the brain into “short-term survival mode,” leading to firefighting today’s problem instead of planning for tomorrow. For some, that can show up as avoidance (unopened bank statements, ignored pension paperwork) or impulsive decisions that feel good in the moment but aren’t helpful long-term. And of course, chronic financial stress is also strongly linked to anxiety, burnout and can have health impacts. For pharmacists already under pressure in a demanding profession, this is a real and unwelcome risk.

Honest conversations about pay, pensions and what "enough" looks like can be genuinely valuable, but many people, including pharmacists, don't talk openly about money with peers.

We hear more and more about ‘financial literacy’. What conversations about money do you wish happened more often at home, at work or in schools?

Financial education should start early, not just as curriculum content, but as a practical life skill – children need to understand budgeting and how to keep money safe.

In the workplace, honest conversations about pay, pensions and what “enough” looks like can be genuinely valuable, but many people, including pharmacists, don’t talk openly about money with peers, so they’ve no benchmark for whether they’re doing okay. Contractors and owners talking earlier about growth aspirations, acquisition, business value, succession and exit planning matters strategically as a topic on the radar well before retirement comes knocking.

The pharmacy sector’s clinical training is rightly robust, but business skills get far less attention in the training syllabus and this must be an aspect worth exploring, given how many pharmacists go on to run their own business.

Many people feel overwhelmed when it comes to managing their money. If someone wanted to feel more in control, what are the first practical steps you would recommend they take?

Start with visibility. Get a clear picture of income, outgoings and savings before trying to optimise anything, and research anything that isn’t understood until it is.

Then set one small, specific goal (e.g. “know my pension value by month end”) rather than trying to fix everything at once.

Lastly, get advice early from a trusted expert – a financial adviser, a sector-savvy mentor or an accountant.

If you had just five minutes with someone who was feeling overwhelmed by money worries, what is the one financial habit or mindset shift you would encourage them to adopt to support both their financial and mental wellbeing?

Take time to properly understand your business and personal finances, and don’t be afraid to reach out for support if you need it. This relieves pressure more effectively than endlessly reviewing a spreadsheet on your own.

And finally, treat financial wellbeing like a habit – regular, small check-ins will always beat an anxious once-a-year deep-dive.

For more guidance on managing your money, demystifying credit ratings and finding funding, you’ll find lots of support on our website. If you’re experiencing financial difficulty, please reach out to us – even just chatting about what you’re going through and the options available to you will help to relieve some of the burden.