You are on the road to recovery after your brain injury, getting back to your regular day-to-day life in Louisiana. Working with your doctor, you have done a good job of dealing with the short- and long-term issues common to brain injuries, but you experience a constant surge of anxiety surrounding financial matters.
CreditCards.com has a few pieces of advice to help you. Learn how to manage your finances despite any cognitive difficulties you may display.
Know what to expect
Before you dive headfirst into paying bills and tweaking your budget, it is best to get an idea of how brain injuries impact your ability to manage your finances. Because your attention span and concentration levels may not be what they used to, you may need to carve out short blocks of time to pay bills and balance your budget. You could struggle to make cash transactions, and you may forget to make scheduled payments.
How to help yourself
If you can, try to find a trusted and dependable family member or friend to help you with organizing medical and ongoing bills, making payments, creating a new budget (if necessary) and letting all necessary parties know about your condition in case you can waive late fees and penalties.
Depending on the severity of your brain injury, you may be wholly incapable of making sound financial decisions on your own. In that case, you may need to appoint a power of attorney to take care of financial matters for you.
This information is only intended to educate and should not be interpreted as legal advice.