How financial stress is affecting our homes

Financial stress is increasingly infiltrating SA homes, and financial anxiety is no longer just what people worry about come month-end, but it’s a constant psychological burden.

Home-life stress has spiked from 33% in 2025 to 42% in 2026, DebtBusters Money Stress Tracker findings, which were released on Tuesday, show.

This is the highest level recorded since the survey was launched in 2022.

Psychologist Andrea Kellerman says when financial stress “infiltrates the home and is no longer left at work or contained within monthly budgeting, the opportunity for emotional recovery is lost”.

“Emotional resources become depleted, patience decreases, communication deteriorates, and conflict becomes more likely. Gradually, the home shifts from being a place of restoration to becoming another source of psychological pressure,” says Kellerman.

July is Mental Health Awareness Month

“When people cannot recover at home, the nervous system remains in survival mode, increasing emotional exhaustion and conflict and reducing resilience. More South Africans report feeling stuck, indicating a growing sense of helplessness after years of sustained financial pressure. Spending over 40% of take-home pay on debt weakens the psychological link between effort and reward, increasing burnout and reducing hope.

“Young adults are showing the greatest increase in financial concern, raising concerns about optimism, motivation and belief in the future. The encouraging finding is that more people are considering debt counselling, showing that many are still looking for ways to regain control.”

DebtBusters’ executive head, Benay Sager, says the survey further shows that more than 70% of South Africans say they experience financial stress, which is largely driven by rising costs.

There were 18,000 respondents.

“This year, 72% of respondents admitted to money stress, a slight increase compared to last year and a reversal of a steady decline from a high of 78% in 2023. Home life stress has reached 42%, up by more than a third compared to 2025 and the highest recorded level since the survey’s 2022 commencement,” says Sager.

“After a two-year period in which increasing interest rates were the primary driver of financial anxiety, short-term cost-of-living concerns now dominate. The top two 2026 issues are the fear of running out of money before the end of the month and having enough to cover debt repayments.

“Concerns about inflation and living costs increased by close to a third, and worry about the cost of electricity was significantly higher – up 99% compared to 2025.

“Rising living costs have also resulted in more debt repayment pressure. More than half the respondents now spend more than 40% of their take-home pay on debt repayments. People taking home more than R20,000 a month face the most debt-repayment pressure. This group is the backbone of SA’s middle-class population — and 75% of them spend more than 30% of their after-tax income on debt repayments.”

Kellerman says even though “the brain is quite adaptable and it is able to go into a little bit of resilience when there is this stress reprieve, there was an increase now where we have seen again that the stress has gone up”.

“The home isn’t the sort of safe place anymore, and it is quite important that the home be safe. If we don’t feel psychologically safe internally, then that is quite a problem, and when we then bring it into the home that is supposed to be our sanctuary, our safe space, then we don’t have any space anywhere.

“If we think of money and so on, it has now crept more into our fundamental needs like food, electricity costs that have gone up and petrol. So all of those are fundamentals. If we think of food and if our fundamental needs are minimised, those financial concerns are not just at the workplace, but they now go into our monthly budgeting even more, and that goes into family.”

She says we have to consistently make decisions which influence relationships and atmosphere at home.

“That places even more stress [on people], and that cumulative stress has depleted the ability to make better decisions and think out of the box, and then it goes more and more into conflict management, and then it goes more into family members having to absorb that kind of stress.

“That is a big concern because that goes into the emotional well-being of everyone involved, [including] children. That has this ripple effect; children also become highly sensitive, and then we would have more conflict at home as well, with the partners also being less emotionally available for each other, and that mental energy is not quite there.”

Feeling stuck and losing hope

She says 34% of respondents said they felt stuck, and this means that people feel discouraged.

“The cortisol levels go up, adrenaline goes up, and then we go into this kind of burnout space. We can’t think out of the box about how to get out of these financial problems, and that gradually erodes the person’s belief that they can actually change their circumstances.

“With this repeat of having to look after themselves, and then also the increase of paying off their debt, which is 40%, which is not sustainable. Even if they try to work harder, they feel exhausted. So they don’t really feel that there is an improvement; they feel stuck, and that then causes that helplessness internally. In addition to being stressed and anxious, that then also causes depression.”

Kellerman says to break the cycle, it is important to seek help to “understand that small little steps can really change [situations].

Younger adults show more willingness to act

Sager says there is some good news.

“While fewer consumers are enthusiastic about cutting back on monthly spending, possibly an indication of savings fatigue, more are making a plan. Younger consumers are 1.5 times more likely to follow through with a budget and four times more likely to be looking for a higher-paying job,” he says.

“They also show 58% more intent in dealing with money stress. Overall, South Africans show a lot of entrepreneurial spirit when dealing with money stress, whether, for example, making or growing things to sell, buying or selling online, or renting spare accommodation.

“When addressing financial stress, fewer say they are embarrassed to ask for help, and negative sentiment about debt counselling has declined by 23% over the past three years. Willingness to act, increased awareness, and less resistance to getting help offer some hope that the 80% of South Africans with unsustainable debt levels who could benefit from debt counselling will increasingly start to take the opportunity to rebuild their finances,” Sager says.

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