Are you a compulsive spender? Is your spouse? A compulsive spender is someone who can spend everything, right down to their last dime on frivolous things and items that they want but don’t necessarily need. A compulsive spender can do more than damage a marriage; they can land the relationship and the family into dire financial straits.
If you or your spouse is a compulsive spender, chances are you are both aware of the problem. Make no mistake, compulsive spending is not a malicious act that one spouse does just to tick off the other spouse. Compulsive spending in and of itself is a disease like alcoholism and drug addiction.
The following tips are designed to help you address compulsive spending, but they are not necessarily the solution for compulsive spending. If you have this problem or your spouse does, consider seeking professional help. There are counselors and support groups for these types of problems. Seeking one of those out may help you and your spouse to get control over the compulsive spending and eliminating this choking point from your marriage.
Helpful tips for compulsive spenders:
- Get Rid of the Credit Cards – Whether you cut them up or just put them in a safe place in the home – don’t use credit to buy anything. In fact, limiting all your spending to cash only purchases can help prevent over spending. It’s also a fact that when you spend cash, there is a heightened awareness of what you are spending and it’s not just some nebulous charge that appears on the credit bill next month
- Keep a Spending Journal – My husband actually did this for years and showed me how to do it – you get a nice little notebook or journal and you divide it into columns and you write down literally every single dime that you spend. If you spend $.75 for a soda in a coke machine, you write that down. By keeping a visual and physical record that you have to enter with handwriting, you make the spending real and you will know the moment you hit the spending limit you have set for yourselves
Have you or your spouse ever had to cope with a compulsive spending problem?
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