Depressed over Money? Don’t Spend to Compensate!
For some people spending money isn’t about the money at all – it’s about boredom, or depression or addiction. Somehow we’ve gotten our spending and shopping under control, but when we see the debt, we get depressed and – you guess it – shop to make us feel better!
It’s a vicious cycle. Maybe you’ve been there:
You are feeling a bit blue so you head to the mall to get out of the house. You see a dress on sale that you just have to have for your birthday party only seven months away. So you buy it.
Or you’re passing your favorite fabric store, and just happen to stop.
Your best friend calls, – the scrapbooking friend, and she’s got a lot of really cool supplies she wants to split with you. So you buy.
It is easy to rationalize our spending habits. Our hobbies give us pleasure.
Perhaps you don’t have a hobby addiction, but just like good deals:
You are at the discount warehouse store and say to yourself: I’ll eventually use those extra two hundred rolls of toilet paper and anyway, it was a good deal.
There are a lot of ways we pretend about our shopping addictions.
I have to have a new dress.
I’m out of stickers for the scrapbook.
The toilet paper was on sale.
Then the bill comes in, we get depressed over the spending and what do we do? We either eat or spend some more.
You know the best and fastest way to help break the habit?
Write down everything you buy and all the money you spend.
This goes one step further than budgeting.
If you’ve budgeted $20.00 for scrapbooking supplies, then write down exactly where the $20.00 went and keep it in a little notebook that you refer to often.
If you’ve already bought 200 hundred rolls of toilet paper. Write it down. There’s nothing like looking at your spending in black and white to jolt you into reality.
Start being compulsive about the spending, instead of doing the spending.
Sound crazy?
Try it! It works.