Confessions of a Shopaholic

As some of you know, I have a bit of a spending problem (got this from my mom). I am not the typical shopaholic that spends lots of money on expensive clothes, shoes or jewelry. I am a bargain hunter who loves to spend money! When I find a good bargain, this strange high comes over me and then I convince myself that I must have it. I can usually justify any purchase to myself....I swear it is a disease!!!

This "disease" that I have got much worse when I became a SAHM. Go figure...now I am making no money, yet spending more than before! The reason for this increased spending.... online shopping. When I first had Z, I had a hard time leaving the house. That fall and winter, I did all of my shopping online. Amazon and Old Navy were the two places I spent the most, because they were the kindest and kept my credit card info on file. It got so bad that S and I froze my credit card into the middle of a block of ice.

This literal freezing of the card worked for awhile and my spending cut down dramatically (except for Amazon because they had my number on file...damn them!). Then the day came last spring when I lost my debit card and had a cart full of groceries that needed to be bought ASAP. I rushed home with Z and melted my card and drove back to the store....since then it has been off ice and this has not been good.

Well S and I decided that it would be best if I did not have a credit card (freezing it won't work any more because I now know my number....it really is a disease!). We took some money out of savings and paid the balance off. I will cancel the card later this week and tonight we are going to cut up the card into little bits and dance around them! No more credit cards for me!

I know this is the best move for me. Giving a shopaholic a credit card and telling them not to use it is torture...it can't be done. I think the first step of my reform was to admit that I have a problem (I admitted this last year) and now I need to take steps to make sure that I don't spend money (removing the card from my life was the first big step). My next steps will be to make sure that Z and I keep busy and stay out of stores. I am also planning to unsubscribe from all of my favorite stores who send me email updates about their sales etc. And I think S might have to start getting the mail so that I don't see the fabulous catalogs come in! Hmmmmmmm......

The last step for me is that I am going to go through all of the wonderful things we already have and start getting rid of the things that we do not need. I will either sell them on Craigslist, put them up on FreeCycle, donate them to charity or throw them away. Most people do their big clean up in the spring...I am going to do it this fall. The money I make I will put away for those rainy days when Z and I want to go shopping! ;)