My tale as a reformed shopaholic…

FB: Look at how great she looks! That was literally the way I glowed and looked when I shopped!!

I don’t think I was as bad as some stories I’ve heard of women panicking, and buying all the wicker baskets they could find and storing them in a huge room in their house just because it made them feel good.

No, no..

My problem was I just loved new things. When I bought something, it was like it was my birthday. Every day.

Let me start from the beginning. When I was younger, I actually had a tendency to be frugal, around the age of 7. When I was given money by my parents (once in a while), or by my relatives for special occasions, I saved it. I saved it in the bank and waited until I got to $100 or $200, then I’d ask my parents to take me to the bank and let me withdraw the money so I could use it to buy things. (More often than not, it somehow ended up in my siblings’ hands as I didn’t know better. Hmm… in retrospect that was pretty skeezy of them to take cash from a child).

Anyway, as I grew older, I got my first job at 16 working at a fastfood restaurant (ugh I know. I stank like grease and oil when I got back from my shifts). And this job, paid minimum wage, but with the hours I was working at nights and on weekends, I had plenty more cash than I did before!!

I still saved all of this money, but on my weekends off, I’d spend it. Buying clothes, spending it on trips to see my long-distance boyfriend, whatever it was – if I had it, I spent it.

Mind you, I still paid off my credit card every month however – my dad (at least) always told me to be careful never to carry a credit card balance, but never completed that thought with “and don’t forget to always save 20% of everything you earn!” .

Anyway. I was perpetually living on all of my disposable income, spending it on things that didn’t matter.

Then I moved out, and went to college. The same habits continued but this time I had a larger pool of money to borrow from – after clearing my tuition, my books and other student bills, whatever was left over, instead of saving it for a rainy day, I spent it (again) on junk. Buying LOTS more new clothes, buying shoes, jewellery, scarves, lots of dinners out, everything. To me, it was free money in my mind. It never occurred to me (well, maybe.. deep down inside), that I’d be out of this college situation in 4 years, and I’d have to pay the Piper in the end.

I loved having a new necklace, or a new top. The new pretty jewel tone of it, or the way it sparkled, captured my heart, and on impulse, I bought it.

And most of all, I was using it as a way to bond with my girlfriends, and to show off. Yes, I humbly admit that I bought things just to flaunt that I had the available money (in a sense) to buy it. It was also a nice bonding experienced, sipping drinks at a cafe, surrounded by bags of new things.. it was nice. And uplifting. But the bad thing was associating shopping with good times, when I could’ve easily had good times with my friends in my apartment, watching Sex and the City on DVD and eating snacks we made in my kitchen.

My shopaholicism tripled with my student loans. I was going to the mall almost every day after class (the bus from my college was a direct route there), and just browsing racks or counters at the mall, and if I saw something I liked, I didn’t hesitate to plunk down the plastic to pay for it.

With credit cards, it never seemed like real money to me. I never actually saw any $20 bills being handed over (ironically, I had a spare $20 stashed in my wallet at all times, and I was VERY careful with that one $20, but not responsible at all with my line of credit.. Huh.)

Sure, I still paid my cards in full every month, but it was all on borrowed student loan money.

I bought, and I bought and I bought. Even my friends were always marvelling at all the new things I got, and it seemed to them like I never wore the same thing twice (umm.. yea. pretty much). And I always seemed to have new things, new shoes, new jewellery to show off.

I think my estimates were that I spent about $10,000 or more, on JUNK. Did I mention that I also worked 2 full-time jobs during school? If I hadn’t, I think that bill of $10,000 would’ve been $30,0000 or more, without my job to pay for it the rest of it.

I worked out a budget (couple months ago), I tweaked it until satisfied, and began tracking my pennies.

Now, I am satisfied that even though it seems like we don’t have a lot of money right now (every free penny goes to debt), we still have more than most. And whenever I go shopping now, I’m more careful.

So in essence, I had to face my debt, face my fears and accept them.

It sounds pretty simple, but remember, it came only after 14-15 months of hard work.

That’s 420 – 450 days!!! Imagine that! During the entire time, I could’ve been working on suppressing my buying impulses, but I didn’t.

And now, we’re on the right track, and we have to make up for lost time, but I’m glad I came to my senses and my reality sooner rather than later. I don’t even want to think about what I would’ve considered buying this year had it not been for that moment of truth.

(Actually yeah, I do. I’d buy an iPod, a GPS navigational system, and a whole plethora of Sephora goods….)

Related Posts:

• Feeling of inadequacy
• Financial Snapshot: Two Young Lawyers
• High Income doesn’t necessarily mean Financial Smarts
• Financial Snapshot: Psych Undergrad works towards a Master’s
• November update on finances

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