How to Stop Shopping for Credit-Card Debt

Find the Shopaholic cure

Chronic overspending for one in 20 American adults is a serious mental health condition, according to a Stanford University School of Medicine report. Many of us are prone to occasional shopping splurges, but chronic overspenders shop for more than bargains; compulsive spenders seek emotional and psychological satisfaction. If you suffer addictive spending, take action with the following therapeutic strategies.

Things You'll Need

• Awareness
• Willpower
• Creativity
• Patience

Instructions

1. 

   Cancel unnecessary credit cards and shred the physical manifestation of your debt-liest sins. Compulsive buyers are more than four times as likely as their money-savvy counterparts to make only the minimum payment on credit-card balances, according to the Stanford study. But you can change that. Pay off bills with the highest interest rates first.

2. 

   Use free online calculators like those offered at Bankrate.com to determine how long it will take you to pay off your credit card, then learn how much more money you need to pay each month to erase the debt sooner.

3. 

   Arm yourself with the right tools. For much less than you'd spend on a pair of designer shoes, you can easily improve financial-fitness with a budget-planning software package like Quicken. Or, if you use Microsoft Office, check your document templates easy-to-use budget worksheets to better survey spending missteps.

4. 

   Practice money mindfulness. Focus on how your mind and body react to spending money any given moment. Does spending make you feel stronger or sexier? Trace those feelings so you can recognize what it is that drives you to overspend.

5. 

   Start your own overspending-anonymous blog (and earn AdSense dollars to pay off debt) on Blogger, Movable Type or TypePad as you clickclack away at the keyboard, waxing poetic your financial insecurities. Upload a few motivating pictures that reflects your true aspirations and not something that will set you off on an online-buying binge.

6. 

   Break the spending cycle. Not unlike the way in which we sometimes gravitate toward unhealthy foods to feed emotional hunger, the chronic overspender shops to compensate for whatever she feels she is lacking in her personal life. Fill that void instead with low- or zero-cost activities: Start a knitting circle, join a book club, "shop" for a volunteer opportunity or kick off a new workout routine.

7. 

   If all else fails, seek professional help from reputable debt-counseling organizations such as those listed in Resources. Several, such as Debtor's Anonymous offer overspenders a chance to discuss perhaps for the first time their addiction in an intimate group setting. Meanwhile, Debt Consolidation Care's community website provides visitors private debt-consultation and forums for virtual support-group sessions.

Resources

• Calculate the true cost of paying a minimum balance on credit cards
• Debt Consolidation Care Online Support Network
• Federal Government resources for spenders and debtors
• Advice from Olivia Mellan, M.S., a Washington, DC-based money coach and psychotherapist
• Quicken financial software
• Women's Institute for Financial Education
• Are You a Compulsive Debtor? quiz
• Freeze Credit Cards... in the Freezer!