Chapter 16
Recovering Spender Step 3:
Admit Your Spending to Someone Else
What is holding you back from telling someone about your bad spending habits? Is it fear, worry, anxiety, humiliation? For me, I was so ashamed about my spending that it kept me from telling Mark for a few years. I would wake up telling myself, “Today is the day,” but then I would chicken out and continue to pretend that everything was fine. I would walk around filled with anxiety that he would somehow find out. That anxiety would lead me to shop, and the cycle would continue over and over again.
Secrets are known to be bad for your health, and researchers have discovered actual health benefits from simply admitting your private secrets. Let’s take a look at one of those studies.
In 2012, Notre Dame professor Anita Kelly authored a study on the effects of lying. Kelly and her team worked with 110 people between the ages of eighteen and seventy-one for a ten-week period. Half of the participants agreed to try to stop telling lies during the study, while the other half received no strict instructions. Both groups were given polygraph tests, and researchers found a dramatic difference in the health of the two groups. They found that the participants who told the truth more often had 54 percent fewer issues with anxiety and depression, and 56 percent fewer physical health complaints (such as headaches). They concluded that keeping secrets and lies causes physical stress. This, in turn, causes an increase of the stress hormone cortisol to be released in the body, threatening health. The results also showed that being emotionally vulnerable paradoxically causes an increase in feelings of power, and the participants who were vulnerable (due to telling the truth) reported very little physical stress.
A common misconception of being vulnerable to another human being is that you are the weaker person; but that could not be further from the truth. Vulnerability is not weakness. Let that sink in for a minute—it is not weakness. As bestselling author Brené Brown (check out her TED Talk, “Listening to Shame”) explained so perfectly in 2012, “Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.” When secrets fester, shame increases. We are courageous when we speak out regardless of how uncomfortable it feels.
Brown also goes on to say, “If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.”
If the shame you’ve felt over your spending is kept secret, it will continue to grow. If you continue to be silent about it, that shame will fester and become greater and greater. Your health may start to decline; you may feel anxious much of the day. But if you tell someone about it, you have the opportunity to kill your shame once and for all as you walk in the path of truth.
When you’ve confessed your spending to at least one human being, you are now ruling over that fear. You are now in control of it; it is not in control of you any longer.
Rachele was so tired of walking around on eggshells around her husband. She got her and her husband into $5,000 worth of debt in just three months. After a health care scare, she felt so stressed that she started spending money that they didn’t have.
Rachele joined my Financial Renovation course with just over $5,000 in debt. She had tried to budget in the past but she had an income change which made it more difficult to keep up with her bills. After her health scare, she had to change her line of work and her income was cut in half. She joined the community to learn how to get out of debt, learn how to budget successfully, and to get on the same page as her spouse.
During the course, she paid off over $2,500 worth of debt, which was almost half! She also managed to set aside $1,500 into an emergency savings account for unexpected expenses.
Before the course, she felt this pressure every single day of how to manage money. She said that the way this course broke everything down to a manageable level each week made it so easy to tackle. The pressure is now gone and the plan is in action. Rachele is still paying off debt and plans to be debt-free within the next three months.
Rachele had to admit her spending to her spouse and by doing that, he was able to bear some of the stress from their finances. They were able to get on the same page, and work through it together. She realized there was no “right time” to tell him, so one day she just blurted it out over dinner. She was relieved when he forgave her, and offered to help.
Her life has been forever changed as she now knows how to successfully stick to a budget, save on groceries, and best of all, is now communicating with her spouse about their family finances.
I can relate to her story because when I prepared myself to confess to Mark, I sat and thought about the different ways I could tell him, but nothing seemed right. I waited and waited for the correct time and atmosphere, but it never happened. I got so sick of waiting for the perfect moment that I just blurted it out that one night. Mark was so graciously forgiving and eager to help get us back on our feet. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t heartbroken over all the lies I had told him.
After you’ve confessed, if you are able, ask that same person to help you to be accountable. This person can be the one who helps you set up your initial budget, or just calls to check up on you. Mark was my accountability partner, and it only worked because he believed in me and was a Saver.
There are times when both people in the relationship are Spenders. What happens in this situation when only one of you wants to get help? In this situation, I would suggest you both sit down and have a good long talk about it using my Financial Bucket List or the quiz from Step 1. Talk about your goals for the future and where you want your values to take you.
You may even want to include another accountability partner or join a group for help. One of the ways that I currently help people is through my Financial Renovation Community. I’ve gathered hundreds of Spenders together as a community to help build each other up and support each other. The women and men who are part of my community have paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, and that is due in part to their supporting and encouraging one another. You can find out more about that community at shop.laurengreutman.com/community.
