I am a Recovering Spender. For years I struggled to balance a simple checkbook every month without bouncing a check. I found myself a young married woman, in over $40,000 worth of debt, with an underwater mortgage, running a $1,000 deficit every month. I tried computer spreadsheets, but they confused me. I much preferred pen and paper. I tried tracking my spending, but only felt defeated. For years, I read book after book and tried every personal finance system I could get my hands on, but with little success. There were some parts of any given system that spoke to me as a Spender, but I felt that most did not apply to me.
Through trial and error, I learned how to control my spending, and get out of debt once and for all. In the depths of my despair, I started to develop my own system, specifically for those of us who struggle with spending. It is meant to work for ordinary folks like me—and you.
If you are tired of creating budgets only to crash them, if you are sick of being broke all the time, or if you simply want to know how to start getting out of debt, then you are speaking my language. This book is not for savvy spenders who have it all together financially, are masters of their credit cards, and have robust Roth IRAs and stock portfolios. I am writing this book for you—the American Spender.
There is so much information out there for people who love learning about everything financial, but what about people like us? Where are the books for those of us who just can’t seem to get it together? I wrote this book for the not-so-savvy spenders. The forgotten people when it comes to money management. We are the black sheep in the finance class, sitting in the back of the room slouched down with our heads hung low. We’ve gone through life thinking that we suck at math and there is something wrong with us. The ironic thing is that we want to get better, but we just aren’t sure how to do it.
You may feel as if there’s no hope because you’ve tried and failed and tried and failed again. The finance books aren’t making a connection with what you need, instead they are making you feel depressed and helpless. “Just stop spending money,” they say. Yeah, right. We both know things aren’t as simple as all that, because we’ve tried and nothing worked!
Here’s the good news: You don’t have to be depressed and helpless anymore. I’m here to offer hope—because I’ve been there, found the answers, and made them work.
Somewhere along the road you may have been taught that you are not capable of handling your money, and I am here to tell you this is a lie! You were not born to be terrible with money, that is not who you are. Maybe you’ve tried to budget in the past, but failed. For years you’ve lain down and endured the pain because you didn’t know there was a way out. Maybe all you really needed was someone to pick you up and help you see what is on the other side of the divide.
This book is the financial book for the person who doesn’t enjoy talking about money. It is for the person who wants to learn how to get out of debt and stay out of debt once and for all. If you struggle to stop spending and have failed at budgeting many times in the past, this is the book for you! Let me be the one to pick you up, dust you off, and help you walk over that divide so you can see that there is hope on the other side.
I know what it takes to learn that the other side of the divide offers relief. I was a compulsive shopper for most of my life. My spending habits landed my husband and me under a mountain of debt. I would wake up most mornings and feel like there was a 400-pound weight on my chest. My spirit was crushed, the anxiety and stress were paralyzing, and I had no idea how to get out of the mess I had gotten us into.
What you’ll find in this book is my story of how I found us buried in $40,000 of debt, and how I managed to dig us back out. I’ll walk you through what it takes for a Spender to go into “recovery” with her spending, climb her way out of debt, and live a life of financial freedom.
I consider myself a Recovering Spender. I will always be a Spender and am always one decision away from falling back into my old habits. Through trial and error (okay, mostly error) I’ve found what works to keep me from spending money. I know what boundaries I need to keep in place, and what my trigger points are. I am a Recovering Spender, and I hope to help you get into recovery as well.
Throughout this book, I am going to share with you my struggles and weaknesses. I’ll show you how someone like me can climb her way out of debt, learn how to happily stick to a budget, and start to take back control of her money and life.
I am not going to tell you that the process is a quick one, but you will get better. I have tried it all—the cheats, the quick fixes—but they all failed me. Why? Because I wasn’t willing to do the hard work that it takes to get it done the right way, which is often the harder way.
In the second half of the book we will go through the Twelve Recovering Spender Steps you need to follow to get your life back. These are the steps I took to get my spending under control, successfully stick to a budget, and still have fun and enjoy life along the way. As someone who has been through this, I took the best parts of every program I’ve ever tried and created a new one using the things that worked best for me as a Spender. Consider this the “Official Spender’s Guide to Recovery.”
I am living proof that you can take back control of your spending habits and get yourself out of debt. Believe me, if I can do it, anyone can.