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Name: Jess
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Re: I have a shopping addiction. - February 10th 2013, 11:31 PM

Another thing is making it hard to access your money!

The reality is there's no harm in looking and wanting, but if you always buy the things you desire . . . well you end up with a house full of clutter, for starters.

Anyway for making your money hard to access - there's a couple of things I can think of - one, which was suggested to me a long time ago, was fill a container of water, and put your cards in the water, then put that container with the cards and the water in the freezer. That way, next time you want to make a purchase, you have to wait for the water to melt. And you're not allowed to cheat with making it melt. However that won't work if you've memorised your card numbers.

The other option is, make in financially painful to access your money. You can set up purely electronic accounts that your bill money gets put into and your bills are payed via automatic payment, where if you make a withdrawal that's unplanned, you get charged for it. Having separate accounts for bills and spending money is a good idea anyway, because as said previously then you know what you have to spend and you can't accidentally dip into your bill money for leisure.

And finally, be realistic about being an adult. There's an order of importance -
RENT - you want to keep a roof over your head. You don't want to have to go back to your parents and explain to them that due to an addiction, you weren't able to pay rent and got kicked out. Rent always, always, always has to come first.
Amenities - Power, Water, Phone, Internet - these are your regular "bills". Keep on top of them, and you won't get late fees, or get your access cut off. I've had my phone cut off before (bad planning, mania, etc) and it feels AWFUL. It also affects your credit rating.
Food and transport - these come last because if your bills are more than you expected, you can always live off noodles and bananas for a week, and with transport there's always a way to cut costs or to get a ride with someone sometimes.

After all that . . . then you have the money you can spend

If you're having really serious trouble with this, and none of anybody's suggestions sounds doable, then I would very strongly recommend seeing a counselor or something, because it might be something more related to impulse control in that case. But do as much as you can, and if that's not helping, and you're still trying to get more imaginary money (let's be honest, the money on credit cards doesn't exist until you pay it back), then you might need more assisstance than what we can provide on the internet.

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