How to Overcome Money Addiction and Live a Better Life
We all love money and quite frankly, we all need money. We need money to live a good life, get the things that we need and want. It will be impossible for us to do the things that we want to do without money. So, it is important that we chase that money and try to spend it appropriately. However, this chase and need to spend money on the things that we need and want can become something else for others. It can result in an addiction.
One sign that a person is suffering from money addiction is that they have a constant urge to spend money. They will sometimes feel like something is missing from them if they have not spent money in a day. Many of these people buy things that they do not need and have their homes full of unopened items.
If you are one of these people that suffer from money addiction the question you will be asking right now is “how do I overcome this addiction?” Here are a few steps to help you overcome this problem.
Be Truthful To Yourself
If you already show signs or you feel like you have money addiction, the first step to recovery is that you must seek help first inwardly. You must talk to yourself and you must be truthful about what the situation is with you. Any addiction is a problem, and money addiction is no different. In fact, it hinders you from having financial success.
According to psychologists and content creators at twiftnews, the most important step to recovering from money addiction is to tell yourself that you’re addicted. The reason many addicts find it hard to recover and instead, falls deeper into the pit of addiction is that they fail to admit that they are already addicted. There are many reasons why it’s hard to admit, but once you cross this hurdle, then you are on your way to freedom.
Apart from admitting that you are an addict, you also have to ask yourself genuinely if you want to change. While you need to make that initial admission, it is not enough. Some money addicts might attach more importance to their spending than the benefit that they will derive from breaking the addiction. So, even after admitting their problem, they find it hard to really want to change it.
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Talk To People around You and Seek Help
If you are really going to break an addiction, then you need to do the hard things. In this case, it will include you talking to the people around you and seeking help from them. I know personally that this might be difficult for anybody to do. Admitting addiction to the people around you is a tough thing to do but it is necessary for you. However, we all have people in our lives that are willing to go the extra mile for us and do anything for us to live a better life. These are the people that you reach out to.
There are people close to you that love and will be willing to help you out. These are the ones that will motivate you, stay by you, and help you through the whole process of recovery. They will also help you to make the right choices and make you develop the discipline that you need to make better financial decisions till you are well enough to make those decisions by yourself.
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Make an Inventory for Your Spending
When we start making bad financial decisions and overspending or we start to show signs of money addiction, we often have an idea that things are getting bad. But the truth is, we really do not know how bad it is until we go through the records (if there are any). Without a record or inventory, it is easy for you to tell yourself that you are not overdoing it especially at the early stages of the problem. Making an inventory is something that can help you prevent falling into money addiction. And if you are going to overcome this addiction, you might be needing an inventory.
With an inventory, you can keep a record of the amount of money that comes into your account and how you spend the money. You could also look back at your spending over the past few months. What you need is your bank statement and credit card, then you go through the past transactions that you have made one after the other.
You might want to break down your purchases in that period into two parts; the “non-essential” purchases and the “essential” purchases. This is the first step. Take this seriously and note that essential purchases include food, shelter and clothing. But going to high-end restaurants and the likes are non-essential.
Once you have divided the essentials from the non-essentials, add up the total sum. The total amount of non-essential services will likely shock you. That is how to know the depth of the problem you are dealing with.
From your inventory, you will notice your spending patterns too. Look out for the negative patterns in your spending and try to block them out or cut down on it as soon as possible.
Make a list of People that your Spending Habit affects and think of ways to make it up to them
Addictions and negative habits do not only affect the addict, it also affects the people closest to them. In most cases, their immediate families are the ones at risk. For instance, if the person that is suffering from money addiction is a married man, the wife will definitely be a victim of the addiction too. If they also have a child or children, the child(ren) will also suffer because of their addiction. There are many other people like that, even those that are not part of you immediate family could suffer from it. For instance, your wrong spending habits could make a friend of yours feel unnecessarily pressured into spending more than they should just to compete with your money-spending habit.
If you are to make a list of people that your bad habits affect, you are going to have a really long list of people, so you have to try to make it up to these people as soon as possible, and as much as you can. Then, try to make it up to these people. The best way you can do this is to live a new lifestyle for them. Your spouse and child need to be able to count on you to make the right financial decisions. You need to do better for them. Make a budget and work with it strictly.
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