Spending My Way Out Of Misery

I’m sure at some point in your life when you were feeling down, someone has told you, “hey think of it this way, at the bottom things can only go up.”

Victoria and I have been friends since our days at Cornell more than 10 years ago. During our years in college, Victoria would have been the last person that I would guess to have difficulty in handling her finances. I did not learn of her “spendaholic ways” until she told me shortly after we graduated. However, I didn’t really think very much of it; I thought, “Hey, who hasn’t had a moment of weakness where they splurged way too much on a particular item. It was a stressful week, we deserve a treat!” However, the problem arises when you have way too many treats!

Through the years, I have seen Victoria encounter the many hurdles in her life, which she describes in the pages ahead. In witnessing this, I have discovered that all it takes is a little splurge (a small drop of water), to turn a bank account balance from a manageable $100 (an almost empty bucket) to an overwhelming balance that could have paid for a couple years’ rent or your child’s college tuition (a bucket overflowing uncontrollably with water). Victoria has come a long way and in some ways everyone can relate to her. We’ve all been spendaholics at some point in our life; unfortunately it lasts longer for some than others. Usually, our impulsive excessive spending behavior manifests itself when we’ve just encountered some new form of stress in our life. However, once the stress has been controlled, the urge to splurge seems to disappear.

By sharing her story, Victoria shows us that we are not alone in our habitual spending ways and her story enables us to take a glimpse of ourselves from the perspective of the others around us. As you will see, the major key to Victoria ultimately improving her financial situation was her ability to realize that you have no one to blame for your situation but yourself. Our situations are a reflection of our own actions, which we all have a choice in. If we realize and accept the consequences for our own actions, we would probably make better decisions and have fewer disappointments, thus less stress. It is these disappointments which ultimately in one way or another turns us into spendaholics for either just a day or for years to come, as was the case for Victoria. By sharing the revelations attributing to her successful battle with her “spendaholic ways,” Victoria shows us that it’s true, “at the bottom, things can only go up.”