There are so many parallels to addiction of spending and alcohol. This was my story. When I stopped drinking and started my sobriety from alcohol the addiction of spending came on strong. Different substance, same outcome. 

In recovery we have a saying, we peel the layers of the onion. When we start our recovery from one substance or situation we can often pick up something else in its place. Often if you are recovering from alcohol use disorder it can be replaced with food, sugar, spending, gambling, sex etc. I like to call it same sh*t, different pile. It’s all the same. We are reaching outside of ourselves to escape. We use something else as a coping mechanism. Some call it a really fun game of whack-a-mole. 

This is completely normal. 

In Lesson 4 we talked about understanding our financial feelings. This is where the parallels are really seen. The feelings. The things we are trying to numb out on. The void we are trying to fill. 

Part of my story is...

Welcome to Lesson 2 of Financial Sobriety School.

This lesson I wanted to tell my story. I have told my story before but what's really beautiful this time when I tell my story is that my story has come full circle, for now. What I mean by that is, I have come from a place of being close to bankruptcy close, losing my home, close to losing everything. 

I've been working on my financial sobriety now for over five years. When I say working, I literally mean working on my financial sobriety, to get to a place where I was able to pay off my credit cards. As you'll read in my story today, it took a long time to do that, because the addiction to spending money was so, so strong and I accumulated a lot of debt.

I'm going to start my story when I was just a wee baby. My parents were babies raising babies back in the day. My mom was pregnant with me at 15 and my dad was 18. My mom was 16, when she gave birth to me. SO YOUNG! When I think about that statistic in general all I can say is...