Author: Carrie Rattle

Stuart Vyse’s Going Broke: Why Americans Can’t Hold On To Their Money brings an important historical perspective to a current crisis, approaching debt not primarily as an individual issue but as a far broader sociological one. Vyse views our present debting behavior in the context of historical economic influences, moral financial perspectives, the evolution of… Continue reading Recommended Reading: Going Broke:
Why Americans Can’t Hold Onto Their Money
By Stuart Vyse
(Oxford University Press, 2008)

A year ago in the newsletter (Vol 2, Number 3), we reported on The Healing Money Workshop, held at Onsite Workshops in Nashville, Tennessee—one of a very few programs that does intensive work with people who have serious money disorders. A combination of financial education and experiential therapy, the workshop focuses on bringing to awareness… Continue reading Results of an Open Clinical Trial of a 6-Day Experiential Therapy Program for Disordered Money Behaviors

Dr. Sunghwan Li, professor of marketing and consumer studies at the University of Guelph in Ontario, has been studying reactions, specifically guilt and shame, to impulsive purchases. In researching the effect of one recent impulsive purchase on 222 college students, Yi found that “people who feel guilty about it are likely to fare better than… Continue reading Other Recent Research

After years of rigorous testing and research, a new test of compulsive buying tendencies is being published in the December issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. Designed to identify consumers who “have a strong urge to buy, regularly spend a lot of money, and have difficulty resisting the impulse to buy,” the new test… Continue reading Important New Test for Compulsive Buying Comes Out in December

An article in The Williams Record discusses the dramatic rise in online overshopping among college students, but that rise isn’t limited to the collegiate population.  Increasingly, other Americans are clicking their way to addicted shopping. They’re lured there by an endless virtual world of merchandise, by attractive pricing, and above all by the ease of… Continue reading Stopping Overshopping Tips: When Happiness Seems Just a Mouse Click Away…

In a Washington Post article earlier this year, Michael Fletcher pointed to some disturbing facts about the direction of the middle class economy. At the heart of the matter is a curious reversal: although the typical American family now earns less than it did seven years ago, its rate of consumption has increased significantly. Median… Continue reading Making Less, Spending More: What’s Wrong with this Picture?

A recent article in the Williams Record, the campus newspaper of Williams College, examines the dramatic increase in online buying among college students. It notes that under-25s are among the most frequent computer users and reminds us that credit cards now flood the mailboxes of younger and younger people, typically beginning in the early teens.… Continue reading Students Love Getting Packages—
Even If They Have to Send ‘Em to Themselves!

Recent research makes definite and demonstrable what we already suspected: that QVC and other such channels are enabling and encouraging compulsive shopping. For an overshopper, these channels are simply too seductive. Don’t go there. Stay away. These are not retail stores, where, at your leisure and with sales pressure you can limit, you are able… Continue reading Tip: Resisting the Shopping Channels

How do negative emotions affect our buying habits? A recent study looked into the effects of sadness on our willingness to spend. Participants, who had agreed to participate in the study for a ten dollar stipend, were divided into two groups. One viewed an emotionally neutral video about coral reef systems in Australia. The other… Continue reading Emotions and Buying Behavior: Two Recent Studies

An overshopper who completed the Stopping Overshopping Program read Mindfulness and Money shortly after she’d finished the work of the program. She recommended it highly. We asked her if she’d consider writing a short review for the newsletter and she’s graciously accepted. Two years ago, I was deeply in debt and fighting the urge to… Continue reading Recommended Reading: Mindfulness and Money: The Buddhist Path of Abundance