....My discussion of this topic from an earlier post. My compulsive spending was mainly due to... 1) Lack of real self worth. I was constantly trying to buy self worth and happiness. Wanted to live the rich life, could not afford it and was defiant about it and resorted to "forcing" things. Also was envious and jealous of almost everyone. Was out to "show them" and "out do" them. Whenever you think about outdoing others, think about what road your on? Having a big ego and an excessive amount of pride are big factors too. Had little acceptance or gratitude. Now I get my self worth from living within my means, comfortably fitting within my space and gratefully accepting my current position in life...one day at a time. 2) Did not want to face the issues in my life. I used spending, debt, clutter and other addictions to "occupy" my time. Per an article in the WSJ regarding famous con man Ponzi: "When a mans mind is concentrated, he is blind." It turned out to be a death spiral as I always needed to generate more drama and sickness to occupy my mind from dealing with the past problems. Was blind to it all until I stopped debting, spending and participating on many other addictions and started to recover. Study the Virtue theory of the ancient philosophers. It details how we get this way and our whole lives start to revolve around dealing with the problems we have created for ourselves. Restructuring my life got me back to sanity, although it has taken 8 years of hard work to get there. It didn't happen overnight and takes constant diligence to keep me there. 3) Self sabotage due to many irregularities, falsehoods, lies that was my life. I lived a very unbalanced life and was out to consciously and subconsciously ruin my life. Being dishonest was the foundation of most of my troubles. Once I started with the 12 steps, debt recovery, did some inventory work, developed grateful acceptance. I had too many complexities in my life and worked on living a simpler life through the Voluntary Simplicity movement. Inventory work identifies all these past spiritual problems and gets them off your back when you give them away. No one is perfect, we have to continue to take inventory work as long as we live. 4) Another reason for my spending is pleasure; it just feels good to buy stuff. If it feels good, I over do it to excess until it becomes painful. I think this is a big area of why we spend. It is just enjoyable and we have a hard time controlling it. Personally, I'm an excessive pleasure seeker and use pleasure to escape stress and unhappiness. I needed to find pleasure in more healthy and positive areas than spending as a hobby. Spending produces pleasure chemicals in the brain and I was hooked on this drug fix. Only trouble was it lasted a day or two and I need more spending to keep me high. This led to debt, clutter and self loathing and I was headed in a death spiral. "Maybe the next purchase would make it all better for me?" This was my only hope in life. I had nothing to look forward to other than what to buy next. 5) Greed, plain and simple. I am very greedy and suffer from what I call "The Big Eye's" syndrome. Nothing is ever enough. I want it all. I want to buy everything that catches my eye. I want to eat all the food I come across, I want every woman that I lust after, and on and on with all the addictions. I have no natural means on my own to know when I am full or have enough of a thing without the help of the program. Practicing a program of grateful acceptance as well as being more generous with others and less selfish helped counteract my greedy tendencies. 6) Bordeom Did not have anything else to do with my time, so I shopped. An old post on "Positive Time Fillers" Developing a list of positive time fillers was a big help with my addictions. As Thoreau wrote in Walden , "The devil finds work for idle hands." Before heading in this new direction, most of my time was occupied by what to buy next, overeating rich foods and getting fat and when I wanted a break from that I had a picnic basket of other addictive areas to get drugged up with. Most of my new activities are sport or movement related as they also serve the purposes of helping with my overeating disease and have the added benefit of improved health and don't produce clutter like some hobbies do. In addition they help with depression, balance and equilibrium and brain functioning. Now, keeping busy is not the cure all for addicts, but it is a necessary foundational pillar. Other areas of importance are those activities that relax our minds or stimulate them for healthy growth potential. Bottom line: is the activity pleasing to us, healthy, nurturing and sustainable? You can also use the SCA guidelines for any questions about the activity: is the activity placing unreasonable demands on my time and energy, will it place me in legal jeopardy or endanger my mental, physical or spiritual health? Remember, as Jack LaLane said, exercise and eating healthy, natural foods are the King and Queen of good health. If you hate to move and hate to eat well, then do as he also said; "I developed a liking for things that are good for me." Now I have much to look forward to in life for activities or rewards that are not destructive and are sustainable. Activities to occupy yourself that don't revolve around spending, eating, gambling, drugs or alcohol or other addictive areas only go so far in recovery though. You also have to be careful to take time to relax and not escape life through activity. Horace wrote, "Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt--You can run away as far as you like but you'll never get away from yourself." 12 Step work, reducing stress, repairing the wreckage of the past and living a balanced life all contribute to heading in the right recovery direction. I've enclosed a few of some of my activities below for your perusal. Also be careful you don't find another excuse to compulsively spend with each new activity or sport you take up. That is something I have to watch. For instance. If you take up rollerblading, you buy one pair of skates and one set or protective gear, etc. You don't buy 5 pairs of skates 5 different skate bags and 8 sets of skate clothes, in all colors for each day of the week plus one extra for holidays. If you want different skates, you sell the old pair and then buy a different set. Everything is on a "one in ~ one out" basis to avoid compulsive spending, stockpiling and clutter. Partial List of My Positive Time Filling Activities: Hiking, Mountain Bike, Climbing Gym and Rock Climbing, Basketball, Rollerblading, Trail Running, Jet Skiing, Racquetball, Swim, Sun Bath, Fishing, Canoeing, Skateboarding, Weight Training, Target Shooting, Camping, Jogging, Kayaking, Motorcycle, Snowshoe, Downhill Skiing, XC Skiing, Yoga, Massage, Meditation, Dirt Bike, Free Lectures and Movies at a Local University, Snow Tubing, Snorkeling / Scuba, Napping or Relaxing in a Hammock, Bar B Q, Picnics, Library, Spiritual Studies, Free Musical Events and Concerts, Church Services, Scenic Seasonal Car Trips, Travel. Exercise and healthy eating are the king and queen of good health. They must also sit on a thrown of low stress living. I hope you make the king and queen part of your life. Here is a small snip from Psychotherapy Toady regarding the benefits of exercise with addiction. Why does exercise have such an impact on the emotional brain? Naturally, there is, first of all, its effect on endorphins. These tiny molecules secreted by the brain resemble opium and its derivatives, such as morphine and heroin. The emotional brain contains many receptors for endorphins, and that's why it is so sensitive to opium-it immediately radiates a sensation of well-being and satisfaction by hijacking one of the emotional brain's own intrinsic mechanisms. Opium has a powerful effect on emotions-in fact, it's the strongest known antidote to the pangs of separation and mourning. However, when derivatives of opium are used too often, they can become habit forming. Brain receptors become inured to them, so the dose must be systematically increased in order to produce the same effect. Moreover, because the receptors become less and less sensitive, regular pleasures lose all their power and potency-including sex, the pleasure of which is often reduced in drug addicts. The secretion of endorphins brought on by physical exercise does exactly the opposite. The more the natural mechanism of pleasure is gently stimulated by exercise, the more sensitive the mechanism itself becomes. In addition to relishing sex and life's other big pleasures, people who exercise regularly actually get more pleasure out of the little things in life: their friendships, their cats, their meals, their hobbies, or even the smiles of passersby in the street. Essentially, it becomes easier for them to be satisfied, And in fact, the experience of pleasure is just the opposite of depression. Depression is defined, above all, by the absence of pleasure, more so than by sadness, which is probably the reason why the release of endorphins has such a potent antidepressant and anxiolytic effect. Stimulating the emotional brain by exercise also kindles the immune system. It promotes the proliferation of "natural killer" cells, making them more aggressive against infections and cancer cells. The opposite effect occurs with heroin addicts, whose immunedefenses collapse, often causing them to become gravely ill. Exercise may also strengthen another physiological mechanism related to emotional health. This mechanism involves what we have already learned about heart rate variability. "'People who exercise regularly show a greater variability in heart rate and more coherence than people who do not. This means that their parasympathetic system, the physiological "brake" that brings on periods of calm, is healthier and stronger. A good balance between the two branches of the autonomic nervous system is one of the best potential antidotes to anxiety and panic attacks. All the symptoms of anxiety start with an overactive sympathetic system, a dry mouth, accelerated heartbeat, sweating, trembling, a rise in blood pressure. The sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are always in opposition. Thus, the more stimulation the parasympathetic branch receives, the stronger it becomes-like a developing muscle.

Definitely check out the forums at myfico.com. There are tons of experts and people who are going through the same exact situation as you who will help with warnings, tips, sample letters to creditors, etc. There are a lot of debt consolidation scams and more cropping up every minute. I would not trust a credit counselor or financial advisor who wasn't registered with the state or SEC. More than likely this debt "counselor" your DH talked to will take your $900 and walk away. They get paid $900 even if they spend 0 minutes on your case. You would have no idea, and all they have to say is "Sorry, we weren't able to convince your creditors to budge, thanks for the $900." If anything I would do a search for a nearby Certified Financial Planner at http://www.cfp.com. Nearly every one of them will do a free sit-down interview with you to discuss your needs and give you an estimate of what they would charge to help you (and how they would help you). They take an oath, have an ethical standards board and take exams and continuing education so you can be more certain that they will not scam you out of your money.

You remember the reasons given for it being essential to let the market decide which is the best way to go? That competition will ensure that everyone offers the products and services that people desire ... they claim. And it's partly true ... the corporations love competition ... among their suppliers. That way, the big guys can dictate to each supplier what they're willing to pay: take it or leave it. If they're big enough, many suppliers will take it ... until they are near bankrupt. They love competition among their customers: if there are only a few, they have too much negotiating power ... there is more or less a level playing field. But ... they hate it on their own level. Remember how we had a lot of little (granted, inefficient) dairies? The locally dominant dairy'd come in and offer the little guy about half what his business was worth. If he refused, they'd undercut his prices till he could no longer survive. Then the big guys came along and ate the middle-sized ones. When you have half a dozen players doing 80% of the business, do you figure that there's much competition? We have a small number of gasoline suppliers in Canada. When there's a price rise ... four local stores all put up their price to the same amount ... at the same time. After many complaints were heard, the government carried out several evaluations, over the years. They all came up with the conclusion that, yes, there is competition in the petroleum business. And all is well. As communism fell in Russia, many very large businesses and agencies were sold off to certain well-placed individuals or small groups. So they start off with heavy centralization, from the start. The same is going on in China as they gear up for participation in the market eceonomy - many very large companies are being set afloat. A number of them with close association to the Chinese government ... or the army. So theirs is to be a mature, over-centralized, economy from the start. We talk a lot about "freedom" and "democracy" ... which we mean to be operational in the political, and substantially in the social, realm. But a measure of "economic democracy" that some of us feel to be a worthwhile way to fly, doesn't get much consideration. Corporations run by the golden rule: he wot has the gold ... makes the rules. Good wishes for wise management of your life and assets. ole joyful

I completely agree that CWC is neither benevolent nor altruistic. However it is deeply concerned about it own bottom line, and having a gigantic inventory of foreclosed houses isn't helping. It also has to be upset about all the terrible PR it's gotten lately. One purpose of this new program is, no doubt, to try to turn that around. As for the bonds, I don't think the bondholders, which include many huge institutions such as pensions and money market funds, would have been so eager to purchase them if the bond raters had given them a junk status rating, a rating we now know they deserved. I've read that the three bond rating companies (Standard&Poor, Moody's and Finch's), may have conflict of interest issues because, when rating these bundled mortgage bonds, they were simultaneously taking fees from the originators, such as CWC. The deeper we get into this debacle, the more we find out that the financial structure that allowed it to happen is rotten to the core. At least that's the conclusion I'm beginning to reach. Tell me I'm wrong.