Relapse triggers

The last post I wrote was about how bad I was feeling after a month of spending.  It seems that loosening up the pocket book for big expenses always seems to inevitably lead me to a period of relaxed spending that I end up kicking myself for later.  And February really turned into one of those periods. 

First, S and I had already planned on going to Pennsylvania for 4 days to have a ski vacation with my family.  I had budgeted for our share of the expenses and thankfully my parents had given the lodging and lift tickets to us (and my sisters) for Christmas.  I felt pretty comfortable that spending the money on this vacation wouldn’t set back my plans of paying off my credit cards by the end of the year. 

But then I noticed the front tire of my car was bulging out and would need to be replaced before we could drive anywhere… I have no savings account to fall back on and of course new tires were not in the budget so out comes the card to save the day.  And because I had already broken the seal on the card for the big vacation and new tires, I started putting some small things on the card here and there. The mentality was something along the lines of I’ve already racked up a huge bill this month what’s an extra $30.

Also, in the past three weeks S got an interview, a second interview, and finally a job offer for a majorly awesome job.  Each of these events has had me whipping out the card for celebratory dinners, drinks, and also a few presents to give his wardrobe a boost.

And inevitably with all this spending comes the feelings of guilt which you think would stop me from more spending but seems to have the opposite effect.  For some reason the worse I feel about aspects of my life the more likely I am to try to spend my way into feeling better which is where I was during my last post… down in the dumps and unmotivated to get back in gear.

I realize that going on vacations, celebrating major life events, and giving presents to loved ones are not bad ways to spend ones money, it’s just that I don’t have any money, I have debt.  I want to be able to feel happy and stress free when spending money on these types of things instead of the overwhelming guilt and despair that comes after periods like this.  The only way I can get to that point is by recognizing the triggers that loosen up my wallet and working hard at resisting them.

During the next week or so I’m going to focus on what my triggers are and figure out some ways I can avoid disaster… I don’t want to have another “February”!