At the height of her shopping addiction, Lisa, a 56-year-old registered nurse, had blown through her and her husband’s $10K of savings, taken out three clandestine loans and accrued $50K in credit-card debt.
Another thing the out-of-control spending cost Lisa? Her marriage.
“I did all kinds of things I’m not proud of,” says Lisa, a mother of two from the Houston, Texas-area who asked The Post not to use her last name for privacy reasons.
The days between Black Friday and Dec. 25 make for an especially challenging time of year for people like Lisa who are compulsive shoppers. They’re believed to make up about 5 percent of the population, according to 2015 research that ran in the journal Addiction.
“The addiction affects both men and women,” explains Terrence Shulman, founder and director of The Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending and Hoarding. “And it’s definitely on the rise because of easy access to the internet.”
And while compulsive shopping might strike some as a frivolous problem, it can lead to a path of deception that has serious consequences.
“I lied to my dad and got him to co-sign for a loan,” says Lisa, whom Shulman dubs a “trophy shopper,” because she is a “big game hunter” who treasures extravagant, high-status products.
She bought her 9-year-old daughter a $1,200 diamond-and-ruby necklace. Her son received a $1K football signed by former Dallas Cowboys star Tony Romo. The booty for herself included $1K handbags by Kate Spade, a $500 purse from Betsey Johnson and the pièce de résistance — a $10K diamond ring from De Beers.
‘I did all kinds of things I’m not proud of.’
“[The band] made me feel as if I had found true happiness,” recalls Lisa. “I felt that, once I had this trophy, I would need nothing more — until that item got old, and I discovered something else that would make me feel like that all over again.”
Drowning in debt and crippled with guilt, Lisa eventually confessed to her husband. He was horrified by his wife’s spending and the couple divorced in 2002. Happily, they reunited — “He said he couldn’t live without me,” says Lisa — and the couple remarried in 2010.
But she still hadn’t learned her lesson. She continued spending on goods from brands such as Michael Kors, Coach and Dooney & Bourke.
It wasn’t until two years ago that Lisa consulted with Shulman, who made her realize she was committing “financial infidelity” by continuing to lie to her husband about her spending. Shulman instructed her not to buy anything for six weeks and to pay off her $600 credit-card bill and $379 monthly car loan under full supervision of her spouse. This holiday season, she’s planning to resist her usual habit of last-minute impulse buying.
“I’m trying really hard,” says the nurse. “I couldn’t carry on doing what I was doing.”
She maintains her issues stem from an unhappy childhood in which love was expressed through material things. “Gifts were the love language,” she adds. “My mother was narcissistic and emotionally immature.”
Brenda Connell has also searched for reasons behind her five-decades-long shopping addiction.
Her mother always subscribed to retail therapy. “It was a form of filling a void and retaliating against my father when things weren’t going well,” says the 70-year-old grandmother.
Connell, of Springs Lake, Michigan, was never short of money after marrying an orthodontist. She splurged on toys and clothes for their four kids and indulged her love for seasonal décor, especially golden Christmas ornaments from Danbury Mint.
Her go-to store was the now-shuttered Jacobson’s in Grand Rapids where she’d buy “cute clothes, shoes and boots.”
“I got a buzz from finding a really good deal,” she says.
She also did everything she could to hide the sheer volume of her shopping.
“It got to the stage where I’d leave my purchases in the car until I thought it was [safe] to incorporate them into the home,” she says.
Things got worse after she divorced in 2000. Her ex would give the children “generous” checks for Christmas. “I felt like I had to compete,” says Connell. “Despite my relatively modest income, I’d buy my daughters and son gift cards totaling $1,000 each for the holidays. It all added up.”
The retired nurse now lives with her second husband, a former pilot. With his help, Connell faced her demons and visited the Shulman Center in 2017. By that time, she had racked up $30K in credit-card debt.
“I knew I had to come up with a way of not only paying back that money, but also stopping the behaviors,” she recalls.
A combination of talk therapy and support groups helped Connell manage her shopaholism. She sought advice from Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and the married couple refinanced their mortgage to pay off the $30K.
They no longer buy expensive presents or gift cards for their family members.
Instead, Connell gives what she calls “service gifts” to her relatives. She will get down and landscape their backyards or baby-sit. In the run-up to this Christmas, she is sewing miniature quilts for two of her four grandchildren to place on antique toy bunk beds she used to play with as a girl.
“You don’t have to spend a lot over the holidays,” says Connell. “Something heartfelt means so much more.”
SPENDING FREEZE
Whether you have a bona fide addiction or just need to suppress your inner Santa, therapist Terrence Shulman shares tips for tamping down holiday-season splurging.
- Make a list of what you need – then pass it off. Find a trusted friend to pick up only these items for you. To keep things light, you can say, “I’m afraid if I go into the store, I will turn into Santa Claus and can’t afford it this year.”
- Leave the credit card at home. Travel to your shopping destination without any plastic at all. In Shulman’s experience, hardcore spenders make excuses and worry about what they will do in the unlikely event of, say, a flat tire. “With debtors, there’s a tendency to catastrophize, but just remember that these situations are rare and you’ll be OK.”
- Skip in-person shopping on banner sale days. While crowd-drawing clearance sales are alluring, Shulman suggests avoiding them. Yes, prices may be a little lower, but they turn into buying bacchanals, causing you to scoop up stuff you never needed in the first place just because it’s a deal.
- Let your cart languish. When making non-essential purchases online, put the item into a virtual shopping cart for 24 hours. It will give you a day to decide whether or not you really want to purchase that super-powerful garden hose when you already own a perfectly serviceable one.
- Use an app to keep you accountable. Recording your purchases is “a very confronting experience that wakes you up,” says Shulman. Pick an app that allows you to create a budget, track spending and know when you are busting through your predetermined limit. Shulman likes Wally.