The Twelve-Step Program for Financial Stressaholics

I was speaking at a 12-step meeting one day, and this Twelve-Step program for Financial Stressaholics suddenly came to me. With a wink and a nod to Alcoholics Anonymous and twelve-step programs everywhere, here are the twelve steps to treat your money disorders—spending bulimia and income anorexia:

The Twelve-Step Program for Financial Stressaholics

1. We admitted we were powerless over money—that our checkbooks had become unmanageable. 
   
2. Came to believe that a Budget greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
   
3. Made a decision to turn our will, insurance, checkbooks, and retirement accounts over to the care of a Financial Advisor that we understood.
   
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our debits and credits.
   
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our accounting errors.
   
6. Were entirely ready to have our Financial Advisor remove all these defects of our accounting software.
   
7. Humbly asked her to adjust our bank reconciliations.
   
8. Made a list of all persons to whom we owed money and became willing to pay them all.
   
9. Made direct payments to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would overdraw our bank accounts.
   
10. Continued to take financial seminars and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
    
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Financial Advisor, praying only for knowledge of her retirement plan for us and the power to invest enough money in it.
    
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to income anorexics and spending bulimics and to practice these principles in all our finances.

Chellie Campbell, Financial Stress Reduction Expert, is the author of bestselling books The Wealthy Spirit, Zero to Zillionaire, and most recently From Worry to Wealthy: A Woman’s Guide to Financial Success Without the Stress. She is widely quoted in major media including Redbook, Good Housekeeping and more than 50 popular books. She has been treating Money Disorders like Spending Bulimia and Income Anorexia in her Financial Stress Reduction® Workshops for over 25 years. Her website is www.chellie.com.