12 step fellowship for recovery from overspending or underspending. Spenders Anonymous is a community of women and men sharing their experience, strength and hope as they work toward clarity in their relationship with money.
Some of them spend compulsively or take on debt that they do not know how to repay. Some of them lack confidence in their ability to earn money, while others have money but lack the ability to manage it sanely.
What they have in common is their need to work toward serenity in their relationship with money. Their experience is that they cannot do this alone. Through working the program of Spenders Anonymous, they have discovered a greater peace with their spending and money issues.
They often use spending to change their unwanted feelings and obsessive thinking. Characteristics of compulsive spending include having emotional pain around spending and money issues; spending money they don’t want to spend or spending money they don’t have; or holding onto money too tightly and not being able to let go of it. The problem is their relationship with money – how they deal with it, which can be over or under spending.
These are the 15 tools they have found to be helpful:
• Abstinence
• Meetings
• Reading and Writing
• Anonymity
• Phone Calls and Emails
• Service
• Exercise
• Play
• Slogans
• Humor
• Prayer and Meditation
• Sponsorship
One of their definitions of abstinence around money issues is Peaceful Spending.
Their purpose in working the Spenders program is to stop spending compulsively, to take responsibility for their money, and to carry their message of recovery to the compulsive spender who still suffers.