Debt and Compulsion

As you’re doing your personal financial planning for 2010, hopefully you (and I) will address the issue of debt.

Here are 15 questions to help you discern an important topic. Is your debt problem economic/financial or emotional/compulsive?

Anyone can get laid off or have their business implode and face a debt crisis. But the issue is – why was the debt there in the first place?

Here are 15 Questions about Debt that help you discern the real reasons you may have trouble with debt.

They basically probe about the emotional relationship you have with your debt.

For instance:

When you take out a loan to purchase something new or charge something on your credit card, do you have some sense of euphoria?

If you were to pay off your credit cards and be able to finally shred them, would you feel naked and unprotected?

At the same time, does your debt continually worry you? Does it keep you awake at night?

Those first two are questions I made up myself, but they summarize the issues at hand.

If compulsion is an issue, the book The Currency Of Hope was written by and for people with this issue and will be a good “Christmas Present To Yourself”