NEWS photo Torry Peters

WITH BAGS bulging and a handful of plastic, this -overspender staggers to the till. Contact Counselling offers a unique, ongoing series called the Overspender$ Clinic to people who have. a compulsive problem with spending beyond their means.

4) - Sunday, March 27 , 1988 - North Shore News

Travel with the News

PAGE 52

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WE ARE born to shop. We'd rather be shopping. We're spending our children’s inheritance. The bumper stickers we lash to our vchicles offer crude testament to the fact that the mall has become society’s communal and spiritual centre

point.

Statistics show over the past seven years, Canadians have just about doubled spending on con- sumer goods. Back in 1981, the nation's personal savings rate was 1S per cent of personal disposable income. By the third quarter of 1987, the savings rate had slipped to eight per cent.

Retail sales rung up in 1987 totalled approximately $154 billion. The figure is expected to grow by another $16 billion by 1989,

While most of us are still spen- ding within our means, others are being ensnared by the seeming case of buying into the lifestyle of the rich and famous.

Thirty-three-year-old Sherry, of North Vancouver, has been a chronic, compulsive overspender ever since her first job fresh out of high school.

She has spent more than a de- cade in debt scrambling to feed the spending binges she would go on to quell recurring bouts of depres- sion. ‘It didn’t last too long when 1] was out of debt. The only way ! could save was when I got bonds through work. If I didn’t see it, then I wouldn’t spend it,’’ Sherry said,

Ironically her first job was at a bank working in the personal loans department. Her second job was in the credit. department collecting other people’s money. Although she saw the sea of red ink others were drowning in, she lived from paycheque to paycheque and often beyond.

Said Sherry: ‘‘The hardest thing of all was when I got a Visa card. lt was like wildfire in my hand.”’

Shopping became a cure-all for depression. Actually owning the goods purchased did not bring joy.

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The bills definitely brought no joy. But the act of spending and living a yuppie lifestyle on a modest in- come was an alluring high.

Four plastic cards made it all possible, *‘] shopped for the best of life and the magic cards gave it fo me temporarily,’’ Sherry said.

She carried an average debt load of $6,000 to $7,000 dollars and still owes $13,000.

When she tried to consolidate her debts five years ago, the bank wouldn't give her a loan because she didn't carn enough and was too deep in debt. She chose not to declare personal bankruptcy because she felt obliged to pay back what she owed.

Three years ago she realized she was too weak to own credit cards and turned them in. Her search two years ago for local support addressing her problem was fruitless, There simply wasn’t any.

Support from her friends, who treated her spending habits as a joke, just wasn't there. Sherry did not discuss her problem with her parents,

While attending a recent women's show, she happened upon a booth set up by Contact Counselling Services and discovered the OverspenderS Clinic. She attended a weekend workshop. ‘'! found a supportive, non-judgmental, safe environment. J have more control now and | usually avoid the stores like the plague. Things are a lot better now that I realize why [ was doing this,"* she said.

Sherry found that her com- pulsive behavior was an expression of her inability to adequately ex- press her cmotions. ‘‘It’s tike somebody who overeats. 1’m try- ing to stuff my feelings,’’ she said.

The Overspender$ Clinic, started in May of last year and run by professional therapists Patti Cawsey, Cristina Ciccone, Dixie Kilroe and Wilma Dixon, is the only one of its kind in the country.

The next free introductory sem- inar for overspenders is from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., March 28 at the YWCA, 580 Burrard Street. The next clinic runs April 9 and 10. For more information call 420-1263.

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