Stress for Success: How do you handle your money and credit?

Many Americans are losing sleep these days as they struggle to keep themselves financially afloat.

A major cause of financial anxiety is giving into Madison Avenue's relentless enticement to spend, spend, spend. This may be great for the economy but it's lousy for some peoples' financial health.

If you tend to overspend, see if any of the following five spending habits identified by LaToya Irby (credit. about.com/mbiopage.htm) are leading you to burdensome debt.

• Habit No. 1: Spending more money than you make. To subsidize this habit you dip into savings, get a home equity loan, or make minimum payments on credit cards. These choices may get you through a brief downturn after which you can recover. However if this is an ongoing pattern you'll dig a deeper and deeper debt hole, eventually making it difficult to climb out.

• Habit No. 2 (which facilitates Habit No. 1): Using credit cards for everyday purchases, something many do to earn frequent flier miles. My husband and I do this but we pay off our credit card balance every month, a good habit we've continued since 1986. If you don't pay yours off every month then consider using only cash for weekly purchases like groceries and gas. It's less convenient but safer for staying within your budget.

• Habit No. 3: Being a shopaholic. The best way to disarm this habit is to leave your credit cards at home and carry only as much cash with you as you can truly afford to spend. So when you lust after something that costs $200 and you have only $60 with you, to buy it you'd have to go all the way home to get your credit card then all the way back to the store to buy it, leaving you plenty of time to rethink your acquisition. Or do as a friend does. She postpones some purchase decisions until she has slept on them.

Another friend discovered that frequently she'd lose interest in a recent purchase that at the time she just had to have. She disciplined herself to buy only that for which she could pay in full without using savings. This helped her reduce impulse buying.

• Habit No. 4: Using new credit cards to pay off old ones. This just shuffles debt around and incurs more expenses each time you do it. Don't be fooled, transferring a balance from one credit card to another invariably involves transaction fees, leaving you worse off than before you began.

• Habit No. 5: You spend money you don't have, which is the essence of the previous habits. The obvious solution for this, therefore for all of these habits, is to create and live by a budget that your income can handle.

Do any of these habits sound familiar? Knowing your worst spending patterns gives you a head start in changing them.

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