When I started working for REIC, I read one of the earlier draft’s of Kris Krohn’s latest book. At the time I was not married yet, but had been dating my current husband for almost four years. So, in all of my relationship wisdom, carried this philosophy around with me:

Boys fool around while they are single and girls, well, they shop.

So, obviously, with that mentality, I over-treated myself on occasion and became a practitioner of retail therapy. I was doing pretty good for myself after college. I landed a really good job right out of school (especially for the job market and especially for Utah county) and was spending a little too much—not more than I made, but almost!

Anyways, as I read through the book draft, one thing stuck out to me. Spend less now and make the sacrifice to not spend for a few years in order to create room for building wealth! So save, invest and skip out on the stuff that you don’t need.

This isn’t a new idea, but reading that concept in the context that it was in (a book talking about making money, legitimately) struck a chord. To me that meant, stop eating out, stop compulsive shopping, stop buying things that I “need” (cause let’s face it, girls “need” everything for everything). And me, being in love with fashion, should know and accept that fashion comes in cycles and that if I miss a season, I’ll see quite a few of the same styles in a few seasons or in the thrift store.

For those of you who read the blog, know that I love getting my news updates and editorials from MSNBC. They had a great article called “How to Escape a Shopping Addiction” with 10 steps Gotta have your steps. For those of you who have shopping addictions, be it in retail, electronics, big masculine toys, this might be a fun read. Enjoy!