I've often looked at the level of my debt and felt nothing but despair. Other times I've tried to think more positively, and treat it as a challenge, a challenge to pay the whole amount off and think what an achievement that would be. The problem with that is I've then found myself drawn back in trying to repay the debt through gambling. It's not necessarily the chasing losses part, at least that's not how it starts out. It starts with the best intentions; gambling a little bit, not on any 'silly' bets, but on 'sensible' bets at smallish amounts to allow me to pay that bill or minimum credit card payment, which I wouldn't be able to pay off otherwise. Whilst I start with the best intentions, I then find myself thinking about ALL of my debt. Thinking how difficult it is, how much interest I'm paying each month, how I need to work two jobs and each month after interest payments I'm hardly even making a dent in the capital I still need to repay. Before I know it, I'm then gambling with bigger amounts. A few wins, or a few losses, and I'm back into the swing of gambling; amounts won or lost just become numbers on a screen and I'll keep gambling until I have nothing left. Various times over the past 10 years I've won enough to pay the minimum payment on a card, in fact even pay off that whole card, and various others. Much more than I originally set out to do when I got back into the 'sensible bets' on gambling. But not matter how much I end up winning, it's not enough to pay off the whole amount of debt. Even if it was, at that stage I'd start thinking about all the interest paid over time, the amount of capital I lost, and thus I'd chase my losses. Even if I win those losses back, I'd keep gambling. I mean, that's how I got into this mess in the first place, so why would it be any different this time?! Thinking through this thought process helped me come to two realisations. Two realisations that seem straightforward, logical and common sense. But two that I have actually really started to believe, rather than just thinking I believed. 1) short term thinking - the power of incrementalism Don't think about how long it'll take to repay your debts - I always used to say it'd take 5 years, or 7 years, or 10 years to repay all my debt. That didn't help; it made me want to resolve that problem quickly and made me turn to gambling as the quick fix. Whilst it may take a long time, I've now set myself short term achievable goals. Get to the end of the month without gambling; pay the minimum payments on cards and £20 capital on another card. Get another card to drop down from say £530 to £499, so now it's in the four hundreds rather than five hundreds. Small, achievable goals and steps. And although if you do catch yourself thinking longer term, such that this will take 20 years to repay, just think that step by step you are getting there. You are repaying debt. You are not gambling. You are getting closer to more financial choice and on the road to financial freedom, no matter how long and difficult that road may be, you're on it. 2) a quick term fix isn't the right fix - resetting expectations and facing into the true consequences of your decisions When I'm gambling, if I have access to money, I always feel like I'm in with a shot of winning more money. Even if I have lost £100k, I think if I have a credit card with £5k on it, I still have a chance. And it doesn't really sink in what or how much I've lost until I literally don't have any pennies I can use for gambling. It never seems to sink in properly before that. And there's a parallel in the way I think about my gambling debt; I always think there will be a way I can pay it off more quickly than I should. Maybe I win a scratch card, the lottery, win big gambling, get lucky in a prize draw. No matter what it is, until recently I always had hope of a quick resolution. Facing into the fact that there's no quick fix is something that's only just dawned on me. Seems strange that after 10 years I'm only just facing into this now, but since when have gambling addicts always been completely rational? Realising there is no quick fix, and managing this through short term, achievable goals (be that financial or otherwise) is something that's really helped me to keep going, to be gamble free for the last 4 and a but months. It all seems quite simple really, but for me it wasn't. I still held on hope that my problems would go away, and I've only just now had the realisation that that isn't going to be the case. Maybe it's the first time I've been truly honest with myself. Leave a Reply. |
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