Stories Level

All names are fictional

Level 1:

• Jacob have a problem with spending money. Jacob have expenses that he needs to cover, but he uses his money to buy things he does not need. Afterwards, Jacob is struggling to pay his bills when he got paid.

  • Keywords: expenses, items, struggle

• Ann is addicted to shopping. Due to her compulsive shopping, she is currently in a serious debt, and she can’t seem to stop

  • Keywords: addict, compulsive, debt

• Jane loves to shop. Jane likes buying things for her or for someone else, and it makes her feels good. She always looks for bargains and does not buy expensive items. Although she works hard and earned decent amount of money, she have to be in charge of her family finance because her husband is a shopping addict. Jane always pay her bills, but she often to run up credit card debt. She felt guilty of her actions and wish to save more so that her family could get out of debt.

  • Keywords: bargains, responsibility, debt

Level 2:

• John is having a hard time to control his spending free. He often ran into trouble with the debit card that he got, and have to go to the bank to straighten things out. He had too much shopping, as it is his biggest vices. He needs to get a handle on his behaviour. Shopping only makes him happy for a while, then he regret the things he bought.

  • Keywords: debit, vices, regret

• Lisa is a shopping addict. Due to her behaviour, she is currently drowned in debt and have trouble with the law. She is doing a lot of work to get herself out of debt, and she is really scared.

  • Keywords: behaviour, law, scared

• Emma had been hiding years of credit card debt from her husband. One day, someone came to her house with a subpoena and was greeted by her husband who had no idea. Emma finally confess all of it, and it might have an impact to her relationship.

  • Keywords: Hiding, subpoena, relationship

• Olivia have been battling with her shopping addiction for about ten years. She got a lot of satisfaction from owning things, and it has become a big problem. When she made a large purchase, she felt great and euphoric at that moment. Then, reality comes crashing down and she wants to die. She open up credit cards at stores, so she does not have to ask her husband permission. She afraid that her addiction will ruin her marriage and relationships.

  • Keywords: Satisfaction, euphoric, marriage

Level 3:

• Mia is currently attempting to take hold of her shopping addition. On average, she spend approximately $2500 per month on things that she does not need. She is not sure why she did that. But, she found it really hard to drive past her favourite store, and currently she have bought numerous identical items for back up. She hides a lot of her purchases from her husband, although he does not question her spending as it is her money. But, she still hides it in fear of judgement.

  • Keywords: huge-spender, identical, judgement

• Luke is in desperate need for help to control his impulsive behaviour to shop and spend. He have been in lots of bad situations when he have overspent big amounts. He have just received money to purchase a home, and do not want to blow the amazing opportunity to change before he lost his family home.

  • Keywords: help, overspent, change

• Sophia was naive and blind to her problem. She realized that, after her mom passed, she started overspending to feel in control. Her partner is currently trying to help her, but she is scared that she will just keep messing it up.

  • Keywords: overspending, control, scared

• Mario have known for a while that he have a shopping addiction. His addiction has caused his marriage to end almost two years ago. He later reconciled again lately, but due to his addiction still present, they became separated again. He is devastated and currently seeking for help.

  • Keywords: addiction, reconcilement, devastated

• Jacob noticed that he have a problem. He bought too much stuff that he don’t need, and he always got into trouble by the end of the month. He admits that he can’t control himself. After he paid his bills, he thought that the rest of the money is an “extra” and that he can spend it however he want. By the end of the month, he don’t have enough money to buy milk or gas. Jacob doesn’t give any thought to plan on how will he spend his money to the end of the month.

  • Keywords: bills, extra, planning

Level 4

• Sofia is a spending addict. She decided to spend money on small purchases to deal with issues of low self-esteem and loneliness. She got herself into a big trouble recently when she was discovered that she has misused more than $20,000 funds for an organization. It has occured for a long period of time, and she thought that it was a small “loan” in the beginning, and she would quickly pay it back. But the situation soon became unmanageable. When she was discovered, she immediately paid in full restitution. But, she lost her job in the process and was forced to confess on a public social media post so that she wouldn’t be pursued with formal charges. She became infamous at her local area, and felt bad for all of the people that she has hurt.

  • Keywords: self-esteem, crime, infamous

• Alicia was just spending small money on clothes at first. Then, her problem started getting worse and worse. She borrowed a lot of money from her parents at first. After they stopped giving her money, she started getting loans from anyone she could. It got into a point where she had thousands of dollars in loans and have no way to pay them. Now, Alicia became homeless and it’s all because she couldn’t stop spending money on stuff that she never really needed.

  • Keywords: clothes, loan, homeless

• Julia’s shopping addiction habit nearly cost her life. Her spending problem began when she got an average income job, and moved into cheap association flat. With a large disposable income, she started buying things she doesn’t need and soon became overwhelmed. Nothing made her feel as good as shopping. She even booked a round-the-world trip on a whim. After a few years, debt collector letters were piling up. She tried to move house regularly to avoid being tracked down by creditors. After ten years, she have spent approximately £200.000 and saddled her with £30.000 of debt. Her addiction was consuming her life. Bailiffs warned her that they would reposses her stuff if she did not pay up. Julia went into despair and wrote a suicide note to her son. Luckily, her son made her realise that he needs her, and she decided to phoned her local mental health service. Now, Julia is taking medication to calm her anxiety. She’s trying to get her spending under control.

  • Keywords: suicide, debt collectors, hope