How to solve your

money problems

Confess your sins!

Once you've established your hierarchical list of needs, make as thorough an inventory as possible of all the expenses that you've made since the last year, or since two or even three years before. Examine these expenses with a critical and severe eye, without any complaisance and with reference to your priority order. Ask yourself the reason why each of your past purchases was made and red-pencil the ones that were not in tune with the established priority order. If it turns out that you weren't reasonable, then inflict a punishment on yourself by voluntarily depriving yourself of one or several things that you're reasonably entitled to but that aren't of vital necessity.

Then take the firm resolution not to satisfy any more need that is not strictly in the first category. From now on, every time you're faced with a yearn for buying, don't ask yourself any more this question: "So, should I buy it?", but rather this one: "Will something really serious happen if I do without this item?" If the answer, deliberately honest and sincere, indicates that the item will not satisfy a vital need, then categorically refuse to open your purse.

Then, every week, engage yourself in a session of self-criticism — ask yourself seriously if you should not or could not have further restrained the expenses you made during the past period. If you were reasonable, then congratulate yourself; in the contrary case, inflict a punishment on yourself and take the firm resolution to be more severe with yourself in the future.