Compulsive Shopping Disorder? Shenanigans!

One of the things that we Americans do best, is blame other people for our problems. You can see it everywhere! “No boss, it wasn’t my fault that the report was late, it was Jims, he didn’t do X, Y, and Z.” In fact, John G. Miller even wrote a book called QBQ which actually has to tell workers to stop blaming each other at work so much so you can just do your work and get it done! Of course it goes far beyond the work place. “I can’t help it my kids are rotten, it’s the TV and violent video games.” “I can’t help it that I’m fat, all of the food is bad for us anyway.” The list goes on ad nauseam. People blame others, society and made up disorders for stuff that is absolutely their fault. Yes, it is your fault.

Stanford University has given Americans another opportunity to blame somebody else. They have done a study about a “compulsive shopping disorder.” Prior to this study, it was believed that the disorder effected from 2 to 16 percent of Americans, and that 90 percent of the sufferers were women. The Stanford study found that it effects 6% of women and 5.5% of men, and the average between both genders was 5.8%.

The study also found out some other interesting information about the “compulsive shopping disorder.” The people were more likely to be younger and have incomes of less than $50,000. It also found that “compulsive shoppers” had several credit cards and were near their limits. It was also found out that these people also are four times more likely to only make the minimum payment on their credit cards.

So the survey says that there is a percentage of the population that spend more money than they have and use credit cards excessively. One cannot help but wonder if these ivy-league researchers at Harvard ever figured out, “Hey, maybe some people are just bad with money?” We don’t need an expensive Big 10 university study in order to figure this out!