How can I re-learn how to value money after years of gambling addiction?
The distorted lens through which gamblers end up viewing money…
‘Barney’ had been gambling hard for years. Despite his young age of 25, he was already addicted since more than 5 years. He had met his woman in high-school and although it hadn’t been planned, the pair had welcomed their first child 2 years ago. He loved being a Father, but there was no denying that the financial pressures of having a child had not helped his gambling. At the time he came to see me, he had lost a considerable amount of money that belonged to a relative- who in turn had sent him a donation towards a flat deposit. The relative was of course blissfully unaware that Barney had a gambling problem.
Barney was very stressed. Not only was he now going to have to own up to the relative that he had squandered the money he had been given. He would also need to come clean to his woman that they would not be able to move anytime soon. Finally, he would also be required to repay the money he had taken from hard earned, taxed money.
That night, as he was putting his son to bed, he realised that he had never previously considered how much things actually cost.
He had been existing under a cloak of illusion and denial about what he could afford or not, and what standard of living was appropriate for his earning. Having denied to himself the impact of his gambling problem, he had also got himself into a habit of living off of what he felt was ‘free money’= the money he felt he had ‘earned’ when he had a win. What of course had not gone in to that calculation, was the money he had gambled for. Effectively, he had been living on the potential of another win….
In addition to feeling terrible about what he had done, he also lacked the knowledge of how to exist on what he actually earns. The many years of gambling had blunted his sense of what money can buy and how long he would need to work to rebuild his finances. At this point, as many of you will know, it feels like a very long road ahead. So long in fact that it might make you want to gamble to see if you could make it a bit faster.
Please accept that every bet is going to prolong your recovery time. If you at least stop now- you can start the countdown, regardless of how long it will take you.
Here are some common scenarios relating to how you value money that might resonate with you….
# You may notice the price of goods, but believe that you can afford it as you are incorporating your wins or even worse; prospective wins, in your assessment of your current available funds.
# You are living with the bigger foot in a fantasy universe where despite going broke, it doesn’t really matter. Because sooner or later you are of course going to win it all back and at that point this will not matter so much.
# Everything that cost money feels expensive. You act like a ‘cheapskate’ towards yourself and sometimes even towards others, since it feels like the only way to pay for things should be through wins. If there aren’t any wins, any outgoing feels like a violation on your wallet!
# Any real life shopping or actual responsibilities pertaining to money have since long had to be outsourced to others due to your gambling. As a result you now have no clue what things cost or the actual outgoings for yourself or the family. You also lack the skill of planning for how to make the money last, as this is not something you have felt the need to do before. in the past you could just ‘win it back later’.
# You are constantly so busy thinking about what you ‘believe’ you will win, and as a result live as a bit of a fantasist. You shop at supermarkets you can’t afford, make promises to others that are way beyond your financial remits, and as a result end up with enormous financial pressures- that make you want to gamble more to ‘get back on track’.
Common trap: Equating money with status & self-worth
Adding to the above, many gamblers have a real appetite for the good things in life. With or without necessarily being able to afford it. This is not always the case, but when it is- be aware, as it will trigger a sense of denial in terms of what is reasonable to pay for something, and even more importantly, what is reasonable with the money you have at hand. Something could be ever so well priced, or even on half price sale, but if you don’t have the money – you should not be buying it.
I find that the gamblers (and other people too by the way) are often far too pre-occupied with what money is going to give them in terms of standing in society, status and, even more worryingly, sense of self-worth. I do understand this type of reasoning. Being Swedish myself but having lived in the UK my entire adult life, I know that there is much more emphasis on financial status here in the UK, let alone in the US. There are substantial cliffs between groups from different socioeconomic status such as ‘working class’ vs ‘upper class’. I am of course aware that there are genuine differences in how your life is likely to pan out in terms of educational levels, choices, respect from others and possibly even your chances of being successful financially.
But here is one truth that many people need to be aware of- money does not make the man! We are more than the possessions we have, and the cars we drive. We are what we are in our hearts and soul and actually; much of that can be expressed and lived with or without money. When you operate from a belief of needing money because you miss-sold yourself as someone who was financially better off than you really were, you are likely to reinforce a sense of dependence on money.
This in turn will end you up with undue pressures of living up to situations financially that are doing nothing other than trigger you to put your last dimes on a bet to see if you can ‘make it’.
It is a dangerous and risky game, and it is going to mess with your reality concept of what money is actually worth. The bottom line here is this:
if someone likes you only for the money you claim to be in possession of – they don’t really like you!
If someone really likes you (and you really like them), part of being authentic is to show them who you really are; money or not. The trouble is, that by the time someone loses interest in you after finding out that you lied about who you are (or pretended you were someone you are not) how on earth are you supposed to know if they were just hooked on you because of money (you claimed to have) or if they genuinely felt let down and hurt that you had the nerve to lie to them about who you really were?
The risk is; you will assume the former, that they left because you were not with the status you had sold to them; and then you go on to assume that you must pretend to be someone else next time again. This is a common self-reinforcing cycle that is well worth the effort to disrupt by becoming aware and commit to be authentic in the future.
Remember; good people who are authentic will not care about your financial stutus as much as they will care about your intentions being pure! This will of course also include your intentions of remaining in recovery and being honest.
So assuming now that you are someone who has a poor concept of money’s worth, and find yourself living as if price-tags had no relevance in your life; here are some practical steps to follow to retrain how you value money:
#Try living on a little less – and give yourself intermittent rewards
The idea of ‘living on less’ as a concept is unlikely to be a new one for you, if you have indeed struggled with gambling problems for large parts of your adult life. If you are like many gamblers I have helped over the years, chances are that a period of self-deprivation often gets followed by a huge blowout which invalidates and effectively destroys every bit of effort that you made. This makes it all feel futile and pointless. Some people may even go so far as to argue that this simply doesn’t work as they end up doing more damage when they ‘rubber-band’ back into the gambling behaviour after a while of trying to pull away from it.
Here is the twist; your brain is going to respond to the state of deprivation with serious intolerance and produce urges, withdrawal symptoms and go into fits where all it can think about is your next spree. In so many ways does this end up feeling as if you may just be cursed and will never be able to successfully stay in recovery. instead, You have to get one step ahead. Rather than awaiting your emotional brain’s tendency towards seeking out a ‘reward’ for putting it through deprivation, you will need to allow for small rewards along the way; even when such feels undeserved and excessive to what you can actually afford.
So basically; let’s for a minute imagine that you have £100 to live on for a week. Your challenge is now to live cheaply and at the same time experience a sense of reward for your good behaviour at the end of the week.
What would feel rewarding for you? Is it a nice take out meal? A visit to a nail bar (during non-pandemic times)? Let’s say for the sake of the example that your reward of choice is going to cost you £25.
You now have £75 to disperse of for the week.
For many people I have seen, the idea of planning for a daily expenditure actually ends up going very badly the minute they realise that they have say £10 per day to live off and they are needing to get back and fourth to work, eat a few meals and for some possibly also smoke and drink on top of this. It will not work if you approach your finances with a daily sum in this way. Instead, you might find that putting the various expenses together as a weekly one; say food £50 per week- will mean you could do a well planned food shopping, that will actually sort you out with meals for all of those days and still leave another £15 pounds. As a contrast, eating a meal out for say £6 each day may seem like nothing in that moment, but means that you cannot have breakfast or lunch as you will then not be able to do anything else at all including buy a bus ticket to get to work. The same is of course true for all other goods you might be buying and certain things may be paying off to buy in bulk too even if it means paying more than you feel you can afford one week, knowing that this will be an expense you will not have the following week.
Take-aways from this point:
Plan your weekly food expenditure and shop at the supermarket (a cheaper one) with a plan of what to eat. Perhaps aim for bulk cooking and buying larger packs of groceries to last through the week in order to save money.
Plan the entire week ahead and include a small reward for yourself at the end of the week that will act as a ‘golden star’ for your week of being responsible. Do NOT attempt to remove this reward (which is something I often have witnessed). It is important not just for the feeling on that day, but to pre-empt a sense of ‘build up’ frustration about never feeling treated to anything you want- which always lead to a lapse down the line instead.
Living within your remits is an important exercise that forces you to appreciate the value of goods, while at the same time appreciate yourself for attempting to live within your financial limitations.
#Exercise: what would that loss have got me instead?
Warning- this exercise is likely to cause pain!
Choose a recent gambling episode where you come clean to yourself about how much you lost.
You are now going to do something that’s gonna hurt, but will definitely help put you in touch with reality and make you think a little next time:
I recommend doing the tables below in excel if you have access as you can easily do summary of amounts. This exercise does provides an important reality check and reminder of what things cost, and what better use your money would have had. It is also a great exercise that may force you to check out how much things actually cost in case you have been known to shop following on from wins (at which point you may have felt the price tag didn’t matter)
*For the purpose of deterring from gambling, I do recommend writing each item out in the way I have done in the table above. This is to make it feel ‘extra painful’. Although this may sound cruel, this is for the purpose of your reality check, and with hope that having this reminder can assist in deterring you from future gambling episodes.
** As an add on exercise, you can also try to break down the money lost in terms of hours that you need to work – after tax- in order to make the equivalent. It can be a real shocker when you realise how the same amount of money that you shrugged at when you placed it on a bet, is actually equating to more early mornings, extra hours away from your kids, and effectively from time to time ‘working for free’.
How did it get to this?
There are many more small ways in which you can start getting in touch with reality and begin to yet again appreciate the value of money.
Gambling is an activity (just like shopping on credit cards or ‘buy now pay later’ solutions) that fools the mind to believe that it is not really that costly. All human beings are likely to be attracted to short term gratification on some level. Gamblers none the least! The idea of getting something quick and not have to actually pay for it is therefore particularly attractive for people with difficulties in delaying rewards.
Sadly, by feeding this loop in the brain, you might end up finding it very hard to conceptualise the value of goods in terms of ‘time it takes to earn that money’ or just the value of goods full stop.
You begin to live in an illusion that you have more than you do, and with gambling (unlike credit cards) this also feeds the belief that if you continue gambling you could at some stage ‘break even’. That sought after point where all the money you lost would again get repaid.
I am appealing to your logical side here- please accept that if you don’t gamble to start with, you don’t have to live life in the grips of compulsive chasing. Whilst this might lack in thrill, it also comes with some very attractive and settled features.
You can instead learn to accept that what you have, which may be very little, is enough and it is guaranteed. You will simply have to make it work. If you don’t currently make it work financially, then there will be a range of solutions for how to make it work better. Reduce outgoings even further, taking an extra job, finding a side-hustle or otherwise. Just know that gambling is not going to be one of those solutions.
Here are a few more things you can try to help you ‘reset’ your template for the value of money:
a year ago I would have put ‘pay with cash’ in this section. It looks as though cash will soon be a thing of the past. Second best would be cards such as MONZO that allow for good budgeting, gambling blocks as well as transfers to savings that have an entire 90 days withdrawal notice period. This is rock solid for any impulsive person who needs to save. it also has the benefit of being able to view your money build up in the app, yet without having the possibility of using it.
pay out your necessities immediately as the money arrives. This gives you little choice but to survive on what remains. Do ensure all credit lines remain blocked!
start facing up and planning for how debts will get repaid, even when doing so means paying small sums for many years to come
Make it a sport to not gamble; put into a spreadsheet how much you feel you have ‘saved’ by not gambling. Use this amount to treat yourself to something ‘extra’ now and then.
do try to save just a few pounds per month in order to enjoy the feeling of something building up. Do make sure the account is locked from withdrawals with less than a few days notice!
Calculate the value of an unnecessary expense to see how much it will be in a year. For example; if you think shopping at M&S local vs shopping at Aldi makes no difference on a particular day when you feel a bit tired and unmotivated to do a ‘big shop’- try and calculate the difference and then times it by the number of weeks in a year. How much would £20 saving become in 52 weeks? £1040! Suddenly it may seem worth those extra drops of energy to battle through the isles at Aldi.
Try to set some real financial goals and think about how it would feel to achieve them; this will feed a new more constructive loop in the brain and overtime reinforce your willingness & motivation to delay gratification.
Last but not least, do not forget that as a person with gambling addiction you are likely to be SUPER RESOURCEFUL when it comes to surviving on no money. Never have I seen so many fantastic solutions come out of a human beings as when a gambler is needing to get through the week without having to tell someone they have lost their money to gambling but still need to get through the week. This is the time to use that resourcefulness but without the lies and the deceit.
GOOD LUCK!
Annika X
© annika lindberg 2021 Headward.co.uk