Buying on credit means you are agreeing to spend your future money on today's impulse buy. Often it's a decision your future self will regret and it propagates a cycle of debt.
"People keep making choices today that make it so that their current income to the household keeps paying for past choices," says Julie Murphy Casserly, Certified Financial Planner and founder of JMC Wealth Management in Chicago.
How to recover: Discontinuing all purchases and living off rice and beans until the credit card debt has been paid seems like a solution, but it rarely works.
"If they take all their money today and don't live in the present moment and don't plan for the future, then they're only going to keep recreating that financial past over and over again," Casserly says.
Instead, she recommends finding a balance among paying off the past, enjoying your present and saving for the future.
"If you deny yourself something you want today, in the future you're going to act out and jack up your credit cards again. I've watched it again and again," she says.
You can still splurge, but save up first. It will be much less costly in the long run.