Thought for today: A Spending Plan* is not a budget. It is a tool to avoid vagueness around our expenses. If our disease tells us that we want to avoid knowing where our money is going, our Spending Plan offers clarity. It is the antidote to financial vagueness. A member shares: “Before DA, I kept wonder, “Where is it going? I […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: At the end of our Pressure Relief Meeting we will want to schedule our next one, usually one month into the future. In between, we will continue the daily practice if tracking our numbers, gathering useful perspective along the way to help measure our progress. A member shares: “Doing my numbers has […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: After our Pressure Relief Meeting is over, and we have a new Spending Plan and an Action Plan for dealing with our debts and our life, we will be on course to grow in solvency. Our Pressure Relief Group has given us honest feedback about our current situation and we are now becoming […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: Continuing on the theme of sharing and pressure relief, let’s talk about what happens in a Pressure Relief Meeting. A member shares: “I like to start my Pressure Meetings with a short prayer like the Serenity Prayer. Then I hand out my numbers and give the group a chance to review them. “My Pressure […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: Having set up our spending categories, and tracked our numbers for a few weeks, the next step to simple pressure relief in DA is to put together a realistic spending plan that puts our needs first. To do this we schedule a Pressure Relief Meeting (PRM) during which we will share with our Pressure Relief Group (PRG) our categories for income, spending, […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: Feeling financial pressure? Having a Pressure Relief Meeting, as outlined in DA Tool Four, can help. It starts with tracking our spending for a few weeks, and ends with sharing what we find with others more experienced in the program. Tracking what is going on with our money, summarizing it, sharing it with a Pressure […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: The disease of underearning and debting can involve co-dependency. Trapped and helpless, weeks can turn into months and then years with no improvement. A member shares: “My boyfriend takes all my money. He’s an addict. I can’t afford to leave, so I feel stuck. I keep wishing for someone to wake me up […]
Continue reading →A member shares what life was like before he got a PRG (Pressure Relief Group) and began looking at how he dealt with his creditors: “When I first came into DA I had a lot of rage. Not anger. Rage. I battled creditors daily. I was combative, even at meetings, at the slightest hint that […]
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