The time is back upon us. The greetings of the season, the snow, the black Friday, the e-Monday, the bills and jingles and so on and so on. So what to buy and what no to buy is the question? Well, not so much this holiday season compared with last ones. Everyone I know is broke. They are in fact too broke.

The inflation is catching to everyone’s savings -if there was such a thing. The credit cards are max and the monthly payments are due sixty days ago. The amount of advertising has increased without the paycheck increase. So what to do? Not so much we can do and is in out power to do. We can certainly shop around and look at things, but buying them is filled with hesitation and uncertainty.

Questions linger over our decision to buy anything now-a-days. If you buy now and pay later; how do you pay later? What if there is no paycheck increase and your overdue payment is close to 90 days late. The minimum payments you used to make no longer affordable. Every time you missed a payment by a day or two, the interest rate on your credit card went ten times that. How do you fix all of this?

Not that you have any choice here? You are bound by tradition-or is it a really bad habit- to buy and buy and borrow more to buy things you just want to buy. Like a crack addict you fingers shiver and your body tingle at hearing the word “sale”. You know you cannot afford it - you know will not be able to pay for it - you are already behind, but hey, old habits are hard to kill. Especially shopping habits with money you never had.

What an addict to do? I have never heard of a rehab for the shopping-crazy-person-who-cannot-stop borrowing money they cannot pay facility. You can kick crack habit out and it might come back, but shopping, it has become as a pastime, as watching a baseball game. You are in trouble. I am in trouble. We are in trouble. The whole economy will soon be in trouble. Have you not witnessed the crazy-home-buying-spree that we went on - and look at it now.