Researchers like Professor Tahira K. Hira at Iowa State University in Ames argue that the traditional ways of helping people deal with out-of-control debt, such as negotiating with their creditors and working out debt repayment schedules, will not help change the negative behavioural pattern.

"We need to sit down and understand why this person seems to have a consistent financial problem," Hira said. "If we focus only on the financial end of it, the same person will be in trouble again in five or six years.” Most of us have money problems. Some are simply quirks that do not cause any real financial woes. But Hira's research suggests that severe money problems must be faced as an essential first step to getting out of debt and onto a sound financial footing.

Hira, who trains financial planners, says she approached financial counselling in the traditional way for years, emphasising how to budget and to get out of debt. She changed her approach after working on a consulting project with the Canadian consumer bankruptcy office in 1990. That study convinced her that psychological factors were the driver for spending and saving patterns.

Psychological factors drives spending

Hira was hired to help the agency determine why bankruptcy filings were growing so rapidly. "The government wondered if they were making it too easy for everybody, so they could just go ahead and file for bankruptcy because the consequences were positive rather than negative," she said. In two weeks of exit interviews with people who had filed for bankruptcy, Hira and other interviewers focused on three things: Who are you today? What kind of experiences did you have growing up? How do you feel about yourself?

"I heard some very consistent patterns even though the people were very different," Hira said. For example, many had weak family relationships as children and an unhappy social life in school. Most of those who filed for bankruptcy had extremely low self-esteem. One or both parents were absent either physically or emotionally as they were growing up.

"I was disturbed by this," Hira said. "If it held true in the wider population, then doing financial counselling for people in financial trouble was not enough." Hira also studied personal bankruptcies in Scotland, Japan and the United States.

When she returned to Iowa State, Hira decided to test the results in a lab that was part of an undergraduate degree programme in financial counselling. In the lab, students with assistance from teachers counselled people from many walks of life who needed financial help.

Hira developed a questionnaire to elicit personal information from these people. The same questionnaire was given to a control group of students whom she believed had a healthy attitude about money.

The students who were comfortable with money had many similarities. "They had a pleasant growing-up experience, an intact family with one parent who had taken a great interest in developing the child as a person, telling him or her: 'You're beautiful, wonderful, capable, you can do it,'" she said. Generally, these students had had a positive money experience at a young age. A parent, for example, "had taken them at a very early age and helped them open a bank account and plan for a goal," she said. "They had a role model. And they had an underlying value system."

Differences in men and women

For the people who came to the lab for financial counselling, low self-esteem often played a role. "We noticed in the women's cases, many were becoming attached to men who needed picking up and cleaning up," she said. "Then the man would walk away, and they would pick another puppy who was bruised. "Men, on the other hand, typically got into debt by buying things for themselves. A lot of men were paying for cars that were long gone," Hira said. "All they had to show for the things they'd purchased was a pile of debts. In both cases, these people were trying to prove something to themselves."

Among people who run into financial difficulties, 25 percent have serious problems and need psychological counselling, she said. Most of the rest simply need to face up to what led them into trouble. For those facing these situations, there are strategies you can take to reduce your debt and change your lifestyle.

Hira attributes many of the problems she sees to the wide availability of credit. "It's not that people have changed," she said. "It's the environment." For example, in the 1930s and 40s people could not compensate for personal inadequacies by spending money.

"If you wanted to please a man or please yourself, you couldn't just go out and buy a new outfit if you didn't have money in your hand," she said. "Now I can walk into the mall and buy an outfit with the salary I'll be earning 10 years from now. Most spenders have little idea of how much their purchases really cost because they use credit cards."

She suggests that people go for one week paying for everything with cash.

"I have tried this experiment," she said. "When I walk into the store with hard dollars in my hand, I just can't spend them."

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