Pay Day- Hardest time of the month

Its nice to know that im not alone when it comes to payday worries, for the first time in a long time im starting to not dread payday and actually get excited as I know i can start paying some bills and owings off. Dont get me wrong the urges are still there as im still early days but im moving forward rather than backwards 

I fee the same as you.    Payday and paywayday I call it.  I agree as I am exactly the same.  Got paid yesterday.  Almost all gone.   I wonder if anyone ever feels like it takes your freedom away?  That is how I feel.    I feel trapped by it but today is the first day and I am going to do my best to get on with my life gambling free.  

I have always struggled with pay day but like you said I am actually looking forward to it now. Being able to put money away for certain things and not having that regret the next day.

It will get easier as time goes on but we need to remember we have got this demon inside of us so need to keep working on killing the demon. Hopefully we can all check in on this post in a few days after being paid and can all say we haven’t spent a penny with these fraudsters ????

Excellent post Craz I agree with everything you have wrote. 

It gets easier to deal with because at first I found your struggling more financially sometimes you see gambling as false hope. But when I started to focus on paying the debts bit by bit instead of hoping I could magic them away. I managed to get on track. Now each pay day it's a relief to know I can pay rent bills and buy what I need to. Rather than that dreaded 1st night of loosing it all and wondering how your going to cope the rest of the month 

I agree it's up to use to make that change talk about it get the blocks do everything we can and be determined not to fall into that dreaded trap. 

I used to be up all night before waiting for the pay to hit my account to gamble. Now I don't even realise its payday sometimes until someone mentions.

Lou X

Hey Lou,

Hope your doing ok.

You are right, Waking up fresh this morning after a great sleep. I’ll be honest I did wait up until I got paid which was about 12;30 ish but went straight to sleep afterwards. That would normally be the time I would be gambling until 4-5 am.

Woke up today as fresh as anything without a single penny spent. Feeling great today, have paid all my bills for the upcoming month and have money left over for myself, which feels great.

I hope everyone has been strong last night and this upcoming weekend. 

Craz x

It really is about taking it a day at a time, the first weekend after pay day is a big milestone for me, if I can get past that without wasting money I always feel more positive about the rest of the month.  When I first stopped betting I would check my account every night and still be proud even if it was just a relatively small amount in there which I had not gambled away.

What I do is when I receive my Universal Credit every month I go online pay rent/bills etc then divide the remainder into 4 and transfer 75% to my dad and he then drip feeds me 25% every week. Got paid yesterday and most of it went to my dad and I dont have a whole months benefits sitting in my bank account.

Also my dad knows the date im paid and he expects that money to be paid in so that pressure helps 

Hi

Payday is a significant day but that can end up being so for all the wrong reasons.

Firstly its a figure on a bank statement or payslip giving us a monetary worth. Are we worth that? Are we worth more? Most of us as employees will think so but GAMBLING IS NOT THE ANSWER to our finances

Its money hard earned these days so we have to face reality and live within our means.

I had a shopaholic phase of my life and realised with the benefit of hindsight it was ultimately not making me happy. Along with my gambling that led to my first bankruptcy

After that developed a mixture of fear and disdain about money. Depressed and jaded, I had an ill relationship with money.  I never really liked spending it and of course never felt I had enough of it. I could be ultra careful with it and I often wonder why I ever started gambling because I dont like losing a penny never mind the thousands I chucked away. I ended up being more interested in money levels than the things or experiences it could buy me. Trying to make money by gambling made a crazy sense to me on every payday....even though it was nonsense and I could never have made my losses back .

I daren't think what Ive chucked away in forty years. Part of the damage limitation is riding the losses to try and keep some sanity against an addiction which is actually destroying us. I know the figure is eye watering

It became about trying to get a little bit back....just a little bit please to raise my spirits but its far more complex than that. The drug of expectation takes over as the main hit even though money remains one trigger point. The grim feeling that I deserve some of it back because Ive given enough away. Its a vicious and insidious addiction that is rarely understood.

I was more addicted to the feeling of playing. the truth is that if anything came too quickly I grunted a meh of disapproval. I wanted to keep gambling and it just went straight back into the slot...immediately or in the next few days made no difference. It wasnt about winning or losing...just a soup of chemicals and my emotions on a rollercoaster until I could gamble no more through extinction.

The trusted advice is have the finances protected so payday doesnt become the trigger to gamble again. Easier said but its got to be done with blocks and somebody controlling your finances and overseeing the payment of all bills.

This is an addiction so strong that it would have me fishing old food out of a bin and existing with no electricity. Yet on payday I was back gambling again. 

Realise its sheer power to control us like puppets and seek help

Best wishes to everyone on the forum

Hi Craz, 

You're totally right that the key to beating gambling is having in place effective barriers between us and gambling, so that even when we get an irresistible urge to gamble, the barriers are there to stop us from acting on our urge. Importantly, we should never rely on willpower alone. It will just lead to relapse after relapse.

Speaking of barriers, if you gamble online, I highly encourage you to contact all the services that enable you to deposit money into online casinos and request that they permanently ban you from their services. This is a super effective barrier to put in place to prevent future relapses. Online casinos are infinite, but the deposit enablers are just a handful. Doing this has really helped me (I’m now 2 years gamble-free).

Email template you can use:

Subject heading: Request for permanent account ban.

Hi there,

Please immediately and permanently ban me from using your services. I have been using your services in ways that are not good for my wellbeing. I would like that to stop and having my account permanently banned is an essential step. Thank you for taking my well-being seriously and doing as I have requested.

My information is as follows: [insert the relevant info such as account name or the email you have associated with them or, in the case of ****, the email you use to make **** transfers]

Sincerely,

[Insert your name]

Since you asked, here are some other effective barriers that should be used too.

1. Self-exclusion from land-based casinos.
2. Having an accountability partner whose opinion of you you care about. You don’t want to disappoint them, and this acts as an emotional barrier to gambling.
3. Softwares like Gamban, Coldturkey, Betblocker, ScreenTime on iphone (get someone else to set up a password so you can’t alter the settings once they’re set)
4. If need be, have a loved one manage your finances for you.

I'm sure you'd agree that the more barriers, the better! Good luck my friend. We got this!