Our credit system has made it so easy that for some it becomes irresistible. The desire for instant gratification tricks these poor souls into years of financial enslavement, and the credit card companies and other lenders become the taskmasters of the American dream turned to nightmare.

Part of the reason for this financial trap is the slick, high-tech, psychological warfare that the advertising industry has used in recent years. But the root cause of our spendthrift consumerism is the rise of the credit card. It used to be that even the most effective advertisement could only capture a market made up of people who could afford the product—but not any more. The days of slick, cleverly crafted ads, of the Madison Avenue ad executives (Mad Men), are gone. It also used to be the case that only creditworthy applicants could get a credit card, but now even infants and toddlers receive preapproved credit card applications in the mail. It’s all just too easy.

You can get anything you want right now—a house, a car, lots of furniture, electronic gadgets, a closet full of clothes, you name it—and you don’t even have to pay up front or even for up to a year later. Companies eagerly seduce you into buying now, paying later. And you’ll pay, and pay, and pay. The sellers’ seduction techniques get you in the door and coax you into making commitments you have no business making, to buy products you don’t need, and didn’t want until they convinced you otherwise.

To make matters worse—for the consumer—you now have to deal with a trend in marketing that I call “Size Does Matter.” Everyone is trying to sell us bigger, better, fancier stuff, and that means more expensive stuff, and whatever they’re doing, it’s working: The fast-food expression “Supersize me” is the new consumer motto, and it applies to everything. Thanks to easy credit and powerful marketing campaigns, we all buy bigger stuff—and more stuff—than we need, and we spend more than we can afford.

How did we fall for this? It’s because “marketing” is really just a nice word for the emotional and intellectual manipulation advertisers use to influence our spending habits. The credit card companies want us to spend; it seems the government does, too. Remember those stimulus checks the federal government sent out? The idea behind that plan was to get people spending, not saving. It’s not just credit card companies and the government. Manufacturers also want us to spend. When the economy is sluggish, the government seems to believe that spending solves everything. The marketing of the constant advances in technology puts a lot of pressure on consumers to keep upgrading, regardless of cost, and this plays right into the hallowed American tradition of “keeping up with the Joneses.” For example, having an enormous flat screen TV in your living room is practically a domestic requirement these days. Teens and even younger kids feel pressure to own the latest iPhone and home gaming system. Every month, some new high-tech toy becomes the “must have” item of the moment, and marketers make sure that we feel the need to own the item right away so that we pay top dollar for it. We could wait a few months until prices come down, but by then, the cutting-edge thrill is gone. We must have it now, even if it means maxing out a credit card. In hindsight, we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves—these marketers are very, very good at what they do, and having access to easy credit has made us even more vulnerable to their tactics.

Over the past decade or so, millions of previously frugal and responsible consumers have been sucked in to the online shopping vortex. In a shopping 2.0 environment, the mall is always open, and online impulse buying can be as addictive as gambling or any other vice you can name. Until recently, you had to get in the car and drive somewhere in order to shop. The time and effort involved not only limited how often and where you went shopping, but also made you evaluate your purchases a little more carefully than you do when you are browsing the Internet. Now you can sit in your underwear and shop while you eat breakfast, or shop while you’re at the office, or shop late at night when all the stores are closed.

Don’t feel like battling the retail store crowds on “Black Friday”? No problem. The first Monday after Thanksgiving has now been designated as “Cyber Monday”—as if we needed another excuse to go online and overspend. This is just the latest development in a trend that’s been in the works for a long time. When I was a teenager, I worked in a department store that was open Monday through Friday from 10:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M., Saturdays from 10:00 to 6:00, and Sundays from 12:00 to 6:00; the store closed on holidays. I remember when Walgreen’s announced they would stay open on Christmas Day—it was a pretty big deal. Other stores followed suit, staying open later and later, until eventually, many were running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays. And then along came online shopping.

Internet spending now accounts for tens of billions of dollars a year in sales and is growing exponentially—and that means billions of dollars in credit card charges. The result is millions of Americans saddled with inflated credit card interest they can never hope to pay down. Online shopping options are unlimited, creating a marketplace so full of temptations that not even the strongest of us can resist all of them.

A perfect illustration is what happened to Bob. He’d always been careful about spending and stayed within his budget. He used his credit cards sparingly and never missed a payment on them. Then Bob discovered the online auction site called eBay. At first, he was happy just surfing around the site, marveling at all the amazing things that people were buying and selling. Then late one night, he saw something he’d always wanted but never dreamed he would ever own: an original Civil War battle flag. It was very expensive, but Bob didn’t care. He had plenty of room on both his credit cards, so he leaned forward and hit the “Buy It Now” button. A chill went down his spine as the words “Congratulations! You just bought this item!” flashed across the screen. Bob was in heaven—at the touch of a button, his lifelong fantasy of owning a piece of history came true. When the flag arrived later that week, it was everything Bob had hoped it would be and more. And then he went back on eBay, just to see what else was out there. Within six months, Bob had acquired a large and impressive Civil War artifact collection—and over $20,000 in credit card debt. His monthly payments skyrocketed. He started making payments late, and then started missing them altogether. Within another six months, Bob had defaulted on both credit cards and was being hounded by two obnoxious and aggressive collection agencies. The same thing happened to a woman I know who starting buying 20 pairs of shoes every day. She just went online and started buying, keeping the habit up for months. Sound familiar?

Repeatedly splurging on a private indulgence and ending up deep in debt is bad enough. But people have become so comfortable with online shopping that they think nothing of buying cars, boats, and even real estate online—three areas where careful research and in-person inspection are absolutely essential to avoid getting bamboozled. Yet millions of dollars of real estate are sold every year on the Internet, unseen by the buyer. I know a couple who did just that—they went online and bought a house in what the listing called “a great neighborhood in a cozy suburb” of a city about a hundred miles from where they lived. When they finally showed up to have a look at their investment, they saw to their horror that the house was right in the middle of a seedy, crime-infested area, and when they got out of the car, they heard gunfire a few blocks away. They got back in the car and sped off, never to return—and were stuck with a house they could never resell.

I’ll never forget the morning I received a frantic phone call from Cindy. She said she needed to see me right away to set up a cash-out refinance on the house she’d owned for 15 years. I scheduled an appointment for later that day—when there’s a rush to refinance, it means someone’s in trouble, and I could hear it in her voice. She arrived half an hour early for her appointment, looking distraught and pacing back and forth. I asked her to tell me the purpose of the cash out. She sat down and said, “I could lie to you or I could tell you the truth.” I told her to give it to me straight. She took a deep breath and began her story.

Her son had called her up the day before, saying he needed $40,000 and quickly. Cindy was stunned, and asked her son for an explanation. He told her, “Mom, I’m addicted to online poker, and I’m $40,000 in debt. I’ve maxed out my credit cards, and I’m thirty days late on one of them.” Cindy couldn’t believe it. Her son had never had a gambling problem or any other addiction in his life. And now, here he was, up to his ears in debt from playing online poker—she didn’t even know there was such a thing. Her son had a great job with a defense contractor, but the position required security clearance that involved routine credit checks. The head of Human Resources (HR) for the company was saying that if her son didn’t clear up the debt immediately, he would have to be let go.

Cindy feared this would ruin her son’s future, and she knew if he got fired, she would end up supporting him. So she came to me for a cash-out refinance—a way of raising money quickly using the equity in her home. She hated to do it, and I hated for her to have to do it, but she was a desperate parent trying to protect her child, so I understood.

Cindy’s predicament made me stop and think for the first time about what a dangerous place the Internet can be. Gambling used to require travel and effort to keep it an occasional pastime for most Americans, just like frivolous shopping. Once the Internet was added to the mix, the floodgates of addiction were opened for an entire culture.

About two months after my meeting with Cindy, I was making a follow-up phone call to a mortgage applicant named Brian. He was surprised to hear from me. He said he “already spoke to the mortgage guy yesterday.” I said, “Brian, nobody from my office called you yesterday.” There was a pause. “Then who called me?” asked Brian, obviously embarrassed and totally confused.

What happened was that when Brian applied with me for a loan and I pulled his credit report, it created what is called a “trigger lead.” This means that a credit bureau, knowing Brian was in the market for a loan, sold his name and number to another mortgage lender, who then called Brian in hopes of catching him off guard by simply identifying themselves as “the mortgage company.” Sounds underhanded, but it’s not illegal, and it’s done all the time. Anyone who has applied for a loan or who already has one gets mail and phone calls constantly from “your lender” or a representative, or so they say. With everything automated, the identification of a lender’s name often leads to unintentionally humorous mistakes. For example, one client with a mortgage written by Charles Schwab Bank began getting phone calls from someone who was offering refinance terms; they said they were calling from Schwab Charles.

The flood of predatory calls to get you to refinance or to steal you away from the lender you’re working with gets even worse. In a way, the Internet marketplace is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. What I mean by this is that everyone who’s selling or advertising something online relies on Google and other search engines to give their product visibility. Most people looking online for things simply type it into Google and use the top five or so search results as the basis of their purchase. A lot of us assume that these top five results are there because they are the sites that have received the most visits from consumers, and therefore are probably the best or at least the most popular. In the early days of Google and Yahoo!, this was an accurate assumption, but no longer. Now companies pay big bucks for search engine optimization, and the company shelling out the most money gets to be at the top of the page, or “above the fold,” as they say.

What this all means is that not only is the Internet a constant temptation to overspend, but its reliability as a source of the best deals, the best products, and the best services has been hopelessly compromised by competitive bidding for corporate visibility. Ironically, the same companies using the Internet to leapfrog ahead of their competition are also vulnerable to Internet abuse. Their employees may work for them, but they are also individuals with their own online addictions, and countless man- hours are lost each year to online loitering in the workplace. In response, many companies have started monitoring Internet use by employees, but the more determined online junkies avoid detection by bringing their own laptops, blackberries, and iPhones to work with them. No doubt about it: we’re hooked, and we’re all visible now.

Another disturbing reality about the Internet is that every time you search for something online, you are helping to define your spending preferences for thousands of companies who keep tabs on your shopping habits. The notorious cookie tracks where you go, what you buy, and what you view. Among other things, this system leads to individually tailored pop-up ads and e- mails from companies that sell the products you want. That’s like walking into a mall and being followed around by a group of salespeople who take notes on everything you buy or even step in front of you and block your way while they force their sales pitch down your throat.

Since the Internet and all its temptations are not going away—ever—and because you can rely on corporate America to continue to use the Internet to their advantage and at our expense, you need to attack the problem realistically. There’s no magic cure here—you have your own spending weaknesses, and you probably can’t afford to just turn off the computer indefinitely. The only way to get a handle on the problem is to admit to yourself that the problem exists and be smarter about how you approach the Internet.

Hopefully, just knowing you’re being manipulated every time you log on will make you think twice about all those offers and deals that pop up on your screen. Also, being familiar with the tactics that are being used helps you avoid many of the traps that have been set for your wallet. But it’s a numbers game, and sooner or later, hanging around online is going to cost you—unless you’re prepared. By following the guidelines and suggestions below, you can continue to spend time on the Internet without risking your financial stability.

One thing about the Internet is that it is crammed with people’s opinions about every subject under the sun, including the pros and cons of consumer products. Use this as a resource to get a sense of whether the item you are considering has been well received by consumers. Compare prices—one seller of a particular item may be charging double or triple what others are charging. And remember, as convenient as online shopping might be, returning items bought on the Internet can be a nightmare, so check the return policy of the seller with whom you are dealing. When it comes to real estate and other major purchases, forget about convenience—get up off the couch and go inspect the potential purchase yourself. There’s just no way you can ever hope to buy a house or a car sight-unseen without ending up disappointed, or even ripped off. Apart from training yourself to be a careful shopper, following all of these steps will also duplicate the “cooling-off” period that is otherwise missing from online shopping.

The solution is to avoid bidding wars completely—they create a false sense of urgency to own the item at any cost. Be honest and ask yourself whether you’re bidding for items or for the win. The best approach is to observe the “One Bid Rule”—place a bid, if you must, but just one bid at a level you know is a good price for the item, or at least an amount you know you can afford. If you make a second bid, you’re opening the door to a third bid, and a fourth bid, and so on. If the item is popular, the chances are you will be outbid at the last second by an auction “sniper,” anyway, but don’t feel bad—if it is not a unique item, then you may well see a carbon copy of the item for sale by the same seller the next day.

The bidding game is usually driven by other buyers like you who simply want the item, but ultimately it is just a way for sellers to make certain they get a good price for their item. Occasionally, the person you are bidding against is the actual seller or someone working for them, so beware of “shill” bidding done under a second user name. The seller opens a second account and enters bids “against” himself to get the rest of the bidders juiced up, with the idea that this will drive the price upward. It works.

The bottom line is that bidding for an item online is rarely a guarantee that you’re getting the best price for that item—the auction price can be influenced by any number of factors—how many trigger-happy bidders happen to be on the web site at that moment, whether a similar item sold recently and for how much, and what time of day or night the auction ended. With those variables, your chances at a real bargain are slim. Remember, when it comes to bidding in online auctions, your mantra should be “One Bid or None.”

If you’re buying something from a big company and not an individual, you need to know before you pay whether the seller has a decent customer service department. Did you ever call an online seller’s customer service number to complain? There are a few that are helpful, but in most cases your call gets sent overseas to an out-source phone service employee reading from a script—and you get nowhere. If you ask to speak to a supervisor, they put you on hold for 15 minutes and then turn you over to a senior script reader with the same result. This is why it’s vital that you understand the item descriptions and sale terms, because they often contain loopholes that the seller can use to avoid responsibility for undisclosed defects or even failure of an item to show up.

You’re probably used to skimming most of the terms and conditions that accompany a sale, but with online shopping, you must read everything very carefully and ask the seller questions where terms are vague or confusing. In a department store, a dissatisfied customer can frequently get around unfavorable terms and return policies through face-to-face negotiations; conversely, online sellers are faceless and remote, and returns are much more of a hassle for them than for a department store, so they are far less likely to give you leeway on a purchase. At the same time, returning an online purchase is also a hassle for the consumer—finding the right box, packing material, a trip to the post office, and paying postage, all discourage you from going through the process. You’re much better off doing your homework in advance and winding up with the right item that doesn’t need to be returned.

Although these are self imposed restrictions that you can reverse at any time, the idea is that the effort and remorse associated with picking your own lock will help deter you. It’s important to remove the immediate temptations until you’ve adjusted to life without frivolous purchases. Treat online shopping like any other addiction and stay away from weaknesses until you’re strong enough to resist on your own.

When you’ve finished the list, shopping is over. It might be hard at first, but keep at it until you’ve settled into a routine. You managed to get used to overspending, so you can get used to restraining yourself. Also, having a relative or friend along is an opportunity to turn the process of changing your habits into an enjoyable activity.

Your goal should be to overcome any bad financial habits, not to take all the fun out of your life. You don’t want to go cold turkey on the frivolous impulse buys, but that doesn’t mean you have to avoid recreational shopping forever. I’ve talked to a lot of reformed impulse spenders who now enjoy window-shopping on a regular basis without making actual purchases. When you think about it, impulse buying is mostly about the “thrill of the hunt” anyway, and you can still enjoy that as often as you like.

Remember that overspending on wants, binge shopping, and online impulse buying is very common these days, so you’re in good company. Having a shopping addiction doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Nowadays consumers are getting hit over the head all the time with clever marketing ploys coming from many different directions all at once—the banks, credit card companies, manufacturers, and retailers of the thousands of products now available to you in the round-the-clock marketplace. You’re only human and shouldn’t be too hard on yourself for lacking the will to resist being manipulated by expert manipulators. But as the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Now that you know you’re being manipulated, there’s no excuse to let it go on. Once you know the tactics used on you by companies, you can develop a healthy skepticism about spending that you will carry with you for the rest of your life. Out-of-control spending almost always leads to a credit-rating casualty, and without good credit, true prosperity is all but impossible.

Think of overspending not only as a waste of money, but also as a direct threat to your credit score. Think of your credit as the foundation of your ability to get what you want in life. There are many ways to damage your credit; some are easier to avoid than others, and overspending is by far the easiest. If you follow these suggestions for curbing your spending habits and making smarter choices, it can be even easier.