GETTING high from the buzz of each new purchase, self-confessed spendaholic Ann Carver secretly racked up £27,000 credit and store card debt over the course of a decade.

Concealing the truth from her husband, as they re-mortgaged their Hampshire home to the tune of £90,000, she let him believe that it was simply down to times being tough.

But after years of overwhelming worry and anxiety, Ann eventually came clean when the money finally ran out and she realised that she had to change her excessive ways.

Today the mum-of-two is debt-free and determined to help others to learn from her expensive mistakes.

“It’s like when you start smoking, you begin with one or two cigarettes a day, but as the habit takes hold you’re quickly on 20 or 40,” says Ann.

“Shopping addiction grabs people in the same way. You want that fix to make you feel better but it wears off increasingly quickly so you have to push that bit harder to get it again.”

Setting up Hey Big Spender in 2010, Ann’s company helps people to address their wayward spending, whether they need to clear a mountain of debt or are simply struggling to tighten their belts.

The 47-year-old has helped people from all walks of life, from a highflying barrister who was frittering her money away on eating out and designer clothes she didn’t need to families on the absolute poverty line.

“It’s irrelevant if someone earns a little bit of money or a lot of money, it’s how that person is managing it,” says Ann.

She aims to get to the emotional root cause of people’s problems to help them to regain control.

Looking back on her own shopping addiction, Ann can clearly see where things went wrong.

A working-class girl, she says she was always good at earning money – and had four jobs by the time she was 14 – but was great at spending it too.

Enduring a turbulent childhood in London, Ann says she was always fragile emotionally but she sunk to her lowest point in her late-twenties.

Losing her mother to a sudden heart attack when Ann was 28, it wasn’t long before her brother died of a brain tumour at the age of 40 and her dad then passed away a short time after. It was this triple tragedy, she says, that really tipped her spending over the edge.

It was on the first anniversary of her mum’s funeral – also Ann’s 29th birthday – that she can remember her first shopping buzz.

“My husband was at work and my eldest daughter was at school, I felt so awful that I couldn’t stay home alone so I took flight and decided to go to a café in town.

“As I crossed the road, a bright red hand-knitted jumper with a daisy on the front caught my attention in a shop window.  Before I knew it, I was trying it on.  When I looked in the mirror there was a broad smile on my face - I immediately felt better. I paid for the jumper and kept it on as I left the shop. Physically I was standing taller, my head was looking forward, I began to notice people were smiling at me and I was smiling back. I just thought wow, great, this has helped.”

A few months later when Christmas came around, Ann – who was then a yoga teacher – treated herself to a new car to cheer herself up.

“At first it was every six months then every three months, and before I knew it, it was happening all the time.”

Masking her inner-pain, Ann’s most extravagant purchase was a £10,000 motorbike, then there was the £3,000 yoga video she made, three cars, sports equipment, health treatments, countless presents for her children, books and nick-nacks.

“I would always justify it, for example I would say that the motorbike was going to help me really find myself as I whizzed down the country lanes, but I was chasing things that didn’t exist.”

She loved the pleasant chit-chat with friendly, smiling shop assistants, and as the years passed her urge to “mend and spend” became an obsession.

In charge of her own finances, selfemployed Ann, who is based in Havant, found it easy to keep her councilworker husband in the dark.

“My husband Steve wasn’t earning megabucks either. We had a teenager, a baby and I had started my own business so we began to re-mortgage to get some extra money.

“In the beginning I didn’t think I had a problem and neither did he, but as the years passed and my habit kicked in, I can look back now and see that I became very good at puling the wool over his eyes. I was fooling myself too.” It was only when Ann says the “walls started crashing down” that she realised how much trouble they were in.

“Thankfully I came to my senses in time. The bank manager was saying no, I’d maxed out all the credit cards, letters were coming through demanding money and the phone was going. It got to the stage where we couldn’t afford the next mortgage payment, so of course my husband knew by then what I was doing.

“He never got angry with me despite what I had done. He is a lovely man and was my rock throughout my grief. I think he was extra kind towards me because I had been through such turmoil.”

In danger of losing their house, Ann faced up to her problem and the couple embarked on a debt management programme.

Working hard to pay their debts, the couple stopped going on holiday, completely overhauled their spending habits and sold off part of their garden.

By 2006 – three years later – they were debt-free.

The following year, the recession hit and Ann realised that she could benefit others by passing on what she had learnt.

Helping people across Hampshire through a series of workshops, strategies and one-on-one coaching sessions, Ann – who trained as a budget coach and attended entrepreneur school - is succeeding.

“Before the recession, spending was almost the trendy thing to do,” she says. “Superstores were popping up everywhere and it was so easy to get credit or to re-mortgage. I like to think if there’s one blessing to come out of the credit crunch, it’s that people are starting to think more carefully about their spending hopefully they won’t get into the same mess that I did.”

To find out more about Hey Big Spender, visit heybigspenders.co.uk or call 07769 663370.