• Very often an addicted person will spend a lot of money and get into financial trouble. The normal person usyally says, 'I can't afford to buy this cause I don’t need this thing.' But not someone who has an addiction - he or she will not recognize the frontiers of a budget.

• When someone with a shopping addiction goes shopping, he or she often compulsively buys everything,for example, goes for one pair of shoes and comes out with two or even more pairs.

• A shopping addiction is a persistent problem. It's more than two or three months of the year.

• Someone will take bought things back because they feel guilty. That guilt can trigger another buying spree, so it's a indissoluble circle. And in these people, debt may not be an issue because they're consistently returning clothes out of guilt - but a problem still exists.

• Shopping addicts  often hide their purchases because they don't want other to know they bought it because they'll be criticized. They may have secret accounts and credite cards.  Because this problem affects mostly women, as alcoholism affects mostly men, husbands will all of sudden be told their wife is $20,000-$30,000 in debt and they are responsible, and many times, this comes out in divorce.

 • Shopping addiction is  like any other addiction - it has nothing to do with how much a person shops or spends and everything to do with after effects. 

  If there is a pattern or a trend or consequences that occur with excessive shopping then the person may be a problem spender - the hallmark is still the loss of control. If they are no longer in control of their shopping but their shopping is in control of them, they've crossed the line.