About DA
Preamble
“Debtors Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from compulsive debting.The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop incurring unsecured debt. There are no dues or fees for D.A. membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions.
D.A. is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy; neither endorses nor opposes any causes.
Our primary purpose is to stop debting one day at a time and to help other compulsive debtors to stop incurring unsecured debt.”
– Preamble of Debtors Anonymous
Revised and approved August 2003
History of Debtors Anonymous
Debtors Anonymous started in 1968 when a core group of recovering members from Alcoholics Anonymous held their first meeting to discuss the problems they were experiencing with money. They first called themselves the “Penny Pinchers” and later “Capital Builders”.
The members of this group made daily deposits of their funds into savings accounts because they believed that their financial problems stemmed from an inability to save money. As days and months passed, the group’s members began to understand that their monetary problems did not stem from an inability to save, but rather from the inability to become solvent.
By 1971, the essence of the D.A. Program unfolded in the discovery and understanding that the act of debting itself was the threshold of this disease, and the only solution was to use the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
After two years, the group of recovering A.A. members disbanded. Meetings came and went. D.A. re-emerged in 1976 when two or three people began meeting on Wednesday evenings at St. Stephen’s Rectory in New York. Within the year, a second meeting was organized, and Debtors Anonymous was reborn. Today, there are over 500 meetings throughout the United States and in in at least a dozen countries.