My solution so far has been to take out a certain amount of money each paycheck, divvy it up into envelopes and when its gone its gone.

Unfortunately, several monthly internet purchases still have to be made, which kinda puts a wrench in the works if you let it get out of hand.

I also have a very bad tendency to eat out when I feel bad.. like last night I had to really really fight to not order a pizza.

"Dad, what does it cost to get married?"
"Every dollar you will ever make."

Where do you find parents that hand out credit cards? I'd like to sign up.

It makes me feel good to have nice, new things in my house. I have to watch myself because of that, because it's too easy to rationalize it -- "oh, but this is for the house, it's a good investment." Sure, it can be, but not if I'm just replacing a perfectly good thing I had already.

Another optional solution is to move to a smaller home/apartment. Literally downgrading your living space makes you much more consumption savvy. If nothing else, whenever you go out to buy something you first have to think, "Where am I going to put it?"

Yeah could have told you that about money. For me it's boredom. Buying something, achieving something by getting it and saving money, then having something to do. Know how hard I have to work not to cancel my sprint phone and buy an Iphone.

@LuluStarPony: Someone else's daddy handed me a credit card and I felt very dirty.

"[..] you might be able to uncover what's really driving the spending habits that are keeping your savings down."

Yes, I'll have to "uncover" my wife. She's very clandestine, so this may take some time..

I do not carry credit card debt, so your mileage may vary.

That said, as soon as I get paid, I transfer money to my house expenses/mortgage and my savings via electronic transfer into their respective accounts. Whatever is left, is left. Even for people who spend down to $0, you will still have covered your monthly expenses and your savings.

We were pretty poor when I was a child... I remember my Mom sewing shorts for us from a pattern (I'm only 28 so this wasn't THAT long ago) as a kid and my Dad built us a lot of toys. When I was a teenager they finally started to make some decent money and I remember my Mom saying one time that she isn't buying "generic ____, I had to do that for years so not any more!" My Dad was always a generous person, doing what ever he could to give us something nice.

Well when I got on my own I was in the mortgage industry making pretty good cash during the bubble (that ruined the world) and I assumed because I could "afford" I should buy it.

Well I got married had 2 babies and the market crashed. I now make 1/4 of my previous $ and we are trying to start our own business. I have a whole new perspective on life and money and what sacrifice is. I kick my self every day when I think of what i have spent in the past 5 years...

When I got money, I hoarded it like milk and eggs in a snowstorm. I still do. I like new things, but not on my dime. I guess that's why I never impulse buy, I look at it and get that WANTWANTWANT pang, then I look at the sticker and have a knee jerk reaction of RIPOFF! So, I sit there for a good while debating it. I like having money more than new things, I guess. Maybe it comes from the fact that at a very young age, my parents told me straight up: you want something, you spend your money on it. Now I put at least half of all of my earnings into savings and don't touch it because it will incur a penalty if I make more than 2 transactions with savings in a month.

When I was younger, money was always really tight so I didn't always get what I wanted right then and there. You would have thought it would have instilled in me some kind of appreciation for delayed gratification.

Not really, it's created a frame of mind to where if I perceive that I have "extra money" outside of what has already been allocated to bills, I initially feel that it's expendable.

Thank God my wife handles the money.

@dallasmay:

That's a great theory unless you're like people in my family who have a tendency to turn into packrats. If we didn't fight it our houses would be stacked floor to ceiling and there'd only be little corridors to walk through; the house size doesn't matter much unless you're talking about large pieces of furniture.

When you start hoarding newspapers you know it's time to join a program. Did cavemen with this illness hoard stone tablets?

I tend to make most of my purchases online. For non-necessities I put them in my shopping cart and let them sit overnight. Oftentimes I'll completely forget I had added something to my cart until I go back to the site for something else weeks later.

@JamesEnsor: Hey, it's Belgium's famous painter!

@j-o-h-n: Sorry John, no one ordered a side of misogyny today.

@RandomHookup: Does your screen name have anything to do with said transaction?

@wickedpixel: I do that too- sometimes its more satisfying to just put things in a cart than to actually buy them. I just have to be careful that when I'm really buying something I take all the old junk out.

@ospreyguy: Sorry to hear about your situation, opsreyguy. I am ten years older than you and put off having kids until things got better. They never did, and now as the worst-case financial scenario unfolds before us, kids are probably not part of my future.

(I'm a dude, but come on: the math on that gets creepy.)

I'm not sure whether to envy or pity you right now, but hang in there and know this: our forebears survived worse.

@Luckwouldhaveit: Sorry hun, truer words were never spoken.

@egosub2: Meh, he's no Napoleon of the stump.

I am an engineer. These bubbles and market crashes that none of the financial "experts" saw coming were pretty damn obvious to us engineers (and most Gen Xers I know).

Follow along:

Step One: Announce merger, stocks go up, profit

Step Two: Lobby for deregulation, laws are changed, merger is approved, profit

Step Three: Run business into ground, open golden parachute, profit

Step Four: With no regulation, run industry as an unsustainable ponzi scheme, profit

Step Five: Ponzi scheme collapses, government bails you out, profit

Step Six: Use government bailout money to buy other companies with huge debt, huge debt is tax-deductible, profit

There's not even the pretense of "trickle down" economics anymore.

This is looting.

@dallasmay: I solved this problem by every time I buy something new, I donate/give away/throw away something in exchange. I'm not sure if this is helping my budget much, but it feels good.

@ospreyguy: Dude, that sucks, but you gotta look to the future and not get depressed. Think of it this way - when everything bounces back, you'll know how to save a crap load of money and your kids will go to college and think you're the best dad in the world because you taught them responsibility with money.

I grew up in a similar situation. My parents worked 2 jobs just so we could keep our house. Honestly, I really don't know how I got to be so money savvy.

Don't sweat it dude. Just love your kids, and they will thank you for that :D

@nygenxer: Described in that way its.. god that's depressing.

@ScottRose: Heh. This reminds of the time I used to work at a shoe store. I had lots of ladies come in who would, at check-out time, say "My husband would KILL me if he knew I was here..."

@ospreyguy: " I kick my self every day when I think of what i have spent in the past 5 years... "

Sigh..definitely know that feeling. I made pretty good money at my first job (at least for a teenager...) and I spent every single penny on underwear. Yes, go ahead and laugh...I worked in the lingerie department and it was just too tempting to not buy all the prettiness that lies there...But now I definitely regret it. I would have so much saved up if I had been smart enough to do it.

At least now I'm set for years when it comes to undies...

Ben, "money money"?

I saved madly for years. Then I was injured at work.

"You'll be set for life!" my landlord told me. I agreed with him because he's the landlord, but he had no clue.

They fired me because I wasn't healing fast enough. Now I live off the savings. For years my script was that if I saved carefully, by this time in my life I'd be living comfortably and buying whatever I wanted (within reason.) The reality is that I'm not friends with Ben and Jerry, but with eggs and rice, still.

Oh, and the reason I have a landlord? I wasn't sure I could afford a house, even when I could have had a no documentation loan. Damn...

@cmdrsass: Agreed. Also, that statement is gender-neutral, even though the poster has a masculine-form name.

@AlxFherMana: Lol, awesome.

@Con Seannery: What is the point of having money if you don't spend it? It's one thing to state that you are saving it for retirement, or a house, or a large purchase, but just "having it" is kind of pointless. Much like my uncle the doctor, who hates paying income tax and would much rather pay a 25% sales tax on everything, and says that having a tax like that would increase his happiness. But he couldn't answer why having more money would make him happier, if he couldn't spend it without being taxed.

@Oranges w/ Cheese: M.A.S.H. Theme Song comes to mind here. :/

@nygenxer: Damn right. I remember back in 2004-2005, friends and coworkers were buying houses and telling me I should buy one as well...

Now they're stuck with homes they can't sell and I'm (hopefully) avoiding the worst of the recession in Norway. No clue when I'll return to the States, though...

@Luckwouldhaveit: Looks like we ordered a side of assumption, though.

How do you know it's not a daughter asking her father? Or a homosexual male asking his father in Massachusetts?

It's taken me 6 years and many idiot financial moves before I've learned to not even think of things in terms of debt. I now live without credit at all- which makes somet things less convenient (renting a car comes to mind). However, I also have a good amount of cash in the bank, and zero debt. Its a nice feeling.

@Luckwouldhaveit: Mysogyny my foot, as a young woman earning money living with a man I plan to marry one day, the idea of marriage is a conundrum. The idea of choosing between a down payment on a house or ONE DAY of festivities is absurd. When we get married, we'll probably host a party at his mom's house and get married by a justice of the peace. Cheap, fun, and we won't go into debt starting a life together.

Same deal with diamond engagement rings: ugly, expensive, pointless. A rock does not represent my value as a woman or a wife.

@dallasmay: I agree. My fiance and I live in a relatively small apartment and have realised that going to garage sales and flea markets quickly cluttered up the joint so we had to stop.

@mdmadph: Or a butterfly asking a mule? Or a unicorn asking a sad clown?

Assumptions! Sheesh! ^_~

@B: Yeah, this is actually a great idea. I try to do things of similar size/volume. It really helps when you live in a small apartment, and donating items that are still good (though worthless to you) is helpful to others, and can be helpful at tax time.

@AlxFherMana: I say that, but as a joke. I make 100% of the money in my marriage (husband's currently in school). I'm such a hilarious dame.

@nygenxer: Yeah, one gets the feeling that those guys who smash windows with bricks and steal TVs are so much more honest, y'know?

You know, I really don't feel like I have any associations with money other than it's a commodity that I get a chunk of monthly and can trade for the stuff I need. It doesn't have a lot of emotional associations, and spending it sure doesn't make me feel nice, although it's nice to get stuff occasionally like a book I want or a pair of jeans that isn't ready to be converted into car-washing rags.

Money is just stuff, and stuff isn't that important, people. "If we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content." Like several other posters, I grew up in truly dire poverty - my family was literally homeless and living in a truck at several points. Even though I'm a grad student supporting myself and my wife and paying a mortgage on my stipend, I feel like I am really well off, and we are still putting money away.

Sometimes I spend time with my friends that went straight into jobs out of college and are making 2-3x what I do while still single, (IE, have thousands of dollars of disposable income every month) and see their nice toys, and start to think I'm poor.

Then a guy I know comes back from the Peace Corps in Madagascar and describes how a lot of people don't even have meat to eat every day, or read "Little House on the Prairie" and realize that these people got one pair of shoes and set of clothing every couple of years (and made it last) if they were lucky - and I know. We are wealthy. We have an embarrassment of riches.

@fever: Well, money = power, and in this kind of economic downturn, having a nice nest egg might mean the difference between losing your house and making mortgage payments if you're laid off. Or being able to fix your car if it breaks. Or being able to invest in a business opportunity when said business is at the ground floor.

I'm not saying spending money is bad, I can't see why you'd never spend any (you would, indeed, be miserable), but I believe Con Seannery was making the point that he can distinguish between "wants" and "needs."

Too many people I know are completely screwed if their car needs a repair, or if they have to go to the doctor, because they "enjoyed" their money instead of saving some of it.

(And if you want to needle your uncle, who sounds like he makes a better dentist than economist, you can tell him that a 25% sales tax would just create a gigantic black market for pretty much all goods -- so rich people would basically buy and smuggle their goods in from out-of-country, and poor people without the means to smuggle would pay the majority of the tax burden. Good times!) ^_^

@nygenxer: Great list, but I can't approve of any of this until you add a

Step seven: ???

PROFIT!

The inevitability of the latest burst was infuriating -- I remember being pissed off in 2006 upon hearing an hour-long local NPR-affiliate's special on the housing bubble, wherein an economist for a think tank insisted that the market fundamentals were completely off and a disaster was coming, and a real estate agent took the opposite position -- that "real estate never loses value! (yay, buybuybuy)."

Argh, in 2006. ARGH.

@Tallanvor: Despite what the news outlets say, it isn't that depressing everywhere in the States. Most of it is localized in the larger population centers like NYC or San Fransisco. For the rest of the country though, it feels more like a normal economic slowdown, not as much like a recession.

@alexawesome: A-MEN, alexawesome.

Best wedding I ever attended: the bride & groom took a week's vacation and got married in Hilton Head by a JoP, then came back and threw themselves a lovely, laid back reception--they paid for wine/beer/appetizers, and the guest kicked back and danced and talked and took photos and just had a great time.

The couple is still married (fifteen years now, I think) and deliriously happy. They did it right!

@B: I do the same thing--when something comes in, something else has to go out.

I received some Fiestaware for my birthday recently, so last night i was going through my crockery deciding what could go. In fact, I did a review of my books and decided on some that have broken my one-year rule (I haven't used it in a year or more, so I need to get rid of it). Ihave to load up the trunk of my car with stuff to go to the Goodwill!

@JamesEnsor: I know that feeling. I let it ride herd on my for a good part of my youth. I've finally started to turn it around but it's still very hard.