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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Are you still living beyond your means and adding to your debt?  Are you saving anything?  Retirement?  How is your emergency fund?  Do you have a budget and do you stick to it?  Do you pay more than the minimums on the credit cards?

I can appreciate that it's hard to cut to really, really bare bones, though this is what I would do.  None of things you list as "wants" strike me as necessary or even particularly important.

I'd allocate a small (couple hundred dollars) worth of "fun money" for every month, whether it's used on clothes, lunches out, whatever, and once it's done, it's done.  Everything extra goes to debt.  [/quote]

Thank you. Great advice. You mention that none of the things I listed as "wants" strike you as particularly important. It is important to me that I provide my kids with lots of opportunities, such as travel (even cheap fairly local places), learning to ski, tennis lessons, movies, out to dinner occasionally etc. I had many of these things growing up and I wish I could give them to DC. Unfortunately we have not managed our money well and although we make enough to do a lot of these things, we now have debt that takes priority. It's hard to always say no to your kids, but I am grateful for what we have.[/quote]

OP, I never learned to ski as a child. I took gymnastics at the local YMCA, and we traveled only rarely. As an adult, I have enjoyed traveling all over the world and do not feel like I had a deprived childhood because the first time I went to France was when I was 20. It would seem that your financial decisions have created an environment in which your experiences of a normal childhood are not going to apply, and I think it's important that you recognize that your child is not going to suffer because they cannot have private tennis lessons or go skiing every winter. Putting things like that in the same category as occasionally going out to dinner is crazy to me.

You can budget for movies occasionally - like, one summer blockbuster and one Christmas thing. You can go out to dinner occasionally. Even if you have a ton of debt, it is possible to create a budget for fun money (like one of the PPs suggested) that allows you to have these things as treats occasionally. It stops being an occasional treat when it happens once a week or even once a month.[/quote]

This PP is absolutely correct, one of the most valuable life lesson you can teach your kids is how to manage their finances and live within their means. Skiing lessons, er, not so much. [/quote]

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