Reply to How do you keep dedicated to living below your means?

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[quote=Anonymous]One of the things that helped me was when I was laid off a few years ago.  We had a very solid 6 months emergency fund.  I was unemployed for 6 months.  Between my wife's salary and the fact that I really buckled down to save (I cut coupons, shopped sales, cooked all our meals, I think we went out to eat twice in 6 months), we only spent half what we usually spent, so we only used half of our 6 month emergency fund in those 6 months.  When I got my new job, I looked back and realized that even with the stress of being unemployed, it was much less when I had the comfort of knowing that we were not going to have trouble paying the mortgage and putting food on the table.  That's reinforced my dedication to living within our means.  I watch our monthly budget, make sure we're paying off all CC's every month, we save up to buy new cars with cash.  The only debt we carry is our mortgage and I pay extra every month, so that we'll have our 30 year mortgage paid off in about 22 years (we've currently been here 9 years, so 13 to go).

What you say to friends who question your choices?
Friend:  Honestly, at your income, why don't you splurge a little and go on a nicer vacation?  You can certainly afford it.
Me:  I understand, but we have other priorities and don't want to spend more on a vacation right now; we always enjoy Ocean City, thanks.

If you need help resisting peer pressure, look for a non-brick-and-mortar savings vehicle, one that you can only get to remotely, like an on-line bank or a money market vehicle that  has no direct withdrawals (you can only transfer money to another account to withdraw).  Then every time you are tempted, think about the fact that you have to contact the bank/account holder to transfer money before you can use it and it automatically forces you to reconsider before you spend the money.  Is the desire for whatever big enough to go through the hassle of requesting a money transfer to your primary account and then waiting the 24-72 hours for the money to transfer before you can spend it?  When I was younger, I did this, I used an e-bank that gave me a higher savings % for a money market, but I could not withdraw directly.  I had to transfer back to my regular bank to use the money.  It stopped me from spending sometimes if I had to wait for the money.  It gave me time to reconsider whether to spend the money in the first place. [/quote]

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