If you can't afford it, then you can't afford it.
That's pretty straight forward but most people don't abide by it.
My wife and I have gotten really good at following this rule. It is actually surprisingly easy to live by once you're out of the habit of charging things. And like I said in an earlier post, once you get to the point where you can afford things, you may not want to buy them anyway because this plan is so addicting.
My wife said it best yesterday when we were talking about our upcoming trip. It's going to cost us more money than we would have liked but it's the holidays and we're visiting her parents. We only get to see them a few times a year so it's important to go when we have the chance. It's really not costing that much as far as trips go. Gas and a bit of food and that's about it. And we are paying cash of course.
Anyway, she said that it just comes down to choice. We get to decide what we do with the money that isn't promised to bills. Many people get themselves so caught up in bills that they have little choice in where their money goes.
For us, it means that for the next month we slow down on paying off our debts. We'll use the extra cash for this trip, Christmas presents for Trey, and another trip after Christmas.
When the holidays are over, all the extra cash starts going back toward the debts. In 2007, we should have everything paid off except our house. How cool will that be?