In my dark teatime of the budget, the DAYCARE years, I would dream about what I would do when the child went to school. Europe! Home remodeling! New car! Vacations! 18% retirement contributions! BEING LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.

I didn't think I was ever living beyond my means, because I had been consumer debt-free for most of those years. I accepted vehicular and HELOC debt as consumer debt, short-term though they may be. I was also contributing 10-18% of my money to retirement annually.

I looked at my budget. A few years earlier MSN Money profiled a couple where we live going broke on $90K a year -- they adopted children from China and had car payments.
When one first tackles a budget, one records amounts that are comfortable and reasonable. Maybe a family living at twice the median income thinks it can get by on DSL Internet, three cats, a cell phone, extra to the mortgage. Maybe one family at that income level is heading toward bankruptcy.
Shockingly, $100K doesn't go as far as it used to even ten years ago.

And then the little whacks are the challenge. One thinks one's doing well because she doesn't have cable television, as long as she waits ten weeks between haircuts at the "good salon" and four months between hair dyes, or because she has cut by two-thirds her family's automobile gasoline consumption, even though gas has gone up to three times what it was when she first bought her car. And then one reads Easy Money and thinks: "okay, somehow I've got to manage college, early house payoff, a decent retirement, home renovation (the kitchen is an untouched 60 year old), disability insurance. Downscaling expectations can be tricky. Preparing for an era where food and energy are no longer subsidized means additional expenses: greenhouses, better windows, gardens, tools, rain barrels and aerators and insulation. How to budget all that in with feathering the Nest of Tomorrow?

So I'm rereading from my personal library for how to live on less: Living More with Less, The Complete Tightwad Gazette, Your Money or Your Life, Invest in Yourself, Saving on a Shoestring and Orchids on Your Budget: the latter is not a nuts-and-bolts "do math to make your income larger than your outgo" but rather a 1937-New-York-City-Vogue "Oh honey yes the money is gone but you needn't throw your chicness out the window"--amusing for its humour and for the recognition that even the lifestyle of having to let the maid go can afford crudites, taffeta, silk, satin, crepe and wool. I'll add this: there was a time, not so long ago, when people accepted their carless, TVless, and retirementless lives with joie de vivre.

"The Smart Poor do not pretend to be rich, which makes everything different. Once you give up struggling to fool people, you can have a lot more fun on very little money. You can live in a funny flat in a poor city neighbourhood or a remodeled barn in the country. You can go to cheap foreign cinemas (now we rent DVDs) and boast about it, instead of skimping in order to be seen at the Opera. You can hunt up bargains in clothes and rip off the gewgaws and--if you have the flair and the figure--look like a million dollars."

Really, Orchids on Your Budget presages YMOYL with this message: "The point, nowadays, is not merely to know the cost of a thing and whether or not you have money to pay for it, but to know whether it's worth the price to you."