Trade-offs

I just broke my phone contract and switched to a cheaper, no-contract plan on a different provider, because the savings over a year will cover the plastic flip phone (flip phones! remember when?) I had to buy from Walmart, the early termination fee, the acquisition of a smartphone for the budget-minded, and have a little left over for dinners out. Which is the whole point, really. It's only now, with both of us here, that I'm thinking about our finances, and how hard it is to live within our means, which at the moment are slender. It's not the big purchases which are hard to avoid, though I haven't quite avoided them; it's trying the new Indian place down the road, sharing a bottle of wine with dinner, buying a rug or a picture for the apartment, a coffee to see me through this essay, strawberries and bread and flowers from the farmers' market. It's the laptops and the coats and the boots which are a little more expensive, perhaps, but good value for money, good quality. All the small extravagances of grown-up life that you don't really think about until you think about giving them up.