While renting their first apartment, Dan and Tammy earned a household income within a few hundred dollars of the national median. But everyone seemed to do it, and eventually Dan and Tammy came to think, This must be how people live.Д«ut it wasn't. In the evenings, friends invited Dan and Tammy to join them at expensive restaurants, where each couple would drop what Dan and Tammy considered a small fortune on dinner. At the cash register, she got a discount on her purchases by opening store credit accounts, which only made buying easier the next time. Many afternoons, she went with her new friends to the mall, where she upgraded her wardrobe and outfitted her kids in matching ensembles. After their second child was born, Tammy signed up for a ladies' tennis league, which meant paying for court fees, cute white outfits, and hours of child care. Within a year of moving in, the couple yielded to peer pressure and joined the local country club. Kindergartners went to tennis camp, a day trip meant Disney World, and birthday parties featured petting zoos. Here, kids hung out at homes with pools, enormous yards, and four-car garages. Another new friend of Tammy's was married to a high-earning sports pro. Their new best friends lived in a house worth three times as much as Dan and Tammy's new nest. In one move, the couple went from the nicest house around to living at the low end in a much fancier neighborhood, surrounded by people who, compared with Dan and Tammy, had done better, gotten farther, acquired more. In their new community, Dan and Tammy encountered a crowd they'd rarely dealt with before: aggressively ambitious professionals. The mortgage would slowly shrink and their savings would increase, they assumed, as Dan got raises and larger bonuses.ДЄt least, that's how it could have gone. They were in good financial shape overall, thanks to their great credit (they kept card balances low and paid them off regularly) and lack of car payments. Buying there would be a reach - 15 percent more than they'd planned to spend - but Tammy convinced Dan they could afford it. Dan liked that it was a gated community with lawns groomed like golf courses. Tammy liked that there were so many families with children by this time, the couple had a child and Tammy had quit her job to be a stay-at-home mom. Shopping for a new home, they fell in love with a four-bedroom place in a 15-year-old suburban neighborhood. He'd be managing a bigger store - but to relocate, they had to sell their brand-new house at a loss.

They hadn't even finished unpacking when Dan got a call: You're being transferred to Orlando. Just a few years later, they had a three-bedroom house built in a relaxed southern Florida community.

But self-denial paid off: In their mid-20s, when most of their friends weren't even married yet, they became homeowners. Dan remembers Tammy being so frugal that when he offered to take her to Olive Garden for dinner, she would turn him down and buy supper at Publix supermarket instead.

He started out at a retail job earning minimum wage but eventually got promoted to manager she was a secretary. And they knew it.Дan and Tammy,* both Southerners, grew up in working-class families and married shortly after graduation.

Bevening out family cashflow budgeting