Well, it's a two-part problem: a rapacious government appetite for tax dollars and an individual desire to achieve the upper-middle-class lifestyle depicted as "normal" on most television programs. Living below one's means is especially hard in these times, when one has so few examples of it to refer to.
Other things can also happen. We easily bought a house, and had our first kid. We were only planning on 2 kids, and our house was perfect for that. We could easily afford 2 kids.
Then low and behold, we had identical twins on our 2nd pregnancy. Then the charming twins had tons of medical expenses even before they were born. Then they got sick at 6 weeks and almost died. One of them had severe asthma, and the other one has brain damage.
We’ve managed to save, but boy it has been a struggle. We even managed to get a larger house a few years ago, but that was because my husband got laid off and we used his severance to pay for the new house.
Since we bought the new house, we also have had major unexpected car expenses.
But the biggest unexpected recent expense has been that we had to put our daughters in private school. The public schools just couldn’t handle teaching our daughter with brain damage. In addition the public school was terrible for teaching, violence, and language. My other daughter was miserable there.
We’ve always managed. We sold some stock early on in my husband’s career and put it into savings for an emergency. We have not had to use that. We also put money in a 401 K, and we have never had to borrow against that. We also have tons of equity in our home, and we’ve never had to take out a home equity loan.
After that, we’re living paycheck to paycheck. My kids don’t do lots of after school activities. We don’t go on fancy trips. Our kids are older now and can stay home by themselves, so my husband and I finally go out on dates. We don’t shop at fancy stores. My kids get lots of their clothes from Target and other places like that.
When the kids were very little, I didn’t buy clothes and shoes for me for over a year (except maybe a pair of jeans).
A few years ago when my husband was going to be laid off, we really scaled back. Birthday parties were just homemade cake and ice cream at our house. I made Halloween costumes. We explored beaches and parks around our house. I cooked at home a ton, and we stopped going out to eat. In about 6 months, I think we saved an additional $12K. No one suffered, and I think we could easily go back to that lifestyle. We found out about a lot of free programs at the library and county parks, and we still go to those when they are interesting.