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• Friday, June 1, 2007 11:23 AM

  I feel like a freak

  Honestly. I read articles like this about how much Americans spend on *stuff*, how overextended they are on credit, how they are not saving enough and expect their houses to appreciate enough to get them out of any future difficulties, and I feel like I'm from Mars (or at least Canada :)

  My family doesn't live that way. Never have, never will. And to me it just seems like common sense, but apparently it is now extremely *uncommon* sense - living within ones means.

  My husband and I share two credit cards that we pay off in full every month. Always have, hopefully always will. The month we can't is the month they get cut up. I am so stunned at how easy it is to get credit these days that my big worry is that one day our credit card companies will drop us - because we pay them no interest and even *cost* them money because both cards give us cash back.

  We both have IRAs and my husband has a 401K from work. We chose to have only one child, because we wanted to be able to give him the best childhood we could afford. That includes private school from Pre-K to 12th grade, and we already have a college fund set up for him. To do that, we live in a 1040 sq. ft. rancher and drive two cars both more than 10 years old. We are prepared to buy another car someday, and already have a payment budgeted into our monthly spending. We have health insurance through my husband's job but take good care of ourselves in the hope that it will only be used in an emergency. We make a combined $65,000 a year, with no big raises in sight for either of us.

  I never felt like we were doing anything special, just living by the example our parents set. How has our concept of success, as a society, gotten so screwed up that people tell me we are depriving ourselves and not living as well as we should? I tell them I am very happy, and they think I'm odd.

  If this is odd, at 36, what will they be calling me at 56?

  —Katmarie Read Katmarie's other letters
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