Is it Really All that Bad?

Things that I have learned are not necessities --

2 cars (Jeff and I have lived on one car for almost our entire marriage. We just make it a point to live near where he works. We have a parsonage now, but haven't always had that luxury. At times, it isn't fun, but it isn't a necessity).

new cars -- plenty of cars work well, and they lose thousands of dollars of value the instant they come off the lot. Those thousands can be saved for occasional repairs in buying a good used car.

Really most anything new -- If you look at Ebay, garage sales, classified ads, thrift stores - you can get almost anything, and often quite nice. New is a luxury, and if we are concerned about our environment, we really do need to look at the retail worship that we have in our country.

T.V. -- we gave up t.v. for 3 years, and I am almost to the point of being willing to do it again. But boy people thought we were wierd....and the babysitter really earned her pay. I think she was about ready to hike our price. Our t.v. is about to die (stupid thing is only 5 years old) and I am not sure whether I'll replace it with the 18 inch that I have sitting in the basement that I've had since college, or if I'll just go unplugged.

Debt - and I am working hard to get out of it.

I realize all of this is considered unpatriotic in the day and age where the health of the economy is measured by the Consumer Confidence Index -- which basically means "how comfortable do I feel in accumulating more debt this month?" and that we are literally being told to go spend! I am not sure that I think it is a bad thing for our work force to shrink to the point where things lower in cost and families are forced to have one person raise the children while the other works...and to figure out how to live that way.

And I'm not saying that I live without anything new, in the dark, and never go to restaurants. I am just saying that I weigh the options of the worth of my time vs. the cost of the new object, etc.

So what about you? What have you found to be unnecessary?