The right list is short but explains why I have never been in a bad financial situation since I have been living on my own or married.

I keep monthly expenses as low as possible. Our needed items including some not so needed internet, cell phone, satellite TV and netflix is still less than 30% of our net income. I would rather pay a lump sum than pay a monthly bill and I refuse to let monthly expenses get high. I am always looking at ways of cutting these down.

I don't believe in car payments. For the longest time we didn't own a car because gas and insurance cost money and, when we finally did buy a car, we bought it cheap and paid in full.

I have savings deducted automatically and gradually increase it as time goes by. As a result, I never notice the lack of this money.

I am not a hoarder. As a result, we only are allowed to buy things that don't take up a lot of space and are extremely useful. This makes shopping for random stuff a very unlikely thing because I don't want to have to throw things out later.

Now the list of what I do wrong.

Patience is a virtue I do not possess. If I want it, I want it now. Learning to save up is a challenge, especially if I know that something I want will only be available for a limited time at a good price. Case in point was my ps3. I got the model that was backward compatible when it went on sale and was being phased out. I don't like clutter so I wanted only one console instead of two to play the playstation games. I managed to pay cash but I definitely hadn't saved up for it or any other toy that I like.

I have always had cheap credit available to me. I have never paid more than 7% interest in my life and not even that for very long. I always have 0% interest available to me which makes saving up harder because I am already backwards in the way I pay for things.

Which leads to, I don't save enough outside retirement accounts. While retirement accounts have been a part of my life for a long time, learning to save for short term and semi-long terms needs is not something I was really exposed to until I came to this site. At that point, I was still paying off debt and was only focused on that. A year and a half later, I am still working on this. *Sigh*

I am going to get this right eventually won't I?