You Can't Always Get What You Want (When You Want It)

  Sometimes I don't have a lot of patience. Growing up an only child I had more than my share of temper tantrums.

This probably looks familiar to most of my family members.

  My most memorable tantrum was when I was around 4 and we were going to Wal-Mart, which parents love to do anyway right? There are 2 Wal-Marts where I'm from, one was infinitely cooler than the other because they had lobster tanks. We ended up at the other Wal-Mart, a huge tantrum ensues because "I WANNA SEE THE LOBSTERS!!!!"

  Don't worry, I got my butt busted for that and rightfully so.

  There are a few lists circulating out there about "Characteristics of Debt Free People", each of the lists I've seen posted says that they are patient. When it comes to patience we're a work in progress. We have been very patient with our cars but in the past month we have poured $900 into our Jeep. Not cool Jeep, not cool. 

  This week has been full of car browsing, we had a list of ideal characteristics of the car we want. After visiting a few dealerships and doing some online research we were told repeatedly that what we're looking for doesn't really exist anymore. 

  Were we looking for some crazy space car? Nope. 

   Here is the list we brought with us:

• Less than 100,000 miles
• Made in this century
• Less than $6,000

 Doesn't look too outrageous does it? We didn't think so but apparently it's unrealistic. We did find a few cars that we liked that were a bit over that price range. We could have very easily sat down and filled out the financing papers and walked away with a new-to-us vehicle and a car payment. We are pretty adamant about paying cash for it though so we left with a list of cars and a business card. 

 Now it has become a challenge to see how fast we can save for it and how we can make adjustments in our budget to put more money aside each month until we get it. This will put a hold on paying extra to our student loans but we think is a wiser decision to get a newer low mileage vehicle that will last instead of getting another clunker. It will be nice having a car that isn't old enough to be a junior in high school! 

 So we're working on this patience thing.

 How do you handle having to wait for something?