Practice Making Payments

If you think you want to have car payments for a new car or something, take a year and practice doing it. Open a special account or get a jar and pretend you are making those payments on time every month. After a while you might reconsider the idea of having those payments. That would be a good outcome. Another good outcome would be that you build up a nice little bundle after a year and then pay cash for a used car that is only a few years old with low miles. I gave this advice to my students who wanted to get their own places. I would tell them to pretend to pay rent for a year. If they wanted privacy to have a boy over, I advised them to go to a hotel. A couple of nights at an hotel is much cheaper than renting an apartment. In the meantime if they stayed home they could save up and buy their first place and be on the road to financial freedom. I've never had to rent a place. I bought and paid maintenance. I don't like the idea of paying rent except in certain circumstances for the short term. I'm pretty stable and don't like to move. Buying works better for me.