Originally Posted by intparent
For us it was cheap vacations -- my kids know their grandparents VERY well :), buying relatively inexpensive models of used cars and driving them til they dropped, rarely eating out (and only at inexpensive places when we did), renting most movies, heavy library use, living in less house that we could afford for many years so our mortgage (and interest payments) were still pretty small when we finally upsized, both parents working, rarely hiring someone to do things like housework or yardwork, etc.

I'm still very resistant to the idea of upsizing, since I prefer to have no debt, having already gone through the joy of paying off six figure student loans.