> That's really fatal thinking. That's the standard line, I know. But your comment about saving misses the point: I was talking about times and situations whe

> That's really fatal thinking. That's the standard line, I know. But your comment about saving misses the point: I was talking about times and situations when you have no option to build savings; you can only choose to go into debt by amount x or amount x+x/10 (for example). In such a case, you cannot save your way out of debt. What needs to happen is a radical change to either your income or outgo stream; if you don't get that change, you're screwed, and it hardly matters how much, but if you do get it, then it won't matter so much if you went into debt a bit more before that. A dollar saved is certainly not the same, conceptually, as a dollar earned. In particular, the act of choosing not to buy things can only save me up to my current income (in a given period), no matter how much I choose not to buy. So if I decide not to buy that HDTV, I can save $1500, and if I choose not to buy a new Mac either, I can save another $1500, but if my income was only $2000, it's hard to claim that I saved $3000 this period. Money saved is merely potential money, while money earned is real money.