I never say "too expensive" to anyone, even myself, ever. If it's too expensive in the sense that I think it's a bad deal (e.g. that 1br/1ba 400sqft house is to

I never say "too expensive" to anyone, even myself, ever. If it's too expensive in the sense that I think it's a bad deal (e.g. that 1br/1ba 400sqft house is too expensive at $700k), then I express that. Everything else though, I say "you have to save for it". A Model S isn't too expensive, I just have to save for it. My wife wanted a couch that I thought was a little unreasonably priced, but I said if we save for it, sure. Savings is separate from retirement and so forth so knock yourself out. Interesting thing about this is it forces you to choose -- you can't save for 10 really expensive things all at once, unless you're prepared to wait 15 years for the money to accumulate. So this method forces you to choose priorities. Works great for a kid I think -- you're saving for this $10 book, but you want a $3 candy bar... what is that going to do to your book savings? You can have anything you want if you save for it.