We all want. We all covet. It’s part of human nature. And with so many things costing money, a budget often feels like it’s the killer of dreams.

For example, I desperately want new floors. We have the worst carpet ever, and even with steam cleaning, it still looks awful. The linoleum in the kitchen and bath can’t be more recent than the early 70s. It’s ugly and oh how I want it gone. I want it all gone.

So recently, we’ve been talking about replacing our floors- getting wood laminate (or even bamboo) in the main rooms of the house to make clean up easier. We started doing our research- cost, quality, hardness, financing options, etc.  Since our house isn’t that big, we could have laminate installed for $4k or less. That’s not bad, not bad at all.

Then, I re-did the budget projections. Tuition prices increased at the hubby’s college due to state budget cuts, so I needed to do this regardless of my flooring dreams.

And here’s what I found out. We’re still in a good place. We have enough money to do some of what we want, but not all of what we want. New floors, if we want to maintain any sort of emergency fund (which we do) will have to wait until hubby is done with school.

Spoil sport budget.

But that’s okay. Because we also want to knock out a couple walls and open up our kitchen. This will require electrical work and change our flooring needs. If my father comes and helps us with the electrical (he has training), we could redo the kitchen ourselves, for a couple thousand less than replacing the floors. Maybe that can be this fall’s home improvement project, instead.