"We can afford it"

Here's the objection from your bank account. Sixty-eight pounds doesn't break you. Neither does Lisbon. You're not in debt, or not much. Each of these things is affordable, and you can prove it, because you afforded it.

I'd agree with every word. Each one is affordable. That's the trouble, because the habit isn't any one of them. It's the month.

Go back to the list from chapter 1, if you kept it. Add it up. For most readers on an adequate income, the month's total of kept-up spending comes to several hundred pounds, and for some it's over a thousand, made entirely of items that were fine. The split, the round, the weekend deposit, the matched present, the trip, the thing for the children, the new bit of kit because the running club has it. None of them was a decision about several hundred pounds. Each was a decision about one thing, made at a table, without the price in view.

"We can afford it" is true of every line and false of the total, and the reason you've never noticed is that the total has never been added up. The splits go on the card, the deposits go by transfer, the presents come out of cash, and the month ends with less than it should and no single place to look. It's the perfect structure for a habit, because it never presents a bill.

There's a second thing hiding in "we can afford it", which is what the money would otherwise have done. An earlier book in this series is about saving on payday, and its point is that money in the current account gets spent because it's there. The month's total is that money. It's the sum that would have gone to the pot, the mortgage overpayment, the thing you actually want, if it hadn't gone to the table in twenty pieces. Affordable doesn't mean free. It means you had it, and now the far end of the table has it.

So the answer to "we can afford it" is a question. Afford it instead of what? If the honest answer is "instead of nothing in particular", then add up the list, because nothing in particular has a number, and the number is the month's total.