IN NOVEMBER 2015, I got a notice from Amazon advising me that its security had been breached by some clever hacker and that my password may have been compromised. I was locked out of my account and instructed to set a new password.
In typical mindless fashion, I immediately set out to do just that. But then my inner contrarian stepped up and shouted some questions. I love this guy, even though most everyone around me thinks he’s a truculent moron.

FOR THE FIRST TIME in my life, I’ve hired a housecleaner. It’s absolutely worth it—but embarrassing to admit, at least at first.
I’ve always been a neat freak, demanding clean, organized and tasteful living quarters, so I’ve spent a good portion of my life cleaning and organizing. A lot. I have even declined an invitation to go boating and hiking because I was color-coding my books.
Lame, I know.
After purchasing our home, I realized something had to give.

SPENDING DIDN’T always come easy to me. As a child, I had a small weekly allowance, the spending of which I carefully controlled. In boarding school, a treat for me was a Mars bar from the school “tuck shop”—a British term for a small candy store.
As I entered my mid-teens and started to earn my own money, more often than not it went into my savings account. Only when I turned 16, and had my first car,

MY WIFE AND I JUST got back from two weeks of travel through Vietnam and Cambodia. For us, traveling strengthens our relationship and reminds us what we want in life. International travel is a luxury—there’s no doubt about it—but it’s also a meaningful experience that is easier to afford if you follow some basic principles before crossing oceans or international borders:
1. Save in advance. Before booking a trip, take the time to build up the funds needed to cover your expected costs.

WHEN I CREATE MY monthly budget, I subtract expenses I deem to be “needs” from my take-home pay. What’s left is money I can spend on items I desire—my “wants.” For budgeting purposes, I divide my discretionary income into four equal amounts and budget that amount for each week of the month. Psychologically, I find it easier to keep my budget on track if I can see how much I spend on a weekly basis.

BY THE TIME WE REACH our late 20s, we’ve made a set of fairly inflexible choices that dictate our ability to spend and save. Our career arc and earnings potential are established. Our debt from undergraduate and graduate programs has been accumulated. The number of dependents we’ll support is getting clearer. Changing any of these decisions is either impossible or mighty tough.
But there’s a second tier of financial choices that are in constant flux—and where we have the greatest flexibility to influence our spending and saving.

WHEN I DIVORCED a few years ago, I found myself needing a crash course in financial management. My first task: Understanding where my money went—and figuring out where I could cut back.
Today, I create a budget each month. I don’t use any type of program or app—I prefer paper and pen. At the top of a page, I write down my take-home pay. I use take-home pay, rather than my $5,500 monthly gross income,

FRUGALITY: I DON’T know whether it’s inherited or learned. I do know that I am frugal—and have been since I was a boy. My grandmothers were both frugal. One had to be out of necessity, while the other just was. My siblings all have the frugality trait. When asked who is the most frugal, fingers tend to point toward me. I could argue with that. But then again, being frugal is good, right?
I am not materialistic.

LAST YEAR, I READ Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance, a book where he explores millennials’ experience with finding love. Ansari writes: “In 1932 a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania named James Bossard looked through five thousand consecutive marriage licenses on file for people who lived in the city of Philadelphia. Whoa: One-third of the couples who got married had lived within a five-block radius of each other before they got married.

WHEN MY WIFE AND I started dating, we were both in the habit of budgeting through rough approximation. We made ballpark guesses about the percentage of our income that went toward specific spending categories and goals. But in truth, neither of us had much idea how much we spent on most things, other than obvious fixed costs like rent or car insurance. As a result, our ability to plan for long-term goals was limited.