Financial discipline is deciding what money will not be allowed to become.

Discipline is usually described as saying no to purchases, and it works better as a decision about what role money plays. What it will not be allowed to become is a scoreboard, a substitute for a conversation, a way of avoiding a decision, or the thing your self-worth is measured against. Those limits shape the spending on their own.

Write down one thing money is not allowed to be for you. Then notice, over the next month, where you were about to use it that way.