To respond to others … How did I get my financial life in shape so well? Good basic decisions/habits, some luck, some discipline, a lot of reading and research and a lot of work. I’m not really one to obsess over saving a nickel here and there, but I do all of the basic, big-ticket things correctly:

Neither my husband nor I are job hoppers. We’ve stayed at every job we’ve had for more than 5 years — on average, 7 years. This means we’ve been vested and earned 401K employer matches and in three instances, earned small, portable pensions. We’ve never raided our 401Ks for anything, and we always roll them over when we do leave a job. By staying at jobs so long and performing extremely well, we’ve also been promoted frequently and earned generous bonuses.

My daughter is now 7 and my son just turned 1 in March. We did not even entertain the thought of having a second child until we were both employed relatively securely and we know we could afford another child.

We automatically contribute 15% of our gross income to 401Ks. Somehow, we were smart enough to do this even when we were single.

We do not spend on things that we don’t really value. I didn’t want and don’t have an engagement ring (complete marketing ploy by diamond companies), and we didn’t go on a honeymoon. We had a small casual wedding (no gown, no limo, no photographer, no attendants) paid for by my mom. We don’t buy jewelry or china or Pottery Barn furniture. I’m 41 and currently driving only the 4th car of my life — my husband, at 43, is on his 5th. Our last three cars we bought used coming off of a 24-month lease. (Not too much of a hardship — I have a fully-loaded minivan; and my husband, who’s more into cars, drives a sporty Saab sedan).

Our starter house we were lucky enough to buy at the beginning of the NJ housing boom so we had 180K equity in it when we sold six years later. We didn’t put much money into renovations (maybe 8K total in 6 years) but took good care of it. We also never tapped the equity for anything and put it all down on the new house.

We’ve never gone without health insurance.

Except for two maternity leaves, I have always worked.

I pay everything on time. No exceptions. Our FICA score is, our last mortgage broker told us, “The highest he’s ever seen.” We always get the best rates on everything and we bargain from a position of strength.

We cut our own lawn, iron our own clothes and clean our own house. My husband is also fairly handy and fixes a lot of stuff himself.

We drive conservatively, so neither of us has ever gotten into an accident or even gotten a point on our license. That means our insurance rates are about as low as possible. We’ve also always done $1000 deductibles.

No one is sueing us, we’re not looking to make a buck by sueing anyone (or some other latest scheme) and we don’t buy lottery tickets (except, I confess, the occassional Bingo scratch off!).

I don’t have call waiting or answering service. We didn’t buy a home computer (or any other electronics) until my husband’s new job gave us one three years ago. I pay for HBO only during Sopranos season. We’ve taken the kids to Disney three times in 7 years … but we always drive (from NJ!!!). We ask for small home appliances and stuff like that for gifts. We never pay full price for anything — shop only at TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Home Goods, IKEA, Daffy’s, Target, Kohl’s, outlets. We almost always use coupons for restaurants and take-out. We don’t have any expensive hobbies like golf or skiing. We don’t have a flat screen tv — and really don’t feel any need to have one. WE just love Costco.

And, in case you’re wondering, apart from buying our kids some clothes or swimming lessons or Stride-Rite sneakers, our parents did not help us with anything.

Basically, I think that by avoiding “status” things (stupid!) and not ever trying to keep up with Joneses, we live well — really well — in a material sense. (Honestly, unless you’re in really bad, bad shape, I don’t think there’s ever a reason to practice some of the more extreme frugality measures I read about on other blogs.)

We also are all home for dinner every night and don’t ever work disgustingly long hours. I do work the standard 40 hours though and am finding that to be too much now that I have a second kid. So, with our finances on automatic pilot, my challenge now is to find a 30-35 hour-a-week job that will pay me the same rate — or get up my nerve to escape from cubicle nation.

serpah – you have great questions and it would be fun to get into them sometime. In relation to the panel of my peers that will be featured in this series, I am probably the LEAST financially savvy and represent the “learn by doing” kind of entrepreneur. What has always always excited me about entrepreneurship is the aspect of freedom, where I design my life exactly as I want it, and use my business to get there. Thankfully, I have always had a thriving practice, so haven’t had huge worries when it comes to cash flow. But I have had to develop a discipline around my spending habits, which are in contrast to my free-wheeling nature. I actually enjoy looking at numbers now, which is much different than when I was in my 20’s.

And MaryBeth, thanks so much for sharing your story! That is so fascinating to hear what you have done specifically. I will turn 41 next month, so love seeing the paralells in our paths (I am a bit more late to the game with kids, just working on my second one now!)

Since it is my job, I would probably challenge you to re-think your views that you could never make as much independently as in your corporate job … I have found quite the opposite. I now consider it much more safe to be an entrepreneur than an employee, who is at the mercy of one company.

From a biz dev perspective, my first gig at HP came from my former manager — I demonstrated my skill by working with her every day as an employee, so she felt confident hiring me as a consultant. These kinds of connections are often your BEST first clients, and point to the importance of doing great work always, regardless of your employment status.

I look forward to the other profiles!

(and I always wanted to be a “heroine,” more specifically a superhero. Isis was my favorite show back in 1972 or so, long before most of you were born.

MaryBeth, your comment was great! How did you work out all that stuff about what’s important to you and what’s not? Is there some little sheet that you went through with your family to tick off what each person wanted? Did you find that you had to make compromises? How did you get your family to make compromises if they had to?

And finally…how do you learn to say “no” to all the small stuff? It’s pretty hard, but I’m working on doing that now.