family financial priorities

where do you spend your extra cash? on debt repayment like us for the last couple years? on clothes? the latest electronic gadget? vacations? school? where does it go and how do you decide? do you decide where your extra cash goes?

a little while ago i was reading on babble (via simple mom) about what a family prioritizes spending money on. it got me thinking. for this particular family they value traveling and experiencing the world together as a family. they lived in france, the middle east and different parts of the US.

today {now that jamie's back from rwanda - hooray!} our family went out to the boys' favourite restaurant {the one with the trampolines!} for lunch and while the boys were jumping, jamie and i talked about what we want to give towards and do with the money that we won't be putting toward debt now that we are debt-free {!!!}.
it was fun to dream and plan and so i asked him some of these questions and we talked about things we are passionate about doing together as a family and things that we'd like to be able to provide for our kids.

one thing {but definitely not the only thing} we agreed about was the fact that we don't want or feel the need to live in a large, expensive house. we don't want to be pouring the majority of our funds into a house/home. it made me happy to be on the same page as jamie on this particular thing. sure there are things we don't both value as highly as each other, but can agree upon but for the most part, it was exciting to talk about people and organizations we'd like to give towards as well as considering options that we might not have been able to in the past due to debt {such as taking trips we couldn't have considered before or starting RESPs for the kids and topping up our RRSPs, etc}.

this is something new for us. jamie and i aren't exactly "savers". we don't really plan either. which is part of the reason why we struggled and ended up in the debt that we're finally out of! being in africa as well as making a concerted effort to pay off debt as fast as possible have opened our eyes to the value of being good stewards of our money as well as to the future joy of planning now for later. i would highly recommend Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University as a great financial planning resource. if jamie and i can do it, you can too.

so what are your family's financial priorities? have you thought about and talked about your family's financial priorities and values? do you prefer to spend your extra money on vacations or would you rather renovate your home? do you have any resources that have been invaluable to managing your money and planning for the future? what do you use {a piggy bank? ING saving accounts? a hole in your backyard?} for saving up for larger goals?

please share!