When you Google the definition of 'delayed gratification', the following comes up:

Delayed: Postpone or defer.

Gratification: Pleasure, especially when gained from the satisfaction of a desire.

So why not sum up and call delayed gratification the action of waiting longer for a desire? We all have monetary desires; the new car, larger house, bigger TV set and heaps of other things. In my humble opinion, after dealing with a lot of people with money problems, what they have most trouble with is delaying what they want now!

Unlike a screaming kid in the supermarket, yelling "but Mum I want it!" adults who want things generally don't have to ask anyone. With a swipe of their ATM card they can have most of their desires right away. And now more than ever, even if you can't afford the desire there are organisations lining up to help you reach it. Credit cards, personal loans, home loans and interest free loans are all there to help people who want but cannot afford right away. I say now more than ever because even if you go back to the 1960s, a mere fifty years ago, there were nearly no options to get what you want if you could not afford it. In fact you would have to go to your bank on your knees just to get a loan. And home loans needed deposits of around 40% before they would even consider you. Back in that decade, delayed gratification was enforced, not an option.

In modern times the rules are completely different. In fact nowadays banks will lend you 100% of your home loan with no savings at all. In the US, at one point they were lending over 100% so you could not only purchase the loan, but furnish the house. Interest free offers give you 24 months in some cases, with no repayments. You don't even have to think about paying one red cent until two years have passed. Credit card companies send you pre-approved credit cards in the mail; cards you didn't even request. All you have to do is sign the back, make a verification phone call and you're away.

Also as decades have rolled by, companies have spent millions upon millions of dollars to understand how you tick. They pinpoint all your weaknesses and then use them in their marketing campaigns. For example, a US study was done on how to make children under the age of seven want toys more, how to advertise to these children and how to make them nag their parents more effectively. Thus they would receive their desired toy.

Not to mention that on average we are all seeing in Australia now between 20,000 and 30,000 forms of advertising each year. We are given messages every day to just buy something. If you just buy whatever is being sold, your life will be that little bit better. There is no denying it but it is getting harder and harder to truly live with delayed gratification in our lives.

We have a weapon against the credit card companies, the slick marketing campaign, the neighbour who has the big screen TV that you are jealous of, and the Bank Manager who offers you a bigger home loan than you ever thought you could afford. It's the word "NO". If you can get in the habit of saying no more often than not, you will be half way to a great budget. Below are 2 stories on how delayed gratification can play out in real life.

But before we go any further there is no use in saying no to everything. As you lay on your death bed, waiting for the end, you would want to look back at your life and have some thrills. The story which highlights this more than any was the true story of the Melbourne financial planner's office. A couple had set themselves a strict budget however their food budget was constantly going above and beyond the monthly spend. The husband of the couple was upset about this and was trying to rein in his wife's food shopping habits (as it was the wife who did the weekly shop). He asked the financial planner if he could help him talk his wife into tightening her belt at the supermarket. The financial planner said that under normal circumstances he would agree with the husband, but as they were 92 years old and had over $2 million dollars in shares, maybe it was ok if they did increase their shopping bill each month. Now this situation is truly taking delayed gratification a tad too far in my opinion.

1. Jenny and Todd are newlyweds at the tender age of 23. They are budgeting extraordinaires and even after their wedding they have $35,000 saved up for a house deposit on a $355,000 house.

Well to say they are good budgeters is true, but they have had a leg up in the budgeting experience. For the last two years the couple have lived with Jenny's parents. Jenny's parents know they are trying to get a house deposit worked out so they are doing the best they can to give them a leg up. Without giving them any money Jenny's parents have provided free board and utilities while they live under their roof. And because Todd and Jenny are such good housemates, they have given them an open invitation to stay as long as they want (within reason).

But Jenny is sick of her parents. She and Todd have lived as a couple for over two years and she wants to start making a life for herself. Not to mention, she has lived in the house all her life. And Jenny says privacy has become an issue. As Jenny keeps stressing to Todd, the Bank Manager has already approved them for a $320,000 home loan. Add this to their deposit and they are flying out of the nest once and for all.

Todd on the other hand, is not so convinced and wants to wait. As he points out to Jenny, the current situation for savings is like a gift from God, as they are putting away a lot of money towards a new deposit. In fact each week they are saving $521, so if they can stick it out twelve more months they would have saved $62,092. Then they would have to borrow only $292,908 for their $355,000 home loan. Todd asks Jenny to stick it out for just 12 more months. To prove his point he puts pen to paper and writes out two scenarios for Jenny to think over.

Scenario One: We borrow $320,000 over 25 years at 7% interest right away. Add in our savings of $35,000. And next week we are living free and clear in our $355,000 house, away from your parents and starting our own life. Our monthly repayments on the home loan, as luck would have it, are $521 a week or what we have been saving already. So we know we could afford it. After 25 years we have paid off the home loan and to boot have paid $357,948 in interest, for a total payment of $712,948.

Scenario Two: We stick around with your parents for one more year, saving the $521 a week and adding it to our savings of $35,000. At the end of this year we would have a total of $62,092. We borrow $292,908 over 25 years at 7% interest, using our saved money to bring it to the full $355,000 we need. However instead of paying the bank's minimum home loan repayment at $477, we increase it to $521 a week, which we know we can afford. Now we pay off the home loan in only 21 years and three months. We would have paid it down a lot quicker than scenario one. After this time we would have only paid $254,250 in interest, or a total of $609,250. This is a saving of time and $103,698. So each extra day in this place is equivalent to a saving of $11.36 a day every day spread over the course of our next 25 years.

Jenny is floored, totaly floored with this outcome. She cannot believe the difference in just one year of staying with her parents. Now not only is Jenny thinking she can stick it out but she is asking Todd to do the figures on if they could save for two years. Todd goes back to the drawing board.

Scenario Three: We stay with your parents for two years, saving $521 a week and adding it to our savings of $35,000. In two years' time we would have $89,184. We borrow $265,816 over 25 years at 7% interest, using our saved money to bring it to the full $355,000 we need. However instead of paying back the bank's minimum home loan repayment at $433, we increase it to $521 a week, which again we know we can afford. Now we pay off the home loan in only 16 years and 6 months. We would have paid it down a lot quicker than in scenarios one and two. After this time we would have only paid $183,658 in interest, or a total of $538,658. This is a saving of time and $174,290. So each extra day in this place is equivalent to a saving of $19.10 a day every day spread over the course of our next 25 years.

Ok, now Jenny is on board. But then it dawns on both Jenny and Todd that once they have paid their home loans back, they will still be working. And the home loan money is then theirs to do with what they want. So for example in scenario one it would take them the full 25 years to pay the home loan to zero. But in scenario two it would only take 21 years and 3 months. Now they have $521 a week to do with as they please. They sit down again and look at if they'd banked this money until when the loan was supposed to run out in scenario one.

In scenario two they would have 2 years and 9 months of extra savings to the same 25-year point in scenario one, even just putting this into an everyday savings account at 5% interest. At the 25-year point they would have one paid-off house and $77,830.

In scenario three they would add 7 years and 6 months of extra savings to the same 25-year point in scenario one, again, just putting it in an everyday savings account at 5% interest. At the 25-year point they would have one paid-off house and $246,390. Not bad!!

Scenario three could really set them up for life. And just by delaying their gratification for 24 months they are looking at around $246,390. As they are thinking about it going forward, each day staying with Jenny's parents is an extra $27.00 a day each day for 25 years. This is good money to lose a bit of privacy.

2. Tim's old computer is on its last legs. He wants a brand new one to do all the things the old one just can't handle. While his old computer still technically does most things, it's getting a bit slow and dated.

Tim has a problem; no available money. So like most people he looks to his credit card to help him out. He believes he should be able to get a $4,000 computer on his card at 20% a year interest and pay it back at the rate of $80 a month. However Tim really never does the figures on how long it will take him to pay off his new computer.

Tim takes the computer home and it's great. It looks amazing, you could see the screen from mars and it even plays Blurays and DVDs. It's the top computer for the year as described by Computer Monthly magazine. Tim continues to pay back the $80 a month. However at the 24-month mark, Tim becomes concerned. He has only paid down his total balance down by $391, even though he has paid out $1,920. This is due to the high interest he has been getting charged. To add salt to Tim's wounds, his computer, as with all technology, has been dropping by 3% a month in price. So what was once $4,000, just two years later is $1,985 to buy from the shops.

Ok Tim is now kicking himself: "Why didn't I wait two years and save my $80 a month and buy the same model computer for half price?" Tim was well aware of technology changes and that what is expensive one year is cheap the next. But he wanted it now, not later. And by not being able to delay his gratification he has paid a huge price in the long run for his computer.

But now for the scary part. If Tim cannot stretch his budget to pay off his credit card over $80 a month for the next five years, then at the end of year seven since purchasing his computer, he will still owe $1,593 and have paid out a total of $6,720.

Can you see how if Tim could have just resisted his urge to get his computer with the credit card, and really knuckled down and saved up the money, his situation would be chalk and cheese? However he, like a lot of other people in society, just could not say no to having it now. And there were plenty of companies eager to let Tim borrow the money to pay for the computer on credit. And why wouldn't they be eager? After seven years they are still making money from a product which is by that time already in need of upgrading.

A study in Australia concluded that parents who use disposable nappies spend on average $2,900 on them until their child is toilet trained. Plus, disposable nappies take 20 years to decompose in the environment. However the study also concluded that parents who use washable nappies saved around 80% on the nappy costs. Would you believe this is a saving of $2,320? If you had four children you could save nearly $10,000!

You are three times more likely to get killed in a car accident driving 15km to buy a lottery ticket, than you are of winning the lottery.

Do you know that in 2010 a study showed that Australian household families wasted around $380 a year of food? That much waste could feed the whole population of New Zealand for a year!