Help! My daughter thinks we're broke because I haven't bought a Wii

Last night, I overheard my six-year-old daughter make a comment to my wife, that got me thinking. Just what I can conclude from this, I'm still working out.

My daughter, Isabelle, saw a reference in some ad to Wii, the popular Nintendo game (as if I need to tell anyone what Wii is). And she made an off-hand comment to my wife that we can't afford to buy Wii.

It sort of stung for a variety of reasons. One, I'd like to think that I could afford to buy my girls a round-trip ticket to the Moon, if that's what they wanted. Two, I know Isabelle would love a Wii console and all of the games that go with it. Three, what killed me is that it isn't that I can't afford to buy a Wii; I just haven't decided if buying one is worth it to our family.

I mean, we only have so many disposable dollars in our income. We could buy a Wii, but then maybe we wouldn't go on a vacation this summer, or we'd go on a smaller one. Or maybe we could have our Wii and our vacation, too, but we'd decide to cut back somewhere else, whether on the restaurants or movies that we go to, or the books that we buy. It's an inexact science, just what our disposable income is, but I know we'd take a hit somewhere, even if we didn't necessarily feel like we were cutting back.