If you try sometime... you just might find...

Picture it. The suburbs of Buffalo. Summer of 2005. My hubby and I had been married for four years, and I had just got the car of my dreams. A new-to-me, shiny, black VW Beetle was mine (complete with the bud vase and everything!). We had two incomes, ate out a lot, and now I had new wheels. Life was sweet.

Fast forward a few months down the road. After a glorious summer of cruisin' around town in my awesome, small, two-door car, we had a major life change. Make that changes. Yes, the baby we had been wanting and waiting for over two years was on its way. Well, on their way; turns out, there were two on their way.

You can imagine, we were totally overjoyed. And overwhelmed. We were socked with the news that I would be out of work about six months into the pregnancy (my doctor, very conservative, played it safe from the beginning). On top of that, it soon became clear that one of our cars had to go.

My husband had an older Saturn sports car with a ton of miles on it. I, of course, was driving my beloved VW. No room for two car seats in either of those puppies; forget a folded double stroller. So what's a budding family to do?

Obviously we needed a vehicle with more room, and mine, being the newest model and having the greatest value, became the object of our intention: the intention to sell or trade for a roomier mini van.

So, about a month before the twins entered the world (which was about a month and a half too early, so really, just in the nick of time) I bid farewell to my dream car and said hello to the huge, beige mini-van with great mileage and lots of room. I had just joined the ranks of mini-van moms across the country.

Thankfully, between the trade in value of my beloved Beetle and a bit of help from our savings, we now had a new (to us) van with no car payments. When our girls graduated from the NICU about two weeks after birth, we were able to ride them home in safety and without another debt added to our list.

The financial lesson I learned from my sweet babies? As the old Stones' song goes: you can't always get what you want . . . but you get what you need.