I believe that most of us have a basic understanding of discipline, however in today's society we don't have to choose between food and a big screen TV. We want it all - we can have it all - NOW. It's too bad that many times this will come back to haunt us.

If you want to prevent your money problems, you have to have discipline to sacrifice. You need to understand that your needs come first, that you have limited financial resources and that never spending more than you earn each month is essential to your families financial survival.

It is even more important that you learn discipline and sacrifice if you already have money problems. When you develop these skills and hopefully overcome your financial woes, you will have a better chance of preventing it from happening again.

The above is simply an example and each individual taxpayer should review form carefully. To check this out for yourself, you need to visit IRS homepage at http://www.irs.ustreas.gov. Then go to bottom of page and click on forms & pubs. In menu click on forms and instructions. That page will have a list of IRS forms. Scroll down until you find Form W4 Employees Withholding Allowance. You will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view these forms. This is easily downloaded at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html

How much could this mean to a family? Let's take example of a couple with three kids making $500 per week and only claiming two exemptions. The Federal Withholding from your paycheck would be about $40 per week. If that family were to claim 9 exemptions, there would be no federal withholding. Therefore, just by filling out a new W4, you just gave yourself an 8% pay raise. That is over $2000 more take home pay per year. If you qualify for Earned Income Credit you may still receive a refund. By way, you can also receive Earned Income Credit in your paycheck, but I'll save that for another article.

I can hear a lot of you now. "This guy must be nuts, I'm not giving up that tax refund for him or anyone else. I work hard all year and this is only time I have a lot of money to spend all at once." I'm sure that most of you won't give up that big tax refund just because you read this article. However, you will come away with knowledge that this is an option, if you qualify, and a few ideas of how you can you could use that extra money.

There are several things that you could do with that extra money. Let's look at a few of them.

1. If you need extra money just to buy essentials, take it and use it. 2. Put money in a savings account 3. If you have a 401k, increase amount of your contribution 4. If you have investments, put more money into them 5. My favorite is to use that money to start a Christmas Club at your bank. By doing this you not only earn interest on your money, but you will have money when you really need it, just before Christmas. This could also help cut down on using credit cards to buy Christmas. That alone could save you a lot of money.