I often identify with people who say that they are graduates of the university of hard knocks. In fact, if such a school existed, I would not only be a graduate, but the valedictorian as well. Time and time again I have had to learn lessons the hard way. One of those lessons occurred during my teenage years when I first began dating.

After nervously asking a girl out to dinner, I was amazed that she actually accepted my invitation. Since I was working with a very limited budget, I didn't want to take any chances, so I called a local restaurant and to inquire about their prices. I asked for the price of the most expensive item on the menu, which was $15.95. I then thought to myself, "OK, $40 should cover it! Even if we both order the most expensive thing on the menu, that still leaves $8 left over for drinks.

You can probably guess what happened. My first surprise occurred when my date ordered an appetizer. Fortunately, I had built a little cushion into the budget by assuming the worst case scenario so I still felt that I had everything covered when she ordered a less expensive entrée. Nervously, while we ate and talked, I kept a running tally of the bill. At the end of dinner, my total stood at $38.90. I was able to dodge a bullet when my date passed on desert and for the first time that evening, I was able to relax and enjoy the date. That is until the bill arrived.

You can imagine my surprise when the actual bill came out to be $42.01 with the sales tax added in. Uh oh! As I sat there wondering how I was going to make $2.01 magically appear in my wallet, my date asked, "Do you want me to pay the tip?" The tip? I hadn't even thought about a tip. Sheepishly, I had to agree and then to make matters worse, I had to ask to "borrow" an addition $2.01 from her. She was very gracious about the whole situation but it was embarrassing nonetheless. That night, I learned an important lesson - count all the costs of any endeavor beforehand.

Now, before you start laughing at my naiveté in this situation, I want to remind you that you've probably had a similar situation in your own life. For instance, perhaps you set a budget of $2,000 for a new computer system. You went to a computer store and picked out your CPU, monitor and printer with great care so that the total cost fit within your budget. However, you didn't figure in the costs of the sales tax, power cords, printer ink, etc. As a result, you walked out of the store having spent almost $2,500.

Or perhaps, you set a budget for a new car with monthly payments of up to $400 per month. However, you didn't count the costs of licensing, taxes, insurance and warranties. As a result, your total cost of owning the car came out to be almost $600 per month. Or perhaps, you didn't count all of the costs of home ownership or starting a business. The truth is that we are all guilty of not counting all the costs from time to time.

In fact, the biggest cost that we often fail to take into account is the cost to our lives. When we get our hearts set on a new house or a new car, we often think that we can pay for this added expense by putting in extra time at work. We think, "I can afford this new house, if I just work one extra shift each week." Or we think, "I can start this business if I just work 80 hours per week for the first two years." However, we all too often fail to take into account just how those extra hours at the office or at the plant will affect our relationships with our loved ones.

Therefore, we agree to take on extra projects at work in hope of getting a pay raise. We figure that we're willing to trade a few hours of extra effort for more money. However, we are trading more than just our efforts; we are trading our relationships with our loved ones when we are no longer available to coach our daughters' basketball teams, help our sons with their homework, eat dinner with our families, etc.

Many times, the financial cost of obtaining the next possession is only a small percentage of the total cost. For some people, it becomes time to "pay the piper" when the kids go off the college. For others, the day of reckoning occurs only after the marriage has been damaged beyond repair. Only then do they realize the true costs of owning the BMW or the beach house or the speed boat.

Therefore, before you purchase that next car, computer system, set of golf clubs or other toy, count all the costs of acquisition. Don' just focus on how much it will cost in terms of money but more importantly, how much will it cost in terms of time spent away from your loved ones. If you do, you may discover (before it's too late) that the price is simply too high.