For most of the world, getting enough food to keep body and soul together each day is a major accomplishment. They're truly worried about their daily bread.

While there's a certain layer of society in America truly struggling to survive (and unless you're in that layer, I challenge you to read to the end), most of the reports I've been readinglike the complaints I've been listening to in the real worldare simply elaborate, high-pitched whines because we can't have everything we ever wanted since we can't afford it "anymore."

The truth is, most of us never could afford it.

We've been erroneously and foolishly treating the non-necessities like internet, cable, cell phones, netflix, shopping, SUVs, vacations, designer clothes, and heck, even a morning cup of home-brewed coffee, as necessities.

We've robbed our futures by treating our home equity as an ATM to fuel our materialism. We've by-and-large failed to save against an unexpected illness or inevitable retirement--or even against a (relative-to-a-cancer-diagnosis) minor glitch like a hurricane hit.

We're living like children, expecting SOMEbody to take care of all those pesky "details" for us.

How sad, how unfair, that we're having to drive our luxury gas-guzzlers less, eat out less often, or maybe say "no" to our whims more than we say "yes."

Disgusting.

When we first got married, we were both working professionals. My fathera depression-era baby who knows a thing or twoadvised that we make a conscious choice to live on one income, so we'd have the other in reserve.  So we did, as soon as we could see any way to do it.

When our neighbors were buying Hummers and 30' boats and treating their extended families to yearly two-week trips to Disney (and of course, telling everybody about it.), we were choosing the hard and much less flashy road,  spending time together in less expensive ways.

We were also scratching our heads, trying to work out how people who make significantly less per year than we did could have such materially laden, high-profile lifestyles. We mused, while their kids flashed their iPhones and game systems and mp3s and laptops at our kids, who didn't have most of it. We learned to laugh, when many of the conversations between kids and adults consisted mainly of "Well, I have (insert ridiculously expensive and hopefully envy-causing item here)."

It's been like watching someone eating his own heart to stave off hunger--it might work in the short term, but it's bound to cause some problems somewhere down the line.

And so it has.

I'm afraid we've devolved into a nation of perpetual adolescents who whine about not being able to fuel our affluenza with internet shopping and lattes.

Americans have been putting the cart before the horse for years, expecting to have from the get-go the level of material comfort their parents had worked their whole lives to accrue before they retired. People have been spending their security to pay for their vanities, all to keep up appearances and feed their massive senses of entitlement.

As the recent bout of hurricanes have taught us, it doesn't pay to live like there's no tomorrow.

Failure to delay gratification has sharp teeth, and aims them for tender parts.