L.,
My husband and I make a very good living, but I'm not about to give my kids every toy there is and they don't need it. Most kids have way too many toys and they don't even play with them all.
When my girls were young, I would buy their Christmas and Birthday gifts at yard sales. You can find perfectly good toys there.
Also, we have so many aunts and uncles and grandparents that we only give our kids one gift for Christmas (Santa's) and one gift for their Birthday. By the time everyone else gives them 1 gift, it really gets to be too much.
We also only let them watch PBS or movies that we bought. This really keeps them from wanting every little toy that they advertise on TV. It also keeps them from learning how to back-talk to me. The few times I let them watch the Disney chanel, they started back-talking to me.
I also started at a young age to not buy them the little toys that they wanted in the grocery store. Occaisionally I would buy them a helium baloon which is cheap and at a young age, they love it.
Now that they are older, they earn "commission" when they work around the house for somethings and most things they do in the house because they are part of the family and that is what family members do.
When they do get their commission checks, we go and put 1/2 in a savings account, 10% in a tithe envelope and they have 40% to spend. That is more than enough money for them to buy little things.
Lately they have been wanting to collect Webkins. I think it is a huge waste of money to collect things that will soon have no value like that so I encourage them to think of other things that would be a better use of their money. They have a few Webkins and that is enough. When I didn't take them to buy Webkins last week, they came up with the idea to go to the painted pottery store and buy something to paint. They were so proud of themselves and they purchased something that is of much greater value in the long run.
I hope this helps, K.