Building Character Qualities

I try to work on building character qualities in my kiddos, not only is it important for them to learn them, but I get joy in teaching my kids to some day be able to "fend" for themselves. One we get to work on on a weekly basis at the grocery store is thriftiness. Constantly walking around the store I hear, "aw Mom, can we get this? Is it on sale?" Now sometimes I feel that I take this a bit far and worry sometimes what type of "character" I'm building.
As you know we are stretching our budget and trying to really pinch pennies, while I think it's important for Gracie to know this, sometimes I think it rubs off a bit much. Last night I came home late from work and accidentally "woke her up". (I think she wasn't really asleep, even though everyone else in the house was!) Anyway, she came out and I graciously let her come downstairs while I ate dinner, pumped and took care of house type things. We then snuggled up on the couch for a bit and watched one of our favorite shows, the Duggers, with their 19 kids and counting!! Anywho, I was not skipping through commercials for some crazy reason and a Kohl's commercial came on. They were advertising this weekends MEGA sale and continued on to advertise that EVERYTHING was on SALE!!!! My little frugal frog who is watching intently says to me "Everything is on sale?" (in one of those cute voices that goes up at the end as if to say, can we go, it's all on sale!!) Well, looks like were on to another character building quality, discernment!!! I of course explained to my 3 1/2 year old that this is a propaganda gimmick and that while everything might be "on sale", it's just a tactic they use because they just want you to buy stuff!! "Oh"! is all I got!