Lately it’s been interesting to watch as people comment only on the cost of debt free living.
While it is difficult in it’s seasons, especially as an American who grew up with a multitude of comforts, it also has a “worth it” factor.
We are currently experiencing the off grid solar electricity, hauling water in until rain water and possible well are put into place, living in a canvas wall tent, building a home only on savings, cars that are held together by duct tape and prayer, living well below our means, and trusting in God to provide for us and to sustain all we have.
It’s often easy for me to overlook all God has blessed us with because my brain can end up focusing on what we lack (ease and convenience) and not remember all that God has sustained. We have lived off of less than most monthly house payments for all our bills to be able to stay debt free while building because of opportunities to buy supplies at extreme discounts, but we have also ran cars down to their last bolt, duct taped those back into place and then ran them down to the threads in the duct tape.
It’s so much easier for me to count it a blessing in regard to the materials but then overlook the blessing of God allowing a minivan at almost 300,000 miles that we paid less than $2,500 almost three years ago to continue running, albeit, with less convenience than many newer cars, but running, nonetheless. These are God’s sustaining blessings.
How about the blessing of not having to pay exuberant prices and finding great deals? Through prayer and asking God to lead us, we haven’t paid more than $3,000 for a single car between S.T. and I in the last 7 years. We do quite a bit to keep our expenses and splurging low and with many of the blessings of technology, we are able to find many coupons, group deals, low phone plans, free wifi at certain places, and even ways to get free drinks instead of splurging and sometimes, those free drinks end up being our date night for the week.
While it’s not always convenient in the moment, and many people don’t understand it’s a blessing in the long run because of the money we save by not being in debt of any sort, working our tails off to pay upfront for solar power and other water systems, and all the coupons for if we do decide to “splurge”.
One of the more difficult parts about this conviction, aside from our culture not being one to make it easy, is our family members who don’t understand it and try to pressure us to just ‘make life easier’. While we completely understand their sentiment, they also don’t understand how this lifestyle – hard as it can be – helps us.
Due to this conviction, life is more difficult, but it helps me to trust in God and appreciate His little winks and kisses He sends my way. Many times this summer alone, I have looked at the price of gas (almost $4 a gallon some weeks) and haven’t wanted to use it to power the generator to supplement the solar simply to be comfortable in A/C, I have prayed and simply asked God to change the weather. There have been temperatures forecasted for 95-110 degrees in the next days and instead of trusting in the electric company for comfort, God has been the one to cool it down to 85 or less, send overcast skies, breezes and rain.
Along with trusting and asking God for my needs and desires due to following this conviction, we also aren’t tied down. Over the last 5 years, we’ve worked to bring all of our bills down to two – We have our phone bills being less than $40 a month (S.T. uses a flip phone through Mint $12 a month, and I use a $25 a month plan through Visible that does the trick) and insurance on our cars is about $150 a month. We obviously have other living expenses, but those are our bills, which means that when and if the time comes that God asks us to pack up and move, we can make a few calls to Statefarm, maybe sell our car to family, give or sell our goats, chickens and pigs, and I can upgrade my phone plan by $10 a month for the international phone plan and we are off.
No water tap bill (about $25 a month here if we don’t use a single drop). No mortgage payment (about $800-$1,200 a month depending on credit and original cost of house). No electricity fees, no car payments, and nothing binding tying us down.
This lifestyle also means that our marriage is stronger, it’s hard to live like this some days, and a lot of the time, I do my best not to bring the grievances up to S.T., because, you know what, HE ALREADY KNOWS! He already knows it’s hot, it’s stuffy, it’s inconvenient, etc. Why bother bringing it up when he can see it too. Sometimes when things get to be too much, I may comment on it after the initial frustration passes and try to find ways to deal with things better, but I already know he dislikes waking up to rain blowing in under our doors just as much as I do. It increases our communication, our prayer life, our respect and love for each other, and any muscle used will grow.
S.T. also doesn’t have to work his life away. I believe, without frivolous expenses of eating out and the money we set aside to bless with, we need about $950 a month for our bills, gas (which is our largest consumer of funds), and groceries which means he is able to work two 16 hour shifts a week and have the rest of the week to spend with Selah, Joy, and myself. Anything extra is usually set aside for giving, household projects, or savings for if a tire blows or a tree falls on our solar generator.
S.T. is able to be involved in our church, in the ministries, involved in my life as well as the lives of our children, and he is also able to spend a lot of time helping his parents, our church family, and his siblings as they are working towards their goals in life.
As I said before, this has been a 5+ year goal, this isn’t something that has happened overnight. There have been many weeks S.T. worked from 2pm Saturday all the way until 7am Sunday, came home, we went to church, he taught sunday school, sat through service, he preached at the nursing home, we get home about 4 pm, he sleeps until 7, eats dinner, plays with the kids, goes to bed at 10pm and wakes up at 5 am to get to work by 6am Monday morning and then works until 11pm, not getting home until about 12am. Then, having Tuesday off, he rests, works on a few things, Wednesday helps his folks with something and then Thursday and Friday he is waking up at 5 am to get to work by 6am Monday morning and then works until 11pm, and not getting home until about 12am again. Going to bed and sleeping until 7am Saturday to get up and go to Men’s Prayer Meeting at 8:30 am at church, maybe helping them work on the new building, coming home around 12 before having to leave at 1 to get to work by 2.
Infact, this week is one of those weeks where he is having to work almost exactly like that, but it is no longer the normative. Before having children, I would work and the mornings after his midnights that I worked, we would time it where he would pull into a gas station closes to where our paths intersected and we’d share a kiss before I continued on to work and he went home to sleep. But again, that was a means to an end. It was a season, not a lifetime.
Looking back on all the money we could have made if we kept to that work schedule almost makes me sick. Just this week alone of S.T. being at work like a mad man – a job that would replace him without batting an eye – no amount of extra money is worth going back to that money hungry lifestyle if it means it robs my children of their father, it robs me of my husband, and it robs my husband of his health and happiness. True wealth isn’t in money, if it was, then why is the highest suicide rate among the wealthy? True wealth is having Christ as your Saviour, a blessed and strong marriage, following Christ together, and debt free. Able to move where God leads you.
I remember many years ago – I believe sometime before Mr. Obama was elected president – maybe about ’08?
My dad and I were in the car and there had been a commercial for cars with 0% interest. As you well know, there is usually a voice that comes over the speakers telling you in a rushed, excited, almost yelling voice all the benefits of getting a car through this dealership, then another voice comes on, mumbled and fast talking about how exclusions apply and all the other disclaimers they have to throw out there that they really don’t want you to listen to.
I remember telling my dad something along the lines of, “I feel like they say all the fast stuff so they can lie to you but then you’re not allowed to be mad about it, because they told you.”
He hadn’t been paying much attention to the commercial at the time but once I had brought it up, he told me, “Do you know what it means for a 0% interest rate?”
“That you don’t have to pay money for the car?” (I was about 7 or 8 years old)
“No, It means the stock market is going to crash, debt and interest rates will skyrocket, and then everyone who got into debt will be so far in over their head, they may not even make it.” I had very little idea about what that was, or even some of the ways he explained interest rates in housing and things like that to me, but the one thing I distinctly remember to this day is him telling me that,
“Too many young people are foolish enough to jump headlong into debt, sticking themselves in a mess and making them unusable for God.” He then proceeded to tell me about how they can’t pack up and move where He would want them to go, they can’t bless others who may need their time or extra resources, they can’t quit their job due to convictions, and they can’t turn their focus on raising their family for the Lord because they were unwise, took money that didn’t belong to them, and got snared in a trap of the devil.
Even ten years later, when my same father had suggested I get a secure line of credit and a credit card to boost my credit score (but not get into debt through it), that phrase flashed through my mind from when I was 8 years old, “Too many young people are foolish enough to jump headlong into debt, sticking themselves in a mess and making them unusable for God.”
I knew the allure could be too much for me to borrow and spend what wasn’t mine. I knew God had a plan for me. I knew I didn’t want to be trapped for 10 or more years because I couldn’t wait a little bit longer to save up for whatever it was I wanted. In fact, I started working part time at 14 1/2 and only got jobs that paid cash until I was 19 for that very reason – I didn’t know if I could be wise with my money if all I did was swipe plastic.
And I went through some tight monetary times after getting a debit card because – guess what – I knew myself well enough, and I had yet to develop the skills to control myself with plastic like I had with cash, but praise God, He allowed my dad to have an influence in my young mind to where I would remember this specific conversation at a random Walmart parking in Broken Arrow, during a rain storm (after he had just commented on needing to go to a boat store to find me shoes).
In 2012, four years later, I felt the burden to go to and reach and love Muslims.
In 2016, four years after that, God moved my family to the church where I met my husband in 2018.
We had discussed missions, faith, goals, dreams, money, debt, children, everything we could possibly think of because, hey, if we marry, you’re stuck with me and I didn’t want to get stuck with the wrong person.
We married in 2020 and three years later, paid off S.T.’s student loans, paid off the land we are on, and in 2023 we told our pastor, parents and church family that we believe God is burdening us for the souls in India.
I want to be used by God. I don’t want to fall into a trap that can’t be reversed for 20-30 years just for convenience’s sake.
God is using us though our discomforts in a world and culture that values comfort over anything else.
I honestly don’t know if my dad even remembers that conversation, we had in the Walmart parking lot. It was a passing rant he went on for a moment, that myself, and probably my little brother heard. To this day, by God’s grace, I have kept that conviction and while it has been hard, God has opened doors for many purchases that otherwise could have gotten us into debt, but by holding fast to Him, He allowed cars, materials and other such items to fit within our budget so that one day, He may move us without the strings of Mammon tying us down.
If God is burdening you in any conviction, whether it be to read His Word daily, to dress modestly -as a male or female-, to stay debt free, or any other number of principles He might lay on your heart, if you know it’s what God wants, do all you can, leaning on Him, to obey that conviction.
It’s worth it in the end, and you will be able to see a wonderful ‘butterfly effect’ as you look back on all God has done to grow you, strengthen you, and prepare you for the wonderful plan He has for your life.
Don’t fall into the snares of the devil to the point that your decisions prevent God from using you. As seen in the life of King Saul, (1 Samuel 13)
our choices can and will turn the hand of God.
“Too many young people are foolish enough to jump headlong into debt, sticking themselves in a mess and making them unusable for God.”
– J.M.E.
~C.C.
Proverbs 3:5-6
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
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