An excited mom caught me after Mark and I finished the Living With Less So Your Family Has More workshop at the Hearts at Home Conference in March. “I’m so excited, ” she said eagerly. “My husband and I have a comfortable lifestyle. I have never been interested in living with less simply because I don’t have to. But today during your workshop, I realized that we could choose to live with less so that we could give more!”
She went on to say that she didn’t know why she hadn’t considered this before, but that day it was evident that God had whispered to her heart and she had listened. She was motivated to go home and make a game out of frugality and simplicity. Not because she had to but because she wanted to.
Each week I’ve been devoting one post to the concept of living with less. However, we’ve never really established the why’s behind making that decision. I believe there are three primary reasons why we might choose to live with less:
- We can live with less to be able to give more. I know one family that chose to give up Starbucks in order to sponsor a second child living in poverty through Compassion
- We can live with less to be able to live out our vision for our family. A family trying to aggressively pay off debt may choose to live with less because of their vision to be debt free. Another family may choose to live with less to remain debt free. And still another family may choose to live with less in order to have one parent at home.
- We can live with less because of unforeseen economic circumstances. In today’s economy
What about you? If you are choosing to live with less, what is your reason why?
We started living with less because we were forced to. We continue because we are changing our family tree. I don't think ANYONE, especially my children, should have to go through the stresses that I did, and it is my job to tell my story and to educate them.
On the positive side, living with less for us has become a game. My kids and I have a great time couponing and seeing who can get the most for their budgeted money. It's a race to the mailbox every day to see what freebies are there!
We started living with less because we felt we had just too much "stuff". Most of which we bought on credit! We planned a careful budget and have paid off all our credit cards!! Praise the Lord!
We are still struggling financially, but we know that God is in control of them. I just wanted to say what a blessing your book has been to us!!
We live with less to have one parent home with our 4 kids, but another reason is to live with less from an earth friendly perspective. We should all try to consume less of everything (gas, plastic, consumer goods, etc….)to create less waste, to live gently on this earth.
We are living with less so that we can support our 6 Compassion International children.
Carol,
We've begun to call living with less an "adventure." It's similar to you calling it a game. I think that makes a difference in our attitude toward it!
We live with less so that I can stay home with the kids and to help us pay off some normal debt. While we don't have credit card debt, which is a huge blessing, we do have one car that has 3 years left before it is paid off (and we're doing that this August!!!) and student loans from my husband's schooling. We have been living this way for our entire marriage, but always love to hear about news ways that we could trim the budget.
We live with less for several reasons. We always planned to in order that I could dedicate myself to caring for our kids for the first many years of their lives. We had no car for years even though we could afford one as it was not a necessity where we lived even though we had 3 small children. In part as we felt it would be poor stewardship of not just finances but of the environmental resources as well.
We live with less so we can give more both financially and time wise to our church, serving as much as a part time job.
So we can support people and projects in developing countries.
We love it and our kids are deveoping a sense that all the fluff in life is just that, fluff and the people of the world deserve a piece of our huge pie.
blessings Dirkie
Living with less became a lifestyle for us when my hubby was in the Air Force. After moving every 12-18 months, we realized there were so many things we didn't use on a regular basis that were just cluttering our living space. We live with less now because it just provides us with a greater sense of clarity in our lives, clarity for what matters most. For us, that is living a life focused on God's purposes for us. Hebrews 12:1 says, "Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easliy entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." I find that simple living allows me to "throw off" that things that hinder me along the way. I'm not saying "things" are bad, but it's when they start to consume your thoughts and time that they can get in the way.
Ooooo….these are all so inspiring! You all are challenging me!
We want to live with less because quite honestly we're just sick of having a big house to clean and too much stuff. It feels too luxurious for us and in reality it smothers our family. We don't live this way in any other area of our life, but our home seems to portray an image we don't otherwise define ourselves by.
So we're downsizing this summer. We started giving away furniture to people who really needed it and started sorting down the rest of our 'stuff'. Our family only uses a few rooms in the house anyway so I can't wait for this change! California is such an expensive place to live and we want to make the most of our money in other areas too and not just pay extreme rent month after month. I'd rather invest in Disneyland Passes. 🙂 Plus I think the closer quarters are good for family bonding.
We live with less so I can stay home with our two kids. For over 16 years we had only one car. Which always inspired people to comment "I don't know how you do itor I could never do that." I have never felt like I live with less , I see the "mores" of living this way everyday. I even had a friend tell me I should give a talk on being thrifty and how to reuse anything, at my local library. I just finished the book and I loved the part when you talked about seeing the more's of this lifestyle.
We live with less so I can stay home with our 4 children, so we can support our church and other ministries financially, so we we can support our 3 Compassion children, so we can have a 6+ month emergency fund, and so we can one day be completely debt free. Denying our wants isn't always easy but it is always good.