We all love comfort and convenience. We enjoy sodas, coffees and teas. We decorate our homes and enjoy many “extras” that some people can’t even fathom. It’s not wrong to enjoy life, but at what cost? My heart aches to think that the kids Parental Care Ministries support ask for an apple for Christmas because that is such a treat. One apple, which they eat until all is left is the seeds. And yet we throw tons of food and “stuff” out every day because it no longer appeals to us. We take out loans to pay nearly 2x the cost of items we have to have now. All the while “not being able” to help those who are less fortunate because of our lavish (in comparison) lifestyles.
Our whole house could be decorated instead of just a couple of rooms. We could have the front yard landscaped. I would love to remodel the bathrooms and I’m sure my husband would love a new truck (his is 11 years old) Our family could eat out more often. Actually we could eat at a nice sit down restaurant instead of picking up a $5 pizza or eating from the value menu at McDonald’s. Heck, we could even go on a date once a month.
You may ask why we don’t do those things if we can afford to. The answer is because we’re choosing to live a more conservative life now (financially speaking), so that we’ll have money later to do things that we want to do and things we should do. We don’t have revolving debt but we do have a mortgage on our home back in Arkansas (gee I wish we could sell it) and a mortgage on our home here in Texas. There are 29 years left to pay on the house here. Every $100 that we are save on our daily expenses and put as an extra payment on the mortgage saves us just shy of $800 on the mortgage. How? Every month that we carry that $100 of debt we’re charge interest. And then we’re charged interest on the interest that we were charged the last month! That comes out to nearly $700 just in saved interest. Gee, I think I’ll drink water when we do eat a restaurant, because I know that the $2 now for the soda is costing me $16 down the road. A soda isn’t worth $16 to me.
We haven’t been able to make any extra payments for a while. We’ve had some expenses that we didn’t budget for. Our extra funds plus some of our savings have gone towards those instead of being put on a credit card that we couldn’t afford to pay off, at nearly 3 times the interest rate of our mortgage. I sure don’t want to pay 24 times over for something because I used all our money on extras that didn’t really make me any happier. Even if you don’t have any debt, every dollar you put into savings now will earn you interest and help you avoid it later when expenses come up.
Are you enjoying lots of extras right now at the expense of your future? Can you cut a few extra little things out that don’t really contribute to your happiness so that you’ll have a bit extra to pay down debt or put into savings to help avoid debt? We’re happy with our lifestyle (although eying the Jones’ things and activities every once in a while) and our kids are happy. We don’t need all the other frills and thrills to make us happy so we’ll continue to live conservatively. Once we’re out of debt, we’ll be able to enjoy some of those extras knowing that we’re paying exactly the price we pay that day and not much more.
Speak Your Mind