Why Be Frugal?

All this talk about frugality has probably made some of my friends and family wonder what has happened to move this issue front and center.

Um, nothing.

Well, not quite true. Perhaps "not much" would be closer to the truth. There was this bill that came in the mail about 6 weeks ago. If you're scientific you might think of the moment as a catalyst. If you're religious you might think of it as an epiphany. Whatever you want to call it, it got our attention and put our finances into perspective.

Most of us have had those moments. We all make choices about how to spend our money.

Anyway, that certain moment helped us decide to lower some expenditures so that we could raise others. So today, instead of giving you examples of how to be frugal I will give you reasons why to be frugal. Your list might look different than ours but this is a list of how we would choose to spend our money.

Cutting expenditures in some areas will help us increase these:

1. Giving to our church and other ministries. We recognize that everything we have belongs to the Lord and is only on loan. We would like to have more funds available to help lay up treasures in Heaven.
2. Sunday after-church lunches for our extended family and anyone else that the Lord directs us to bring home. We don't have a L'Abri ministry like the Shaeffers did, but we do have an open-door policy most Sundays. (I told here about the luncheon that fed 14. The next Sunday 18 were fed a meal akin to a banquet, and I posted here about the modest meal 7 of us ate last Sunday.)
3. Our debt snowball. We dug a financial hole years ago and have worked hard to get out of it. We were originally on track to be out of debt 4 years from now. Then other costs increased and we had to use the snowball money to make ends meet. Now we're wanting to get that sphere rolling once more. Physical Science students will realize that it takes more energy to get a stationary object moving than it does to keep one moving (think overcoming static friction versus kinetic friction). Our realistic goal now is to be totally debt-free (including our house) 5 years from now. It is do-able.
4. My time as a stay-at-home homeschooling mom. Well, actually this isn't an increase. It's just that we'd like this to be able to maintain the status quo until the last one graduates, which isn't for a couple of more years.
5. Financially assisting our grown children. Actually, this is not an increase either, but we do want to be able to continue to help when we can and if we can.
6. Home remodeling projects. Which, by the way, is where much of our money has gone in the last several years. We live in a nice house (which means "modest" as opposed to a ni-i-ice one). Ours hasn't quite been as expensive to keep livable as the ni-i-ice house in the old Tom Hanks-Shelley Long movie, The Money Pit, but it's had its moments.
7. Saving for the future. Yeah, some day we'll really be old. Right now we're just practicing. :)

I'm so much happier when I voluntarily give something up in order to gain something better. It isn't what we give up but what we get instead that helps keep us on track and helps to return us to the track if we've strayed.

This post is linked to Frugal Fridays at Life as Mom.