Welcome to Dwell on These Things, a podcast by Dwell Community Church in Columbus, Ohio, where we hear stories and examples of how God is moving in the church at dwell and around the world. Hi, welcome back to Dwell on These Things podcast. I'm Abbie Merker, counselor and teacher here at Dwell, and in this episode, we are discussing simple living, meaning, how does our worldview as Christians affect the way that we think about our finances, the way that we spend our money or think about our money? So today, we are talking to the guru, Nicole Williamson. She is currently teaching a class here at Dwell called Simple Living, I believe you. This is kind of a polarizing topic. It seems like sometimes people's tendencies sort of to avoid talking about this, or to be just maybe too black and white about it. So what we would like to do with this episode, rather than just having Nicole regurgitate material from her class, which you could just take if you wanted to, she's going to share with us 10 sort of solid principles for living simply. In addition to teaching this class, Nicole is on staff at Calumet Christian School as the band teacher, and she's going to regale us with a rousing rendition of Hot Cross Buns on the trumpet at the end of this episode. Yes, yes, I will. Yeah, so welcome, Nicole, glad to have you here. Thanks so much. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Great. Okay, let's start with, tell us, I don't know, maybe your story, especially like in this area when it comes to, why do you care about money? What sort of your background here? Where did your burden come from? Yeah, absolutely. You know, my burden for this stuff really came from doing it the wrong way for so long. And when I say doing it the wrong way, I mean, it was just, I didn't know how money worked. I viewed it as an unlimited resource. And because of that, ended up kind of in quite a bit of debt, had a real restless discontentment in my heart that just the itch couldn't be scratched. So I had all these heart issues going on, too. But then practically, it looked kind of like a mess. So you know, I graduate college or graduate high school like every 18 year old does. And you go off to college, you have all these big visions, these big dreams. Here's what I'm going to do with my life. And you take out student loans to do so. Four years later, fast forward. Here I am, I'm graduated. I graduate during a recession. There are no jobs to be found. And not only that, I got about myself personally about $40,000 worth of student loans to pay back. And again, just the kind of consumer acquired lifestyle. How can I get more bigger, better, nicer? Sure. Yeah, I love to shop. I like to spend money. And it really what ended up happening was, you know, I had this heart problem. I had all these practical problems and they didn't really resolve with time. So a lot of people think these kinds of things will just get better when I get older, when I get married, when I have kids. The truth is, is that all of these life changes actually end up compounding the problems. You'd not be not that they the changes themselves do that. But your responsibilities grow. Your need to think about finances in a different way change, you know, as you get married, as you buy home, as you have kids. And so then here I am, you know, 11 years into marriage one night after Christmas in 2019, sat down and thought, man, you know, I've been paying back these student loans for a long time. We had a very large credit card balance, too. Just started to finally sit down and look at the problem in the mirror and say, now, wait a minute. A lot of our money is going out the door to things in the past and my heart still isn't content, you know, like I'm nothing is solved. And it was then that we realized, oh, we actually we borrowed, you know, total together with my husband and I about sixty thousand dollars in student loans because we were only making minimum payments. The balance actually inflated then ten years later to ninety three thousand dollars. That is wild, wild stuff. I mean, this is happening to families across the country. And I had a massive credit card balance, you know, because I had a restless heart. So it was really this kind of wake up moment of like. You have to do something here. This this was just a moment to reckon with God. I got I need to repent and get in line, maybe with his values kind of over here with the restless discontentment in my heart. And I need to get down to business and figure out some practical ways to deal with this growing debt. So it was really from that moment that sort of verged this burden for how can what where does my heart need to change? And then how can my daily choices reflect those things that I say that I value? Wow, that. OK, so so so you're saying. You finished school, you got school debt. You get married. Your husband has school debt. Totally. And then it's like, yeah, you got a credit card because most people do. So you have some of that debt also, which you're paying. It's not like you're like, oh, I'm like defaulting on these payments. For sure. Sure. Oh, yeah. We're on time doing the right thing. You are paying them, but you're paying the minimum. And so when you finally sort of are you like, I should take a look at this and realize, like, even though you are paying. It's continuing because you're paying so little. It's continuing interest and the interest is outpacing my payments. So it's like backpedaling. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So it's like you actually have more debt, even though you have done the right thing because you almost like because you weren't paying attention. For sure. Oh, yeah. How many how many of us just regularly want to log into our student loan service and find, you know, like, yeah, exactly. You just think I'll just pay it for 10 years and then I'll be done, you know, and whatever. It might not be that way. Wow. So, OK, OK. So then you're like, wow, this is very jarring. I don't know. What was it like sort of that moment? Sort of realizing like, oh, my gosh, the numbers. I like to say that I am the reactionary member of my marriage. Just instantly felt this sense of fear and frozenness and thought we got to do something pretty drastic. I was trying to convince my husband we needed to sell the house. Like, how do you get out from underneath this? You know, we were a relatively low earning income family. And here we are. We had these massive balances that have grown over time. If this is what the last 10 years look like, what are the next 10 years? You know, this feeling of fear. And it was really tough. It was super tough that I think I wet most of that night, that whole week after that moment, just thinking through how did this happen? What and then what do we do about it? You know, I wanted the solution like this immediate quick fix. Thankfully, we didn't we did not sell her home, you know. And it was just this moment of reckoning with God like, man, you you're I sort of sense this that I could do something drastic and maybe reactionary extreme. Maybe is a better way to put it. I could go sell my home. Or it was one of these rare moments where I had a very strong leading from the Lord, where he was like, you could do that, or I'm going to teach you some really wild things and I'm going to change your character. You're going to do this good old fashioned way and buckle up because it's going to be really exciting. Now, I don't say I'm not going to say that explicitly heard that from God. You know, but it was that really was my experience. It was this this whole week of getting in with the Lord and saying, OK, I'm going to get my heart reoriented here. And I'm going to believe you have vision and hope for me in this area. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine that that was a an emotional evening. Oh, yeah, jarring, shocking. Sure. Tears. But you're not still living under that debt, which I think is part of like why we are like, man, let's talk to Nicole because on a practical level, it's like, man, you really have navigated your way sort of out from under that. You have all these like practical life skills. But I think I would guess sort of also it changed, I don't know, just your views of of money, of stewardship in general. So not only like, oh, you should shop at Aldi and, you know, these like practical things, but also like bigger picture shifts. Absolutely. Yeah, you know, praise God. He's so good to us. We are not under that debt anymore. It came from a lot of grit and hard work, but his grace leading the way to, you know, and yeah, it wasn't just like, oh, here are the top three keys to getting out of debt, which you can you'll find any of those on any social media if you want to, you know, it was, yeah, getting our hearts reoriented around God's resources and how what is his perspective for how I'm living now in light of where I'm going. And then just a lot of brass tacks, practical purposes, too. Like, how about some boundaries? Yeah, right. In comes a limited resource. If I spend all my money, then I don't have any leftovers. Turns out, yeah, that's unless you're a Kardashian, you know. So, yeah, it came from from boundaries, from grace and really just God's leading. Let's think about this differently. Yeah, that's awesome, man. What a specific and sort of niche triumph, you know, like that's true. Yeah, like it's very nice. Absolutely a triumph and relatable on some levels, because it's like, you know, a lot of people have school debt. Yeah, most I would guess, like, you know, people that go through some sort of, you know, post high school schooling, walk out of there with debt or it's like you buy a house, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like that is just so relatable. It's quite a victory. It's awesome. So thanks for coming in here. OK, so why don't you hit us with yeah, some of the principles to like, how do you think through this stuff? How do you navigate this stuff? What would be helpful to, you know, for people to sort of have in their hands? For sure, for sure. I think that's great. You know, as I was thinking about this in preparation for our time, I really sort of outlined like 10 principles that that really matter when you're trying to think of simple living. Everybody wants a life hack. Everybody wants the top 10 things you should do. These aren't that these are just more principles to broadly think through as we're navigating life in this way. The first one is really and I kind of alluded to this in my own story is like, where does my heart belong to ask that question? People hear the word simple living. They assume just extreme frugality, like rice and beans, bear walls. You know, this topic or way of life is so much more than finances owning less. It's really about cultivating my heart that belongs to eternal things that if my heart is set on attorney eternity, how do my zoomed in day to day choices reflect really who I am and what I believe? Am I living practically in light of that? You know, when you think about our culture, it is like a river. I think this is such a great analogy. It's like a river and its current is very fast and very strong. We are all writing down it. Can we bring our heads above the water, even just for a moment to see where it's taking us? And are there, you know, ways where maybe I need to paddle upstream? Or kind of chart a different route, chart a different path. The word is our compass. Thankfully, it gives us a lot of wisdom in this area. Martin Luther King said this really wonderful quote that I just think is so good. Essentially, it's like Christians shouldn't just be thermometers of culture. They should instead be thermostats that are charting the path and kind of pioneering a different way. How relatable that is to sort of say, I'm going to set the temperature here. And not just reflect the winds of my culture, right? Because that is the path of least resistance. Let me just sit on this float and ride down with that current wherever it takes me. 10 years, 20 years later. You might find out it's taking you someplace where really maybe you didn't want to be if you had the chance to have chosen otherwise. What do you think some of that, like, current is? Like, is it like, well. Yeah, credit cards exist, you know what I mean? Like, you can you can sort of live whatever style of life that you want. You don't really have to deny yourself of anything because it's like, yeah, just get a credit card for that. Yes. I don't know. What else? Yeah, accessibility to debt is one of them. That's really defined a new normal. And I think we'll talk about that a little bit later, too. But also just this need for like more up the upgrade, the thrill of the upgrade, the more, the bigger, the better. No one needed a third lens on their phone until they made it. You know, like that kind of thing. Why not upgrade the new style, whatever? No, at the end of the day, it's like, because of grace, we have the freedom to explore these options. You want to spend your money on anything. You have the freedom to do that. The purpose here is let me slow down and just examine where that cultural current is taking. OK, yeah. Where am I in the current? What is the current? What's my sort of heart's orientation to the current? OK, that's great. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, you can think about it even in terms of housing. I really I want to live somewhere that has walkability. You know, like I think I was sharing with this with you the other night. I want this. I want that. It's like, well, why do I want those things? You know, is it bad to have that? No. And it's probably even good in some ways. It's just slowing down and say, why do I want this? Is a very good practice. And no one's doing that. The culture is telling us not to do it. It's saying to live in the moment, live for now. Yeah, I mean, even just thinking about like the amount of like everywhere you shop or just online ads like, do you want a credit card? Right. You know, it's like, I mean, it's never ending. Yeah, right. So if it's like, if you're not paying attention, you're like, I can't. I do. Right. Save 20 percent and I could get like blah, blah, blah back. And, you know, yeah, absolutely. And acquire more. Mm hmm. OK, good. All right. What else? OK, so that's the first one. The last thing I want to say about your heart, though, is that this this is not a bummer. It is a real joy. It's just an expression of the creativity and freedom of the grace that we've been given. It's really it's actually been a very fulfilling way of life. And I think that we'll all find that, you know, as we pursue God's wisdom here. It's awesome. So to one thing that I think is so important to think about when you're talking about simple living is that your upbringing really affects how you operate with money. We like to think that we are these, you know, independent thinkers. And in many ways we are. We would be so foolish to think that the way we were raised does not impact that. Now, it's not for good or bad. You know, it's more of like a diagnostic test. It just is. If your parents were really tight with money, you might be really tight with money or you might lean against that and say, because they were that way, I don't want to be that way. Yeah. Right. And vice versa. You know, if they were really just loose and casual and never had savings, you might follow in their footsteps or you might feel like I have to hold on to this because maybe my basic needs weren't met. Yeah. Things like that. The point is that we are just all influenced by our upbringing one way or another. And I think that's important, especially because it's good for understanding how I am relating with money and maybe where the root of that comes from deep, deep down way back years ago. But also, you know, I'm a parent, I'm a mom. What are my kids learning about money? So it's kind of this rhetorical question that I was influenced by the way that I was raised and also my kids will be influenced by the way that they are raised. Are there things I want to do differently? Yeah. Are there things I want to teach them? So it's similar almost like to this mindfulness of like, OK, how did my upbringing affect me? But also, OK, looking ahead, what is the influence that I want to have on the next generation, my kids or, you know, whatever the kids around me, if you don't have kids or, you know, like your friends, your peers, whatever. But kind of similarly, like, right, this mindfulness. What would you say to someone who was like, I'm doomed? You know, like my parents set me up for failure or or my parents didn't help me at all. And, you know, I'm doomed when I think about this stuff. Yeah, for sure. That's very, very relatable, I think. You know, I think it's like we just have to adjust our mindset and that that is not the type of vision and grace that God gives us in the Bible. That actually what he says is that he rescued everybody who was doomed, you know, and set us up for a different life. So there are certainly there are challenges we're going to face. But, man, if we can if we can sort of redirect our mindset and our perspective. Yeah, I think we'll find that God has quite a bit to offer. Yeah, that's great. That's hopeful. You know, because, yeah, we're bringing baggage into this. So that's that's really good. OK, what else? All right. The other one I was thinking, number three here is that it's so easy to approach this. This is similar to lead to what we just said. Approaching this with a victim mentality versus maybe a grateful mentality. How many times have we heard my generation was dealt a bad hand? I certainly agree with that. I, you know, we're millennials and a lot of ways I'm like, the cards were stacked against us, you know, we graduated in a recession. I think I filled out a hundred applications for like ten dollar an hour. Jobs didn't get one of them. There were no jobs. Right. Oh, many millennials are still to this day crippled under student loans, like we've said. This idea that my generation has been dealt a bad hand. Every generation actually does feel this way. So, you know, I was lucky enough to buy a home right after the recession and actually had really low rates and low home prices. They were very affordable. I mean, then there was a house on every corner. You could just shop around, you know, boomers. So my parents' generation. There was a time when rates were pushing 16 percent of mortgages. And a lot of people just couldn't afford it. My parents actually didn't buy our first home until I think it was about 10 years old. OK. Just because it was not accessible. A lot of people just couldn't do it. They had to wait. You know, Gen Z is coming into the workforce right now with unprecedented inflation. Everyone has been dealt a bad hand in some way. And that's kind of I think that's just sobering and sort of a zoomed out picture of what's really going on. I do think millennials have it hard in a lot of ways. But can we take on our challenges not with victimhood, but with maybe some gratitude, some contentment? And would that then help us have some some creativity then with the challenges that we're facing, not just be reactive to them and or just give into it, say, well, we're just all screwed. You know, so I might as well just lean into it real hard. And, you know, you really could see how this victim thinking kind of trickles down into everyday choices, you know, I feel bad about myself. And it's not my fault that it's this way. So I'm just going to go on a shopping spree. Yeah, right. Yeah, I was dealt a bad hand. But here's an easy way to sort of numb that pain or, you know, I feel better and you're just sort of perpetuating the problem. Right, right. I'm going to let that student loan balance just grow because, you know, everybody just got dealt a bad hand. So I'm not going to think about creative ways to approach this situation if I'm stuck in how I've been wronged. Or maybe it's just so overwhelming, right? Like you're like, I don't I don't know how to solve this. So it's sort of like, I'm just going to bury my head in this. Yeah, you know what I mean? Right. Because I don't know what to do. Yeah, for sure. For sure. OK, cool. All right. Number four. And I know we've brought up this quite a bit already so far, but it's to be wary of debt. And there is a huge reason for that. Well, first of all, let's talk about what scripture says about this. The Bible is not heavy handed about borrowing money. But it does give us a lot of wisdom. And the main takeaway is that it just can be very, very foolish. A Proverbs 22 says that the rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender. Again, that's just sort of wisdom there. That was totally my experience. You know, you feel like, gosh, I am just a slave to my bank. My debtors here. I have to every month they're coming. They're knocking on my door, asking for my share of my income or their share of my income. And it does feel like real slavery. Like, I don't get to pray about that money. I don't get to dream about that money. I don't get to plan with that money. It's just out the door. Yeah, right. So we should be wary of it when entering in a borrower situation. Here are some really eye opening statistics. Credit card right now nationwide credit card balances are sitting at one point three trillion dollars. That's that feels like not a real no, I'm like, I have no reference. I didn't have to read Google how many zeros were in trillion because I can remember like a 12. You know, OK, good to know. It's so much money. That's that's an insane amount of money. Student loans, we hear about these a lot. They're at one point eight trillion. We hear about these in the headlines a lot. We say this is a financial epidemic for an entire generation. What's interesting is right behind student loans are auto loans sitting at one point seven trillion, which is wild because you keep a car for what, like 10 years, you know, and then you're on to the next one. And then homes are sitting at about eleven point eight trillion. And and I want to talk specifically about these first three because I think that credit cards, student loans and cars are where really a lot of our cash sort of disappears each month. Easy. You could totally make a case. Easy to make the case that that can also happen in a mortgage. But there's some some varying factors in a mortgage when maybe you would say that a mortgage is actually maybe good debt equity. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. But these first three can be very slippery. The average American household has twelve thousand dollars in credit card debt. Average debt carrying a balance and the rates are pushing 25 percent. Last I checked. So let's put this in real dollars and cents. You're carrying a twelve thousand dollar balance in your credit card. I don't know if discover and discovers like, OK, you need to pay back two hundred and fifty dollars a month. All right. That is kind of a large chunk of change, but it's not twelve thousand dollars. All right. I'm going to make two hundred fifty dollar a month payment. What you need to pay attention to, though, in the fine print is that if at that rate you're going to pay back nearly eighty eight thousand dollars total, right? And it's going to take you 50 years to repay it. Well, I'll be like 90 years in 50 years. You know what I'm saying? And that's if I never spend a dollar more on this card. It is wild. Credit card is such a credit card debt is such a slippery slope. It can tank families. And again, when you think about how this relates to that cultural current, how quickly you can just ride down that river. Do you think it's like. You know, just the allure of like, I can have access to this, this money right now, I could buy this thing or even just these this plethora plethora of things. Yeah. And just I can't. I don't know, like think beyond that to right when I'm 90 years old. And it's like, wait a second. How much how much of my my income? Yeah, has gone to just repaying, you know, this thing that I bought when I was 35 or, you know, like whatever. But I I I don't hear people talking about this. You know what I mean? Like, I'm assuming people just you don't think about it. No, you don't think about it. And why would you? Because we are marketed debt from the day we're 18 until the day we die. You know, and what we're being sold is not be cautious. This could really ruin you. Yeah, right. You look at I mean, how many credit card ads do we get in the mail? I get several a day. And it's all about here's your fairy tale. Here's your right. Here's your freedom. Here's your happy ever after. Why would you think critically about it or think about what the future has? Debt debt really does make all things accessible. So if I can have it right now, why do I need to think about what consequence will come later? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Is that is that a thing? I think that applies here. Someone fact check me. Yeah, that's right. That's right. OK, so that's credit card debt. Plenty to say about that. We could have a whole podcast probably about credit card debt. Be very wary of it. Be very wary of it. Student loans. Forty four million Americans have student loans. That is a lot of people. It seems unavoidable to pay for college without loans. Yeah, right. If mom and dad didn't help you. Man, I've been there like I did not get a ton of help from my parents, and that's why I ended up with a ton of student loan debt. I think, you know, the simple life is a really creative life. So we are so reductionistic in our in the way that our thinking is. It's either I take out everything on student loans or mom and dad give me a full ride on their salary. There is a lot of room for creativity in here. How can we mitigate the grief of student loans in the meantime? Maybe if you're in school, it's like, can I get a better loan rate? Can I borrow less and work a little more? Can I slow down and not be? I have to finish school in four years. What if you did it in five, but it meant you didn't have to take out a ton? Yeah, right. You know, I think there's so much to unpack here with creativity. But man, we got to take it seriously because it really is coming after not just millennials, but the generations to follow. And you're saying, OK, so you and your husband. OK, so so basically only 100 grand worth of debt. Yeah. You're not doctors. No, you're not lawyers like these are just like crossbones all day. These are state school bachelor's degrees and a little bit of credit card kicked in. Right. A hundred grand. Exactly. Yeah. I was sharing this with some students this past weekend and in the simple living class and what was a couple of them were really shocked to hear that number. And it is alarming. You're just like, whoa, I think that that experience is actually very normal. And actually statistically out there, millennials carry on average one hundred and thirty two thousand dollars of non mortgage debt on average. Good gravy, Marie. We're just not talking about it. That is normal anchors. So if you don't have this kind of debt, it's very likely the person sitting next to you, you know, does your roommate, your spouse, your future spouse. It's coming for us. So if you're out of school, you have student loans. Think of what you can do to get out of them. All right. Last one here for be wary of debt is car loans. This one's so tough. OK, because cars are so pricey post covid. What happened? I don't know. What happened? You know, I bought my minivan and I don't know if I'm allowed to say this. Probably I bought my minivan for two thousand dollars. Get out. Yeah, exactly. And a hundred thousand miles on it for two thousand. Those cars don't exist. Yeah, right. OK, this post covid world we're living in. So really, the question then becomes, again, not black or white, this or that. But what can I do to just delay a financed loan here and save? Here are some things that are pretty undignified and inconvenient. But that's how life is, right? Can you catch a ride? Can you take the bus? Can you share with the spouse? So inconvenient and maybe not even practical. But the idea is here. How can I slow down? Are there ways I can be creative here? How can I save up? And then if I do have to take out a loan here for a vehicle, because the truth is we live in Columbus. This is a commuter city. Yeah, right. For the most part, you really do need to have a car. Am I going to shop around for the best rate? Am I only going to buy exactly what I need? You know, again, it's so easy to think, well, I have to take out a loan. So why don't I just buy the 2026? Yeah, right. Right. Totally. 2026 hybrid, Sienna, you know, whatever the cool minivan. I don't need that. What do I actually need? How can I mitigate the grief? That debt is guaranteed to give me if I'm not thoughtful about this. OK, OK. So that's that. OK, quick question. So so you didn't talk about like housing, like sure buying. Do you think that some of these principles then would apply? Yeah, where it's like, OK, maybe before, like, what's the earliest I could possibly buy a house? And, you know, that maybe there are some of these principles would apply to like. Or maybe you don't, you know, like, I don't know the wisdom of like, maybe you should consider renting as long as you can, you know, some of those. I don't know. Right. Yeah. And the truth is, is that renting is not throwing your money away. I think there has been this consensus or, you know, thought that if I'm not participating in homeownership and I'm throwing my money away, that's not true. Rent is a living expense. And if you don't have the cash, you got to think, you know, when you're purchasing a home, it's not just what the home is. You're paying for property taxes, homeownership, right? All the maintenance costs. Sure. Do you have a lawnmower? Exactly, exactly. My primary bath shower is leaking down to my kitchen right now. It would be really great if a landlord were taking care of a limb. I'm taking care of that, you know, there's all these downstream costs to you that we need to think through with homeownership. So I feel if someone's trying to buy a house right now, you know, the rates are high. They just dropped lower. They're finally below six percent, which is great. You're trying to buy a house right now that the mortgages are tough. The actual home values themselves are really high. I feel for you. It's it's tough. Again, it goes back to that victim versus grateful mentality. What you do get to do is sort of pioneer and chart this out for your peers and say, how can I do this thoughtfully nuanced? And with the word guiding me on my principles. And I wonder if there is. I don't know, maybe people don't talk about this, but sort of this like status that comes with homeownership, you know, where it's like, well, by this time in my life, I got to have a house or, you know, like before we have kids, totally got to own a home. Just these these sort of unchecked assumptions or, you know, about this is the order of things or this is what everybody does. Or it says something about me if I don't. Yeah, you know, like I'm almost 40 years old. Don't own a home. Yeah. And it's like, and I'm the only one, you know, like that's very rare. My situation is a little bit unique, but, you know. Yeah, hold on. Maybe we hit pause and really, yeah, think through some of these other costs, some of my, yeah, baggage that I'm bringing to the table before. I'm like, yeah, let me sign up for, you know, 300, 400 thousand dollars. Right. Signed away. Yeah. The image that you think it gives you is not going to pay those bills. So, yeah, being slowing down, it is always a good idea to slow down. Cool. Love that. OK. All right. Number five. I have here that lifestyle creep is a real thing. So here's what I mean by lifestyle creep. Every bump in income, every windfall of cash that you get means that I live that much more lavishly. Yeah. And you can. It's easy to see then how debt really fuels this lifestyle creep, too. You know, kind of the illusion of I have more when really I don't. You know, what are the things we tell ourselves? Like, well, I've earned this. I deserve it. You know, I've worked really hard. God gave it. Yes. Yeah, totally, totally. And so really, then it's like, well, how can I fight against this? You know, this idea that just because I have more means I should be living more. You know, the discussion of conspicuous consumption really fits well into this. When we think about why we buy goods, any good out there, it's got two aspects to it. It's utility, how well it does its job, and then it's honorific value. What it says about me, the consumer who's purchasing it, you know, it's so easy to get that influx of cash and then use it to just manicure or create an identity. Yeah, create an Apple person. Right. Exactly. All of my texts are is Apple. Yeah. You know, I'm a Subaru kind of person. I drive Subarus and you're going to see me with those cool, colorful, Kodopaxi bags. They're, you know, and I'm not shaming anyone who has these things. I'm just saying none of us are above making identity purchases with our resources. And that's just what the cultural current is insisting that we do. With our money, with our cars, upgrade your car with vacations, with clothes, with hobbies. I mean, it's just really endless. Yeah. As believers, we get the opportunity to really be levies against that cultural current and say, I will not let money assign me an identity. It's not going to do that. Why? Because I've already been given one, a better one. We've been put into Christ, a new creation. I think it's really hard to do. Lifestyle creep is so real. We are all falling prey to it all the time. So much of it is rooted in our identities. But again, we don't have to ride that current. We can slow down and see really what a slippery slope that is. Inversely, what if our generosity increased instead? Yeah, right. Proverbs 19. I love this proverb. It's one of my favorite verses in scripture says, whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord and he will repay him for his good deed. Now, I've been in quite a few borrower-lender relationships. That payback comes with a ton of interest. Is God saying he's going to repay us back in with interest? I don't know. You know, I'm not going to read too much in scripture, but I know he's a very generous God. And is that what he's saying here? I can't wait to find out. Yeah, yeah. There is this saying that kind of circulates in social media, usually in November, like around Thanksgiving, that says when you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher fence. It's catchy. You know, people post it on their Instagram feed and stuff. I like it, though. I like it because it really is like, yeah, it doesn't. I can resist this one thing and replace it with something else when I get that bump in income. I don't have to give in the lifestyle. I can pray about how to be more generous. Maybe it's great. Yeah. This is a safe space, Nicole. What kind of lifestyle creep calls to you? Oh, to me. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Give us some examples. Come on. This is it's embarrassing how many times I've updated my backsplash. I love my home. OK, OK. OK, my husband's done. He's like, I'm not installing any more backsplashes. I love a muted, minimalistic home. I justify it by saying it's, you know, gives me mental energy and it's not chaotic. And that probably is true. Spent a lot of mental energy thinking about it. Yeah, I like to update my home. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Wow. Thank you. Yeah. You're being honest. OK. Yeah. All right. Number six, the B word. Everybody needs a budget budget. I know it's corny. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm trying to be creative. Not very funny. All right. Here's some facts. Sixty five percent of Americans say they do not have a written budget. Sixty five percent. They don't write it down. Yeah. I'm looking at one. Yeah, I think that that is probably really true. Yeah, I'm zero percent surprised by that statistic, because one that was me. That was one hundred percent what I was doing. You know, we live in this Yolo culture. Have fun. It's all going to work out. Just be responsible or not. As we all know, unless you are some, you know, Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian or whatever, that just doesn't work. Like your income is a finite resource. People do not like budgets because they feel restrictive. I think we need to rework that perspective a little bit, that a budget actually is a tool that can give us a lot of freedom. It's really it's like a mirror reflecting where your resources are going. It's not doing anything but that. And it is a tool, too, that really magnifies your income. It can help you save, helps you put boundaries around your spending so that you can spend with confidence, you know, and not guilt because you know exactly where your money is going. You're not wondering where it went at the end of the month. And then feeling really bad when you went out to dinner with your friend or whatever. I love coffee treats. It adds value to my life. I think I really enjoy it. It's not a need. It's definitely a one. But it is something I want to spend my money on. You and I love to drink Tim Horton's coffee together. Yeah, it's our thing. Yeah. Coffee treats, believe it or not, are a line item in my monthly budget. Just because I need to set boundaries around it or I literally would just do it every day. But I don't I don't have the self control to say no. But when I put boxes around my spending. Then, yeah, I don't have to feel guilty about why I had already planned on this. You know, this is and I'm married, so this is a thing my spouse and I agreed on together. We are very prayerful about our resources. I don't need to go live in guilt or shame. We've decided ahead of time. So, yeah, the point is, you know, I'm not buying that coffee, worried, guilt, ridden, ashamed that the people at Tim Hortons probably know my first name. Right. Totally. You know, I've just been prayerful about my resources and I get to spend with a clear conscience. All of that said, our income is a limited resource. It's why kind of a budget is necessary in the first place. The money has to come from somewhere. We can't just keep spending and expect it to all always be there. So the question really is, how does my income reflect my wants in life and then my have tos in life? I want to be generous. I want Tim Hortons as often as I can. OK, yeah. I want date nights with my with my husband. I want ice cream with my kids and I want to do family vacations. I have to pay the bills. I have to pay the mortgage, fuel my car, feed my family. So how does my budget then reflect my wants in life? And my have tos. And there are going to be things in that want column that you just can't do. It's OK. That's where contentment and gratitude can come in and can go a really long way when you're faced with that. But there are some things that we can do, you know, and we get to be really grateful for those things too in our want column. So the point is, is that boundaries here give you freedom. They mitigate chaos. You know, and at some point, maybe to this conversation, too, is that we're looking at progress over perfection. I mean, I think there's just a lot of perfectionists out there. So they're like, if I can't get a budget to work in the first week that I even try, it must not be for me. You know, it's going to take some time to get used to this and to maybe even feel like you're pretty good at it. I think it took us six months to really feel like I can stand up on this surfboard and I'm not going to fall down. Yeah, right. You're going to fumble your way through it a few bad months at blowing a budget is not a good reason to just stop. OK, keep trying. OK, look for small ways of progress and just be grateful that God is stretching your capacity here, that this is an opportunity for growth and to develop some discipline. A simple budget to simplify is what is my net income? Net income is what's coming in the bank, not the gross income. It's what actually gets deposited in my bank account. And gross is gross is what you're making total before any deductions, before taxes, before employer deductions for health insurance or retirement or anything like that is after taxes. What's actually in your bank account? OK, so simple budget. My net income minus my monthly expenses should balance out to zero to zero dollars. Now, you might be listening and thinking, so I'm just going to have zero dollars in my bank account. Like, no, no, no, no, no. It does not mean that you just spend everything you have. It does mean that every dollar that comes into my hands is assigned. It has a name. OK, it has a goal. These dollars are going into savings. These dollars are paying down debt. These dollars are for dining out with my friends. These dollars are forgiving. Every single dollar has a goal. And it's 100 percent. OK, if one of those assigned names, like on my lineup, my budget, is just spillover money. You know, like I have one of those categories. Treats. Yeah. Or treats is a different one. OK, sorry. I should just label it. Abby and Nicole's to important coffee. Treat box. OK. Yeah. I my spillover money is for things like I have about 50 dollars allocated to it each pay period. Sometimes gas just costs more, you know, right now. Yes. Yeah, right. Exactly. Or, you know, I forgot about my kid needing something that's like a 10 dollar expense or whatever. It's just kind of like padding. OK. And I don't touch it. A buffer. Yeah. But I don't touch it except for the kind of the spillover moments. It's not for my treats. I already have a line item for that. Smart. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that 50 dollars, it has a purpose when it's in my bank account. And the reason we want to do this. OK, why why live like this? If we don't assign a purpose to our money, it's going to be thoughtlessly spent. It just is. It's only human nature on stuff we probably don't need and maybe don't even want. OK. So income minus expenses equals zero. You do that for a couple of months. It's going to magnify your income and you're going to be finding money in places you probably didn't think you had. Yeah, I mean, I was sort of curious, like, OK, yeah, what about the people who like, what would you say to someone who was like, well, I don't need a budget because I live within my needs. Sure. Yeah. But it sounds like, well, that's sort of the answer right there then. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I've totally heard that. People are like, well, I don't I don't go into debt and I don't I don't really know what I'm spending on, but I know I'm not living above my means. Right. Well, why not slow down and see where your resources resources are going? Again, it's just a mirror. When you see that reflection, you might really like what you see. Or you might say, I don't know about that. Maybe I want to do it differently. The point is when you draw boundaries like this and you put things in their place, your your freedom is opened up. You're able to make choices. No longer is sort of your circumstances and money kind of just happening to you. You're in control because of the boundaries you put in place. Yeah, I love that. I love a boundary. OK, great. All right. Number seven. I'm going to take a drink of water. Yep. All right. Number seven, I think, is one of my favorite principles here for simple living, and I titled it Support Your Friends. This stuff, it is so hard and confusing. People feel shame about it. They feel they want to hide, not be vulnerable. Talking about money is very taboo, you know, especially in our culture. Totally. We can be a beacon of hope in each other's lives instead of hiding in the dark about our spending, our debt, our desires, even. Why not share and normalize this discussion? But also affirm one another's generosity, their candidness, their active choices to live against that grain and maybe swim up the current or chart a new path. None of us is so spiritual to fight the cosmos alone. We need support here. I love. You know, one of the one of the most tangible ways I think I've seen this is so I work out of school. So I see parents a lot. But really, I see what they drive, you know, quite a bit. Now, I'm I'm saying this as an observer, not in any way of judgmental tone. I just observing. But I love when I see a young mom with a baby in a baby carrier in the backseat pulling into school and some like granny gold Avalon, you know, that clearly grandma passed down to her. And she's you know, the doors don't open on their own like everybody else is minivan and she's figuring it out and putting that preschooler in the backseat with that booster and making it work. When I see that, I am just like, what a wise family. Of course, I don't know their situation. They could be massive spenders. But it does sort of signal to me like you're doing something different. Everybody's jumping in two feet into all kinds of, you know, car loans, auto loans. You're making it work and avoiding the pitfalls often caused by just upgrading before maybe you really can avoid avoid it or afford it before you can afford it. I just really hope they're getting support from their friends with us. I hope their friends think they're heroes, that they're awesome. You know, our access to debt, it really just creates a new standard of what's normal. Most people are living beyond their means Christians to totally. If you see your friends and not living beyond their means, they are swimming against one of the strongest cultural currents that there that there is out there. If their vacations are extremely modest and maybe few, it's likely because they're being wise with their money to cheer them on. No one is living like this. These guys are heroes. Why celebrate affluence? You might think I would never I would never celebrate affluence. I don't believe you. We all do. We all do this. So but why not then deliberately instead celebrate self-control, deliberately celebrate their generosity and tension, creativity, commitment, you know, a heart that belongs to eternal things. Let's celebrate the stuff that we say our values where our values are. That's so support your friends. Love this one. That's great. Do you think that. It's appropriate then to like. Ask people about their finances or maybe like ask people about. Yeah, they're giving like, again, this is such a taboo topic. Right. Is it like I I'm just sort of observing and commenting or is it like, no, they're I don't know. There's room for like, we have blunt conversation like I could ask people about this. What do you think? Sure. That's so tricky, you know, because not only is it it's awkward. It's taboo in our culture. But at the end of the day, they do get to choose. You know, it's like if they want to spend their money in a certain way, it's not our responsibility. Yeah. But in like all areas of life, you know, we speak into each other's lives. I think there's tactful ways to do this and very trusted relationships to be able to approach someone and just say, hey, I've noticed this. How's it going? I've noticed that you complain a lot about how you don't have cash. But I see you planning kind of these like really big vacations. Do you need some help thinking through that, you know, or can I be supportive in some way? And nine times out of 10, my guess is at least in the people that I've had these types of conversations with, a lot of times it's like, I don't have accountability and I could really use it. Yeah. Or sometimes you're going to get that's my personal information and I'll thank you, you know, and OK, fine. They can draw their boundaries. But I think that there is room to explore with people in a loving and tactful way that communicates, I'm just rooting for you. Sure. I'm not trying to tell you what to do. Or, you know, maybe it's just like. Maybe I start, you know, I share. Right. Here's what I've been thinking about. Or that's great. Here's a purchase that I a big purchase. Can you help me think through this? Or here's this cause that I'm thinking about getting behind donating toward, you know, do you got you and your household, you and yours, you know, have what's your philosophy on right this sort of stuff? You know, just to generate that conversation. And I think that perhaps one of the advantages here in dwell is, you know, we have a regular sort of annual time that we talk about the budget. We talk about giving and people sort of analyze like, OK, supporting our local church, supporting, you know, the ministry here in dwell. So, again, there's an often an open door there, I think, to have these types of conversations. But outside of, you know, February every year. Right. Um, yeah, creative, tactful ways to to get this conversation going. For sure. For sure. That's really good. Yeah. Leading with our own struggles is always a good starter. I think that's great. Sweet. All right. These next two, number eight and nine are kind of my own personal, simple living principles. Great. Maybe these work for you. Maybe they don't. These are just things that over time I have found we kind of consistently do that have been helpful. So number eight here is have a no spend day or days. Just deliberately choose not to spend money that day. Like zero dollars. Other than, OK, obviously, I already prepaid my heat bill. OK, things like that. If I need groceries, maybe I'm shopping for groceries. I'm out of gas. Yeah. But those variable costs of like, I don't know, I'm just going to get on my phone and just scroll through Amazon for a little bit. Or there is every four feet. What is it? Every four Instagram. What's on it? Your post. Every every fourth post on Instagram that you scroll up is an ad and you can click three clicks. And it's yours. You know, here's a new hat. Right. Maybe you don't drive through coffee treats that day. And so it's deliberately choosing to not spend money. But again, it's replacing it with someone else. So it's this familiar like resisting replace in scripture that I think has been just so good for our character growths. Replace it with something else. Like maybe I'm just going to spend that time baking with my kids or go on a bike ride or I don't know, ride an encouragement note to your friend. So commit to a couple of no spend days a month. And then now you didn't spend any money that day. You kind of get to decide what you want to do with it and pray about it. And maybe at the end of the month, you go out for a big family dinner together. I don't know, but it's just again, slow down. Stop scratching that itch. That's good for me. I have a restless heart. I need to slow down and trying to stop scratch that itch all the time. I like that sort of like a free day. Yeah. Right. Yeah. OK, number nine is meal plan before you go go grocery shopping. Now, if you're not a disciplined, structured chart type of person, all of this might just feel a little like, geez, you know, I need a legal pad and I like. It's worth it. This is worth your time and investment, even if you feel like this is in a strength or skill set of years. It saves money. It cuts down on food waste. You're less likely to lunge into just impulsive buys. The way I like to meal plan is I I plan really my dinners because breakfast and lunch, for the most part, we're eating the same stuff. Yeah, right. Right. So I know I need deli meat and cheese and bread for my kids and the applesauce and some chips and, you know, whatever for their lunches. We're having oatmeal for breakfast or frozen wafflers or what have you. It's the dinners that I'm like, well, I don't know how they are hungry every day. I have to feed them every day. So I plan out my meals for, you know, pay period to pay period. List them out per day. And then I write each ingredient that I need for each of those meals. OK, now I know what I need. The first place I go is to my pantry. I don't go to the store. I'm going to go to the pantry. I'm going to go to the freezer. What do I already have? The stuff I've already spent money on that I can use to make these meals. And I just start crossing off my list. Then go to the grocery store and buy what only what's on the list. And what you need. You'll save hundreds of dollars living this way. Very likely I if I don't do that, I'm like, this looks good. And I want to try that thing. And, you know, the trap of like going to the grocery store hungry. And yes, I need this snack and I need this right now. Yeah, totally. For sure. So meal planning is going to cut down on food waste and save your family a lot of money. All right. Last one, number 10. Is to be intentional with your schedule. And it might feel like, no, wait a minute. I thought we were just talking about money. No, you're not allowed to talk about. Yeah. The point here being that simple living is more than finances here. How can I free up my bandwidth, the chaos in my life, the urgency in my life? How do my commitments in my schedule? Because, again, like money, time is a finite resource. Time is money. That's right. How can I how do my commitments and schedule reflect my priorities in life? So, for example, time with my friend is a priority. If I'm going to church on Sunday morning anyway, why not see if she can just snag breakfast beforehand? Just kind of stack my schedule in a way I'm headed out that way anyway. Being present with my kids, with my spouse, with my roommate, whoever is a priority for me. So then my phone goes on. Do not disturb when we're all together at home. It's an intentional way of of life, of living. And it's a way that we can sort of prevent that. Life will kind of just stop happening. Yeah, right. That discipline here actually bleeds over to discipline elsewhere in life with money, with diet, with exercise. So how can I apply these principles in ways that reflect my priorities, not just with my finances and my budget, but with my other relationships, too, the things that I really value? Yeah, I think that's really good. I love talking about boundaries and I love saying no to things. You sure do. Yeah, it's a real power move, frankly. But yeah, I mean, the reality of like, yeah, sometimes I need to do I need to do some inventorying or some evaluating of my life. Are there and good things in my life that I actually, though, could afford to say no to so that I can say yes to better things. Man, but if I'm not thinking it through right, if I'm just sort of reacting and my calendar is just happening to me or whatever, then often what I find is my life is full of things that I don't really want or I feel resentful about or maybe aren't bad. Right. But hold on. Are they the best? Right. Could I be more more protective about this? And so it seems like to sort of loop back to the first couple principles. Mindfulness, man. Yeah. I've got to have space in my mind to consider this stuff. Right. That it's not just like, oh, it's just a bank app on my phone. You know what I mean? Which I would imagine for a lot of us. Like that's money. It's just like this app and I make sure there's something in it. Right. And that's kind of it. Right. But to sort of expand the way that that we're thinking about this and being more mindful actually leads to more freedom. Totally. 100 percent. All right. So those are 10 principles of simple living that that matter that we should consider and think through. I get asked a lot of questions surrounding this topic a lot. And it makes sense, right, because it affects your day to day. So I have here three questions that I'm regularly asked. The first one, the biggest question I always get asked is how in the world did you pay off one hundred and seven thousand dollars of debt on such low income? I don't know anyone else that has done that. So yes, it's fair question. It's weird. It's kind of weird. I understand. It's a very niche thing. Yeah. We started and a lot of people assume, oh, they must have been really high earners. And that's how they were able to do that. When we start most of our journey through this debt free freedom, debt freedom. We were making about fifty three thousand dollars a year. We did not have a ton of cash. And you have how many children? We have three, three children. That's crazy. It is. It's very strange. It's crazy and strange. No, there's a lot of nuance here. OK, of course, we had to talk. How did we do this? Well, we had to get in line, like I've already said, with God's principles here. Get our hearts reoriented. Mike and I, who my Mike is, my husband, we had to get on the same page about this. It's nearly impossible to do something like that. If you're working against one another, it's just like a hamster wheel at that point. You know, but really, the biggest way to do this is to play offense and defense with your money. So offense is generating income. Your day job is your biggest offense, your salary that comes in. Adding to that, like, I don't know, gig apps like DoorDash and Uber and what have you. Side hustles that you might have. Offense is great because it allows us to not be ashamed of an earned dollar. You know, get creative here. Creativity can abound when you're thinking about offense with your money. Offense, income, side hustles. Right. Give us more. Oh, my gosh. What are you doing? You're the queen of this. Tell the truth. What were you doing? I think at one point you said this was my hobby in life. And I think I love midlife crisis. I was like, is it my hobby? Is this all I know how to do? Own it. Own it. That's right. That's right. Sure. So, OK, I'm a music teacher. There's one. It's a skill set that I have. Teaching piano lessons for two hours a week actually generated about three hundred dollars a month of extra income for us. It's great. You might not be a music teacher. What are you good at? You know, skills. OK, are you really good at writing? Can you? I don't know. Edit a college essay for a student and charge him a couple of dollars, you know, or something like that. Do you like to walk dogs? Do you like seriously? What are you good at? And what do you enjoy? That's going to make this thing really into some kind of income for sure. Some of these are wild. Come on. OK. So also, I got into house cleaning. Yeah, for a while. I just kind of, again, as a side hustle, people will pay you a lot of money to clean their home more than they will for you to watch their children truthfully. OK, so they're going to be a lot of cash. Yeah. When I started doing this, I was a stay-at-home mom. I had a little baby and little kids and going to work really just wasn't in the cards for us the way that we had set up our lifestyle. I don't have anything against working moms. It just wasn't what we were doing at that time. And so I was like, how am I going to generate income? You know, I don't have employment necessarily. So me and another stay-at-home mom worked out an arrangement where we cleaned houses for two days a week. And one day she watched all the kids and I went and cleaned a couple of houses. And then we swapped roles on the following day. We brought in like five hundred dollars a month doing that by really just working one day. And the other day felt like just having a play date with my kids friends. Yeah, right. And it was great, you know, it was cash. It's music lessons were cash generated a ton of income. I am very well known for picking things up off the side of the curb and flipping them. Our church has a dwell miscline. My name's on there daily. I don't know. Often my and my kids kind of like got onto it, too. You know, they tease me about it. They're like, oh, Mom, I see some chairs on the curb. You going to flip those for your student loans? You know, like they totally got on to it. So, yeah, you can do stuff like that. There are tons of market research apps out there. Wendy's is going to pay you twenty dollars to taste test their new burger that they're trying to put on the menu. Columbus is a great test market, so we're going to find a lot of stuff like that. There was a time I got paid one hundred and fifty dollars to try diapers. I had a baby. So not only. Yeah, exactly. Yes, for me. So, you know, I'm getting paid one hundred and fifty dollars to try these diapers and I didn't have to buy diapers. Yeah, right. So it's kind of like double whammy. Wow. There's tons of stuff like that out there. Work smarter, not harder. I love it. That's right. Yeah, I had a I had a dresser phase. Feel free to edit this out, David. I had a dresser phase for a moment. Let me explain. OK, IKEA had product recalls on most of their dressers made like before twenty seventeen. They were falling off the wall and kids were getting hurt. OK. So it's going. Yeah, I promise. There's a purpose to this. So what they were doing was they were paying people cash to bring back dressers. Wow, you're a dresser hunter. I know. And I went to the management and I said, so wait, let me just get this straight. Like, I don't need a receipt. You're just taking any IKEA dresser that, you know, is clearly labeled that it was manufactured before the certain day and you're handing over cold hard cash. Mm hmm. And they're like, yeah, we want them off the streets, basically. Well, you go to IKEA and ask them this. Yeah, because I know I don't want to be sent to like IKEA jail. Yeah. Yeah. So I found a couple on the curb, checked the manufacturer date, put him in the van, went straight to IKEA, walked out with one hundred and thirty dollars cash. I'm just saying. Let creativity abound here. OK, well, I did. I would buy them for five dollars on Marketplace, then take him to IKEA. Offense. OK, so get creative. Yeah, figure out. Do you have skills? What are you good at? What do you like? And can you turn that into something that earns you money? That's right. OK, so that's offense. I don't think offense is the biggest. What would you say? Isn't I don't think offense is the silver bullet, though. OK. To this. It really is defense. There's this old saying that's like offense wins games, but defense wins championships. And I think that's true here. When you're thinking about paying down debt, defense keeps your money from going out the door, from leaving your bank account. And that might mean that you need to cut your streaming services. Maybe while you're paying off debt, you just can't have Spotify. You need to listen to ads like the rest of the peasants. I don't know. You know, you're spending less at Costco. You're shopping around for cheaper insurance. Maybe you're finding a cheaper phone plan. It's cutting back on the ways that money is already going out the door. And the reason that this is so important and why I would say it's more important than offense, because defense, you can do almost instantaneously and it doesn't take your time. Offense takes your time. Yeah, right. Totally. You're going out there. You know, all I have all these creative ideas on how to earn money. It took a lot of my time. Yeah. It's like cleaning houses. Yeah. And I think, you know, not everyone has that kind of time. Right. So I think that that kind of can be a barrier where you're like my life situation, whatever it is, it's like, oh, I'm not. Maybe you're not a stay at home mom. And you know what I mean? Like, yeah. OK, so there's still here. Here's another way to think about it. It's not just about how many hustles you possibly have. But yeah, this defense for sure, for sure. I think most of the money that we generated actually did come from defense by just saying enough. We're not going to spend this much anymore. And we did. I mean, we used my I didn't. I was lucky enough to not go without. My brother gave us his logins for Netflix and Disney Plus, you know, but we did cut them and we're willing to. We went down on our phone plans or cut back on our phone plans. There's tons of ways to cut back. And save. Mm hmm. OK, so now you've played offense and defense with your money. Taking what you've generated in offense plus what you've cut back on generates passive income right there. You take that difference and you just really go hard after your debt. OK, first thing you want to do list your balances from lowest balance to highest balance and accept the house. Don't care what the interest rate is. A lot of people think, well, I need to go after the highest interest rate because mathematically, that probably works out. It probably does. Our behavior is not robotic, though. Yeah, right. We need those quick wins. Totally. If you have a $1,200 balance on a credit card and that's your lowest debt, go after that loan because it's going to free you up like no other. You're going to feel like I can conquer the world. Oh, my God. I just did this thing. Now, whatever that minimum payment was on that $1,200 credit card balance, I don't owe that minimum payment anymore. So I passively get to add that payment into that offense and defense balance and grow my total monthly payments as I get down to the bottom. It's kind of they call this snowballing your debt. And it's like a snowball rolling down a hill that it just gets bigger as it gets to the bottom. So then when you're done, you know, you. Some every nor every day normal person. Me. Yeah. Just paid off $45,000 a day. I don't know. No one does that. That's crazy. And not only that, but you're so used to living below your means. Maybe now you have, I don't know, $980 freed up each month. You get to pray about how to give, spend or save that. That's how we did that. That's how we how we got rid of our debt. Well, and in theory, this is I mean, people have debt. So this is so practical. OK, here's here's a tangible way to sort of attack your debt. But I mean, in theory, you could apply the offense and the defense principles to like to big purchases. You know what I mean? Like, OK, we want to do. We want to go on a cruise. You know what I mean? I don't have the budget for that. OK, so we're going to set aside, you know, six months due office and defense or we want to go back or we want to remodel our kitchen or you know what I mean? Like big purchases. OK, same principles. I'm so glad you brought that up. That's such. Yeah, exactly. Again, it's it's a boundary discussion. My income's finite. I could just go out and freely spend. Sure. It's going to come from somewhere. Or like, right. Use my credit card. Yeah. Right. So why not slow down and think creative about the things that I want to do with my life? That's great. My time. Yeah. What else do people often ask? Is that what we're doing? Yeah. OK. I get I get asked this question a lot. How do I not obsess over over this stuff? How do I not obsess over my budget? I can spend my money, too. Right. You know. Yes. The answer is yes. Simple living isn't depriving yourself out of duty or obligation. You know, like aggressively saving and never enjoying your life. Nor being generous is a really terrible way to live. Spending all your cash and having no savings ever for the future is a really terrible way to live. We need to live with balance here. The principle, like we've been saying, is how do I slow down and see where I'm vulnerable to the world system, to the cosmos? Do I need to adjust? Do I need to put boundaries around my spending? Do I need to check my heart and where I'm oriented with God's perspective here? Not do I need to make sure I never go out to eat, you know, or I never get to enjoy a treat with my friend or what have you. Our brains like this. We like to be extremely reductionistic. Right, right, right. That's not life. Life is nuanced. Grace affords us the ability to be nuanced here. Talk to the Lord about it. Get get unified, have accountability if you need. But the idea here is that we're living with balance and we're slowing down, not living stressful. That's not a simple life. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really good. Yeah, being too black and white. Yeah, it's not like, well, you just I guess you have to take a vow of poverty. Right. And you know what I mean? Like move into a two bedroom apartment. Right. But yeah, the freedom to sort of evaluate like when I was young. High school, college, it's like, man, I'm just trying to buy the most affordable vehicle. So, you know, I'm spending a couple grand on a vehicle. Right. But, you know, like as I got older, you have a kid, you got more income. It just sort of dawned on me like maybe this isn't the way to like buy cars, you know, like buy the like cheapest, worst car ever. You know, that breaks down and totally no alternator needs replaced. It's just me and my child in the middle of winter on the freeway. Like perhaps I should save up for a reliable vehicle. You know, spend more. Yeah. Yeah. It's nuance. You have the freedom to think through stuff like that. Yeah, totally, totally. That's what's so great about grace, that we get to live a free life. That's what Jesus bought for us. It should apply practically in these principles here, too. All right. Last question here to discuss. What do I do about my past money mistakes? Things I regret doing or buying, you know, I think that this is so relatable and like what an honest question, you know, to just say, I didn't do it right. And I got a ton here that maybe I'm working through like a house, maybe an expensive car, something like a car or just I had a really embarrassing shopping spree last month and I've racked up, I don't know, $1,800 on a credit card. What do I do now? Well, how many of us have have have had that experience? Probably quite a few that we've just lunged into something only to plummet with regret, you know, and to just feel really bad about it. The answer has to start with grace. But grace, grace, grace gives us freedom to learn from our mistakes and to try again tomorrow. Legalism makes us hate the simple life, dread generosity, ignore a budget and boundaries, just lunge into it and say, screw it, and I'm done, you know. But grace allows us to face our problems in the mirror. Claim Jesus through it all. You know, there is no silver bullet. We all want life hacks. There is no silver bullet or life hack or personal budget app that really is just going to be the key, you know, to fix our lives. Only Jesus can do that. It has to be grace. Now, that said, there might also be some practical steps that you need to take, like maybe you sell the car and you buy a more affordable car. Maybe you can't spend for a while because you got to pay off that spending spree. Sure. None of that should be done through shame, though. Shame is not from God. We're going to live through grace. Yeah, man, this is so great. This is so helpful. So and what a balance I feel like of like, OK, here's big picture. Principles to like, here's some very niche ideas about how to make the most out of IKEA returns. Yeah, so thank you so much for coming on here. Your story is such a triumph. You know. Sort of, you know, realizing the situation that you were in getting before the Lord, getting under grace and really like. Making some hard calls about. Changing your lifestyle, changing your views of money to get out from under this debt. I'm curious, like during that period. Where was it like we're just tackling debt? Like, were you giving also? Like, how did generosity factor in during that period for you and your husband? Absolutely. I mean, that's such a good question. Yes, we did keep giving. Now, we are on the fiscal support team. We here at 12, we maintained our fiscal support team status. So we gave five percent of our gross income through paying off our student loans. We really weren't able in a position to give more than that at that time. Mm hmm. It's different now. Praise God. But we did keep giving, and that was really important to us because the issue really wasn't the giving. It was the spending and the thoughtless, you know, the what am I trying to say? The issue wasn't the giving. It was just being thoughtless with their spending in a lot of ways. So why am I going to cut out this one thing that is actually really good? And God has given me a lot of grace and a lot of freedom. And he's helping me chart this new path and has vision for my life. I'm going to keep giving. OK. That was a conviction we had. And I'm so glad we did. Yeah. Now that all the I mean, I think my student loan, my my 1098 that came on my last year paying off those student loans said we spent eight thousand dollars that year in student loan interest. Just the interest. Mm hmm. That money's freed up now. Yeah, right. Because God is so good and has been so gracious to us. We get to pray now about where that money's going to go. You know, and it's pretty sweet. It's a sweet position to be in. I think, man, if you're if you're in a tough spot, talk to the Lord about this. He'll guide your heart. Yeah, he he led ours to not stop giving. That's awesome. I love that. I think that's incredible. What a sweet example. Well, thanks, Nicole, you're taking the time to come in and chat. Do you have any, I don't know, specific or tangible resources that you would suggest that people were interested in, like more help or more input? You know, my favorite book on money is by Paul David Tripp, and it's titled Redeeming Money. And I love this book because it deals with the hard issue of money. We all want the financial brass tax and those have its place and they're really good. My issue really was in my heart. And so it reorients our hearts. He's, I think, just a really creative writer and just has a really good beat on how we operate in the way we think. And he's just lathers it all with grace. I love this book. Everyone should own this book. Practically speaking, what we use to help think through budgeting, getting out of debt. We read Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. Now, I'm not out here waving a Ramsey flag disciple or anything like that. I'm not a Ramsey disciple. There's plenty. A lot of people think he's nuts and he kind of is, you know. But man, you know, he is not a finance guy. He's just a simple old realtor like and I there was something about that that felt very relatable, like you're not going to talk about money to me in a way that I don't understand. It was really kind of the first tangible, practical resource of I understand what he's saying. So you want ideas on budgeting, how to get out of debt, how to put boundaries around your spending. There's a lot of great resources in there. You don't have to agree with everything he says. Sure. Plenty of him. I don't agree with you. Keep your brain on. Yeah, exactly. But it's a really great resource. That's awesome. Yeah, I would recommend those, too. Well, that's it for this episode of Draw on These Things. Thank you, Nicole, for joining us here today. And thank you for calling me by my my Christian name. Nicole 007, in case you were wondering, and you need to find her on AIM. And thanks to everyone who gave us a listen. If you're interested in hearing more Draw on These Things podcasts, go ahead and subscribe or follow the podcast for notifications about future episodes. And if you're interested in more about Dwell Community Church, you can find us on the internet at dwellcc.org.