How I Began to Slow Down and Simplify (Part 1 - Money)

My very first post addressed the “why” of slowing down and simplifying, but how? Once my life was full with children, work, extracurricular activities, chores, and obligations, how in the world did I slow that down? How did I step off the merry-go-round?

I wish I could say I approached it with a prayerful attitude, gave it to God, discerned the right steps, and did it in such an elegant, beautiful way; but no, it was not graceful at all.

It was like teaching your fifteen year old to drive (or if you remember learning to drive). Remember, those abrupt starts and stops, the turns at the last minute, and not being able to plan or anticipate but reacting. Yeah, that’s what my slow down looked like.

The first part of my slow down was deciding what was important. I didn’t realize it years ago, but I naturally categorized what was important into money and time. It also didn't seem that I was including God in this, but God, because he is so wonderful, was working through my natural tendencies to make himself known.

Identify Needs vs Wants

As a school teacher, I didn’t make a lot of money, but it helped pay the bills. John was doing well but still working his way up the corporate ladder. When I was pregnant with our first child and we decided I would quit teaching, we were taking a leap of faith since my salary helped.

Luckily, we lived in a small house so downsizing wasn’t necessary. We were doing well there!

We gave up hopes of fancy vacations - not that we were accustomed to them, but our occasional trips to the beach or mountains would be the fanciest our vacations would get. Not to mention that vacationing with small children WAS NOT FUN so vacations were easy to cut out.

Another choice was not eating out often. Again, we weren’t really doing well enough to eat out much but that went from not much to rarely ever. McDonald’s was considered a night out.

It also meant that we had to pay attention to everything we bought. When the children were younger, I’d start my Walmart shopping trip with my list. Once we got to the checkout, there were many items I had to take out of the cart and leave with the cashier. I had to learn what was a necessity and what was a want, and I learned much of what I bought was wants and not needs.

Follow God, Watch What Happens

What was amazing was to watch how God was making it all work. After teaching, I started computer training. My salary was less than what I made teaching full time, but I worked part time and still made well over half of my previous salary. That helped to fill in some of those gaps.

I know it seems strange that one part of slowing down is related to money, but we made choices that forced us to take a path families around us weren’t taking. As the years passed, John’s salary increased so we were slowly making up the difference in salary. It brought us to a point where I was able to quit working to follow what I knew God was calling me to do - homeschool our children.

When I finally let go of my job, which happened to be causing much of the stress and creating a schedule that was hard to maintain, we were able to do it financially because we had been practicing frugality for years.

Next week, I'll finish the story on how God worked to give me the time to slow down.