Debt enslaves

It’s easy to let our spending patterns slip into autopilot. Americans, in particular, pile up debt to spend on all sorts of things.

According to financial experts, the percentage of Americans in debt is around 80%. 8 in 10 Americans have some form of consumer debt, and the average debt in America is $38,000, not including mortgage debt.

I’ve been there, too, living from paycheck to paycheck. It’s a hard cycle to break, dependent upon your situation. But it’s not impossible.

Freedom beckons

Like everything, to break cycles, we must become intentional. That’s why my family went about writing a set of values for how and where we spend money. In fact, this effort was something we aimed to align with our family mission to “live and love freely.” Having a documented set of values has allowed us to not only know what we prioritize using our money for, but why we have chosen these areas of focus.

It’s not the only thing required to do this type of work, but it’s a healthy start.

What follows is the short document we originally wrote as a family to establish our priorities—and refine our own thinking in the process.

As a family, we have come to believe that minimalism breeds abundance. This will result in big changes to how we live and prioritize spending our money together. To help keep us focused on this new, simpler way of living, we have written the following guiding principles.

We believe:

• Minimalism breeds abundance

• Money is not ours; it is a gift of God for us to steward

• Money and stuff does not buy happiness

• Giving is more meaningful than consuming

• People are what's most important

• Financial stress should never interfere with building relationships

• Collecting experiences is more fulfilling than collecting stuff

• Less stuff of greater value is better than more stuff of lesser value

• Possessions do not hold memories, we do

• We won't take anything with us to what lies after

• We are all in this effort together, as a family

• It is not for us to judge others, including what they choose to do with their money or things

• Most of all, true riches are found in Christ alone

From a practical perspective, this means we will strive to:

• Give generously

• Regularly look for opportunities to minimize (make it fun!)

• Give to those in “need” rather than buy “wants” for ourselves, especially during holidays and birthdays 

• Use cash and leave plastic at home

• Set goals for what we want to do together as a family or save towards (e.g. trips, items of value)

• Shop less frequently, with more intentional goals; seasonal shopping for clothing, for example

• Disown more than 40 major wardrobe pieces per person

• Only purchase big ticket items we've been thinking about or looking for after a while (30+ days)

• Purchase items that bring greater value (e.g. bikes), order (e.g. storage systems), and utility (e.g. chef knives) to our lives rather than items that detract from those

• Own less things that last longer and we personally value instead of more things that do not last and in which we find less value

• Take trips and share experiences rather than buying more gifts

• Buy fewer high quality gift for holidays instead of many little ones

• Try to disown something (or more!) for every new thing we come to own

• Speak about these new values with our family and friends so that they are in-the-know before celebrations

• Keep giving more of ourselves to the Lord day by day; He wants all of us

Write your own

Feel free to steal be inspired by our family’s money prioritization document and create your own. I hope it brings about a similar sense of freedom as it has for us.