Life On the Cheap

From Big and Beautiful To Something More Like This...

Recently, I have started to hate the mortgage attached to the house I love. I said to an Eastern priest pal, "I love my house, but I hate my mortgage."

"Back up," he said to me, completely taking me by surprise. "You actually love your house?"

"Yeah," I said. "It's beautiful! It's almost 3,000 square feet, four bedrooms, three baths, two levels, two car garage, mountain setting, brand new - only four years old this fall..."



"But it's just a bunch of wood and metal and glass," he said, tucking his hands into his vestments. "You can't love it. It's not possible. Unless, of course, it has become your idol."



"Not my idol, exactly," I said, "but I definitely feel like my husband and I are its slaves - forsaking all others to meet its demands."



He just nodded. Both hands now inside the vestments, folded across his chest. "You are smart enough to know how you should take this from here, cradle Catholic. I am not going to say anymore."



True enough.



Our house never started out this way - too expensive. In fact, it was insanely affordable when we first purchased it. It was everything else that was taking too much of our funds - food, gas, car payments (which are also insanely cheaper than most couples). But, then we refinanced and took out a loan or two and paid off most of our debt. Which was all fantastic, but did you read the part where I mention taking out loans to pay down the debt? What have we actually paid off?



Our credit score is nicely high now. We can get approved for much less house now at any moment - thus, offering us much more in the way of happiness.



Time to scrub the floor and repaint the walls. Time to put the house of up for sale.



Everyone Lee and I know who are our age, or who have as many children as us (most of our pals), and who have a mortgage, are strapped these days. Only one of those couples, maybe two, is actually strapped because of job loss or because of lowered income. Most of us are trapped because once upon a time in our pursuit of the American dream, we were stupid. Real stupid. And now we are all slaves to our stupidity. To our needs to have bigger and better and nicer and brighter or the best. The best neighborhood, the best schools, the best church, the best friends, the best shopping, the best view, the best hiking, the best house, etc...



It's such a pale of pig slop, friends. It really is.



"We have to downsize!" I said to my husband excitedly during the last couple days of our vacation. "Why don't we sell our big, beautiful house and buy one of those hot ranch/modulars with lots of room and hot appliances, but with (literally, because I have done the math) one third of the mortgage we have now!"



At first it was hard to convince him, and then I said...



"I would never have to take one of those stupid jobs that I am too uninspired to keep. All that tension in the back of your whip lashed neck would probably leave. We would still have great friends, a great universal Church, an exceptional family, the best neighborhood (because we will have moved in:)! What do you think?"



He was still a little unconvinced. And then we drove around for three days looking at homes, speaking with realty professionals, etc...None of them thought we were insane.



"My mortgage has gotten too dang fat, and we have four children who still need raising and, at least, one of them is homeschooled. Maybe all of them will need to be again one day, and I don't have the time or blind ambition to leave my family all day to work outside my home. It makes me sick. Literally," I said to this one sales professional yesterday afternoon.



"I don't want something that looks like a trailer. Our big beautiful home is already a modular. But I am willing to take it one step down and live like one of my absolute favorite Orthodox priests and writers lives. I am ready to go manufactured and have a teeny weeny mortgage." I made a sign with my fingers as though I was holding a very tiny piece of something special.



"Makes perfect sense," said the guy who would get our tiny commission, should we buy something much less than we have now.



"You are not alone," said the woman we spoke to at another location who has dedicated herself to searching out the perfect home for our needs. "There was recently a family with four children who did the same exact thing as you. They had a lovely home in the Lehigh Valley, but two older kids going to college, and they wanted to actually be able to assist them, so they sold their home and bought one of ours. A three bedroom, but they completely made it work. You can make it work if you want to," she said.



This can be said for us keeping the big beautiful home as well. But, like I have said in past posts, I write because I can and because I can't do anything else adequately. So I can't actually add to the needs of this monster house anymore. I can only take care of the family I cooperated with God to create. Time to make that the center of my vocation and not how to help pay for this neatly formed collection of wood, metal and glass.



Downsizing.



And that does not include buying a much older home that I will have to spend billions on to fix up and soothe because of its many aches and pains of aging. I have done that before. It can lead you to the same exact place as a big and beautiful can.



Don't even try to talk us out of it. Get thee behind me, Satan, to all those who think I should - for some stupid reason - slave for a deaf, dumb, blind, and lame master.



"No man can serve two masters: For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (emptiness)." St. Matthew 6:24



"...a man's life consists not of the abundance of things which he possesses, but in being rich toward God." St. Luke 12:13-21



Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also...



Time to push my mortgage out of my heart. Out of the heart of most of my prayer and make room for the needs of the starving and dying, of those who have lost their faith, for the pathetic nature of American Christianity....There are greater and far more important things with which to work so hard on in prayer.



The sum of my prayer life should not consist of begging the Master of the Universe for more income and a greater ability to leave my family, my much more beautiful children, my husband whose life and love is my true vocation... in pursuit of the things my big beautiful house (AKA: Mountain of Ugly Debt) demands of me.



Click Here For A Much Better Article Than Mine About Manufactured Housing.