• How not to build an ark: What we learned from our first Titanic of a home.
• The wealth our “ant-like” lifestyle will create will widen our opportunities and sphere of influence for good if the storm doesn’t occur, and help us temporally survive more easily than most if it does.

Make sure your boat won’t sink!
How do you survive a storm?  Build an ark - and you can’t wait until it rains!  Start by acquiring a life preserver and a fishing pole (eliminate consumer/auto debt, and build up a year’s supply of necessities).  Then build a life boat (build a business, acquire assets with significant positive cash flow, and/or accelerate payoff of your mortgage).  If you get that far before it rains, build a bigger boat and haul the life boat on board for use by your friends and relatives if so moved by the spirit.  Whatever floatation device you presently have, don’t overload it (with unrighteous consumer debt, or acting without doing your homework) or you may capsize in a strong breeze, let alone the Storm!
 
Our Family’s first “investment”
Ever seen “The Money Pit”?  Our first “ark” was like the Titanic.  My wife and I wasted a lot of years and money remodeling a home that was the equivalent of a face-lift for an 85 year-old grandma with terminal cancer. Where we had considered buying a more structurally sound duplex in a lesser-but-still-good part of town, we instead bought a run-down dive on an incredible property.  Instead of an effective payment of $600/month (subsidized by renting the other half), we had an effective payment of almost $1600/month when factoring in the trips to Home Depot to gussy up that grandma for her “Perfect Storm” funeral (the new buyer).  On top of that I lost nearly every Saturday for four years to “the project”.
 
When our family was large enough, we concluded that while we would love to stay, it was simply unwise and impractical to expand this home to fit our needs.  We sadly sold, and the new owner tore down the home to put a starter-castle in its place a year later. As we took pictures of my beautiful walls, fireplace, and windows giving way under demolition, we learned that “stuff” must go “the way of all the earth”, and it is pointless to become attached to material things.

While we lost, we really gained
Where we can clearly see the fiscal folly of that decision, we felt inspired to live where we did, and don’t question that the Lord had other purposes for our living there.  Possibly it was His wisdom in letting us see so plainly our poor habits of stewardship and temptations toward material things, that we can now see better and will perhaps be more temporally secure than we would have been if we’d purchased the duplex in the first place.  I estimate the decision we made compared to our other best choice has set us back over $200,000 in net worth over about a 6-year span.  One good aspect is that we had to live frugally in every other part of our lives, and now that’s the way we prefer to live.  We’ll probably make back what we lost and to spare because our vision was opened to the value of frugality. 

Making sure we’ll float
We are aggressively trying to “build a temporal ark” anticipating a perfect storm, by increasing our income, decreasing our outgo, and paying off debts. It is challenging to live among such affluence knowing that lenders will let us have a lot of “cool stuff”, but instead follow a plan that will leave us either well off if calamity never strikes, or “less miserable” than others if it does. We haven’t completely lost our marbles - we still have almost everything anybody else has - but we buy most things used (Car auctions, DI, EBay, Craigslist.org).  We never buy popcorn when at the dollar movies, and we decided we can put sprinklers off and move the hose around for a few more years.
 
We have found that this is how we must live if my wife is to remain a stay-at-home mother, and we still hope to obtain enough means to more easily support ourselves and perhaps a few friends or relatives in a depression economy. What if I’m wrong about the timing and our plans to better endure disaster see us become meagerly wealthy before tough times set in? Then in addition to the Lord’s charge to care for the poor and needy who are always with us, then I want our family to have extended opportunities for education and influence. We’ll go to Rome, Jerusalem, Washington, and other important or historic sites. I’ll run for office or support my kids in similar worthy endeavors that would be unavailable to them otherwise. 

We do not feel like we’re missing out on much living like the ant. Even though the ant was tenacious in preparing for winter, a wise ant would still take some measure of pleasure from the summer. Where God has given me stewardship over six lives beside my own, I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t make the most of the talents and knowledge I’ve been given. Good times or bad times, we win either way.   

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 at and is filed under The Perfect Financial Storm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.