The Cabin Taught Me What the Money Was For

I was 24, maybe 26, living in a cabin with a roommate, barely insulated, with a furnace that quit on me more nights than I'd like to admit. I'd go to bed in a coat and gloves and get up in the middle of the night to feed the wood stove so we didn't freeze. It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't even comfortable.

But I wasn't paying much for it either, and that was the whole point.

I was building my first business or two at the time, and every dollar I wasn't pouring into a mortgage was a dollar I could put into investment properties and into those businesses. The cabin didn't feel like a sacrifice at the time. It felt like the right decision for me, in my 20's, launching a business without any income. I could live somewhere warmer and nicer and slower, or I could stay cold a while longer and build something.

That pattern didn't stop when the income did show up. As things grew, and they did grow, I never went and got the big house or the impressive vehicle. Instead, I started asking a different question: what's the actual number I need to live a beautiful life with my family? Not the number that would impress someone, the number that would let us live well and still leave room. Once I had that number, everything above it had somewhere better to go.

That's how I've been able to invest heavily for the future as the businesses grew, but more than that, it's how I've been able to give, to our church, to an orphanage in Haiti, to Project LampLight, the nonprofit we started in our community back in 2015, and to a long list of things I never could have supported if I'd needed a bigger house first.

I'll confess, living below your means sounds like a discipline, and I guess it is one. But the real benefit hasn't been the extra money sitting in an account somewhere. It's what it's done to my grip. Generosity has a way of unclenching your fists. The less I've needed my net worth or my income or even my giving to tell me who I am, the freer I've actually felt.

To be clear, I'm not fully there. I still get the twinge, some flicker of pride in what I've built, or what I earn, or how much I gave this year, like it's supposed to add up to my worth. When I feel that creeping in, I try to catch it now. I name it, hand it to God, and ask Him to tell me the truth instead: what I have, what I've done, what anyone thinks of me, none of it makes me more or less. That's not where my value comes from. It never was.

I'm not pushing this on you, I'm just challenging you to consider where your own number is. Not the number someone else would be impressed by. The one that would actually let you build the life, and the generosity, you want.

Thank you!

-Dave Hooke.