Sometime Less is More

Our first apartment in Dallas

I don't know about you but when Shouna and I got out of college and moved to Dallas where I went to work for Ross Perot and EDS we were excited, scared and broke.  We were young and in love so a lot of things did not matter, like money.

Here is a bit of wisdom given to us when we were first married.  "If you are young and in love two can live as cheap as one if one goes hungry and the other goes naked."  Well, I have to tell you I don't believe it.  But it was a great time and makes for great memories.

Luckily we paid for our educations by working hard and being disciplined about how we spent our money.  But one time we got in a real jam.  We had been in Dallas about two months when our only car broke down and it needed $400.00 of repairs.  At that time before taxes I was making $11,250 per year and our rent for a furnished apartment was $320 per month.  In fact we were busted with no credit cards and luckily we had not obligated ourselves to cable TV and there were no cell phones so we did not have those expenses.  The challenge is after taxes we were bringing home about 75% of 1/12th of $11,250 which means we took home $703 per month except that they took out another 10% to participate in the employee stock plan which left us with $633 per month less rent which left us with $311 per month for everything else including tithing to our church.  So by now you get the picture.

Well we had three more days until payday and we had about $2.64 for food which we were extremely low on.  Now this was a test to see if you could really live on LOVE alone.  The only time we had to borrow money from my folks was this time and we paid them back in about 60 days.  We borrowed $400 and got the car back.  We walked to the convenience store pictured below and bought some items to make a pizza at home.  It all seemed live a game show or "Survivor" which is Russell and Karen Whiles favorite show.  We made it.

our convenience store in Dallas

That turned out to be one of our favorite stories and one of our great memories.

So what do you learn from the Osage?

• It really does take more than love to live.
• Love is all about the adventure of two people living together sharing challenges and creating memories.
• You really can live on less and I am really believing that less is more.  Think about it.

 Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com