My husband and I bought our first house for its resale value. We drove an old junk car, but it was paid for.  We shopped garage sales and Goodwill, and in general just did without.

A few years later, we sold that house and used the equity to buy a piece of land. We then lived in a $2000 motor home with our two children while we built the house, since that was the only way we could afford it.

We chose to put our money into structural and long term aspects of the house. And although ugly, we bought the cheapest lighting, baseboards, and door jambs as those are easy to replace later. We moved in one month before our third child was born.  For most of the first year there, we had virtually no furniture. We still haven't replaced the cheap surface aspects of the house, but some day we will. 

All this sacrifice turned out to be more worthwhile than we expected. When the bad economy hit, we were still right-side-up in our house loan and had a low payment thanks to the nice-sized down payment and the low original price of the house.

The irony is we've had quite a few people comment with envy about how much we have. But they are people who would never even consider doing the stuff we have done  -- people who would never live in a rundown motor home, drive an ugly, yet reliable, car, or who would never consider putting cheap imitation wood baseboard in their brand new house. They don't seem to make the connection between the difficult decisions we made and the fact that we have more than they do.

How does all this feel? Good, very good. I look around me at my five-acre "kingdom" and I'm very pleased and grateful to God for His wisdom in our lives.

Roberta