When I was in elementary school, my dad packed my lunch everyday, so I rarely had the cafeteria food. I liked the homemade lunches, but I coveted the school food on Friday, when they always served pizza. When one of the other kids told me that the cafeteria had pizza on Fridays (always a choice of cheese or pepperoni) because Catholic kids couldn’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent, I had no idea what she was talking about.

Can this suburban family of four possibly SURVIVE with just one car?

I decided to take an extended break from alcohol to focus on other things. Here’s how my experiment went, and my surprising choice at the end!

I bike commuted for a year straight, rain or shine. Here’s what I learned.

A kitchen appliance adventure story.

I watched several episodes of Ramit Sethi’s popular podcast… here’s my review!

Four feathered members of the Sense family— Portobella, Henata, BachBach, and Rei

The secular FIRE movement is focused around living frugally to accumulate wealth. The culmination point is reaching a predetermined amount of money in investments, often determined using the 4% rule. Saving enough money to retire years ahead of society’s schedule takes discipline, and many within the movement struggle to switch gears once they actually get to the number they were aiming for the whole time. It’s easy to fall for the siren song that you’ll really be able to rest easy after one more year on the job or one more hundred thousand dollars of savings.

As we watch with sadness as our fellow humans in Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, and elsewhere struggle for basic needs and physical safety, we rightly feel gratitude to God for the beauty and security of our homes here. God’s plans for all our lives are greater than we can imagine, and those of us in places enjoying peace can only marvel at the blessings that surround us constantly, many of which we rarely take time to notice. One related blessing I don’t want to take for granted is the immense latitude I’ve been given to set priorities for myself; to tailor my surroundings to my preferences and set goals that I find meaningful and joyful.

I’ve kept busy with a few personal projects over the past couple months. Instead of some practical tips or a new way to talk about why retiring early is a worthy goal, here’s an update on what I’ve been up to.

Why do we weigh our expenses carefully, plan meals around our budget, and find creative ways to bump up our savings rate? The FIRE lifestyle is all about making conscious choices now so we can have access to more freedom later on. Many of us in this country are blessed beyond measure with opportunities to save aggressively enough to potentially retire early or pursue projects outside a traditional paying job. Financial independence, as I write about it on this blog, is about freedom to forgo paid employment earlier than normal, if you feel like it.

Let’s talk about Ephesians 5. (If you’ve attended a conservative church for any length of time, you know where I’m going with this!)

Our physical bodies are an amazing gift from God, but it’s easy to take them for granted. We eat a delicious dinner and the food is transformed within us into energy; we can breathe and move at the direction of tiny threads in our brains. We climb into bed after a long day, and our cells renew themselves while we rest. The very acts of eating, sleeping, and moving make us stronger and more resistant to disease and pain.

My dad read The Screwtape Letters to my sister and I when we were kids, and I’ve reread it a few times over the years. This letter, in which the devil’s undersecretary describes with horror the new love interest of the human “patient” his junior temptor nephew is responsible for, has always stood out to me. Screwtape’s description of the young woman is dismissive on the surface, but the reader can sense his fear of this woman and her family. What is it about these humans that inspires genuine fear in a powerful demon like Screwtape?

My lovesong to Aldi.

Weddings and frugality aren’t a popular combination. Bakeries and florists often add surcharges for products associated with weddings, and the list of expenses stretches on. But when I got married, years before I’d ever heard of FIRE or dreamt of retiring before sixty, I managed to have a wedding with all the traditional trappings for a minimal price tag, by today’s standards.

Kid Sense is seventeen now, and I’m thinking a lot about my parental responsibilities as she closes in on adulthood. Striking the right balance between supportive nurturing and encouraging independence is tough; every child is different, and they don’t come with instruction manuals.

On Wednesday, we run “the mile.”

At the middle school Mr. Sense and I attended, every student had to run the mile once a week in gym class. Even though Kid is homeschooled, we didn’t want her to miss out on this healthy/fun/terrible tradition. So once a week, all three of us trek to the track and run. We take turns, and the two waiting people time the runner and shout encouragement. We have a spreadsheet to track each person’s times, including individual lap times, so we can set goals and find patterns.

A special post for Father’s Day, from none other than Mammon Sense’s own dad!

Sometimes a home cooked family meal is just not going to happen, despite the best of intentions. So do we order take out? Of course not! Mr. Sense’s pride doesn’t allow for most prepared foods, but he enjoys tinkering with kid-friendly classics. Check out his churched up version of boxed mac and cheese, for those nights when no one remembered we needed groceries until 7:00pm.