Make Money By Simplifying Your Life

So my wife and I are leaning towards interning at the World Hunger Farm for a year. They teach sustainable agriculture and development from a Christian perspective. We would gain some skills that would help us get involved with organizations doing this kind of work around the world.

There’s a catch though. This internship is not paid. That means a family of four living on a farm for a year with zero income. So we’ve been going over the finances and subsequently increasing our stress levels and blood pressure. This is where I find it hard to figure out the difference between stepping out in faith and making a bad decision.

As I’ve been trying to figure out possibilities for extra income and how to make this work, I realized that the best solution so far is ridiculously simple.

Be a full-time stay-at-home dad.

It blows my mind that we would make more money by reducing our expenses than by adding income. It costs more to send two kids to day care than any job I can get on short notice to make some extra money. This is the problem with our mentality about finances and life…this includes food. We have a one track mind that asks, “How can I make enough money to fund the life to which I’ve become accustomed?” We (even me) forget to question the lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed.

It turns out we also have a lot of junk that we could sell for some pretty good cash, like camping gear and nice bikes that we rarely use. I’m going to be putting a lot of this stuff on craigslist soon. I will post links for those of you with lots of disposable income and time to use the gear collecting dust in my house.

How have you or could you make money by simplifying your life?