I Would Rather Have No Payment

Nadine has not had a car payment since 2017 and she would like everybody to understand that this is on purpose.

She has done the arithmetic. She knows what a newer car would cost her a month, and she knows what her current one costs her a year in repairs, and the second number is smaller, and even in the years when it has not been smaller she has preferred the shape of it.

Because a repair is a thing that happens sometimes and a payment is a thing that happens every single month whether anything has gone wrong or not, and Nadine would rather have a bad March than a payment on the first of every month for four years.

That is a preference. It is not a limitation. She could get a payment tomorrow if she wanted one.

And here is what she has never once managed to say out loud in a conversation.

Because when it comes up, and it comes up perhaps five times a year, the shape of the conversation is always the same. Somebody says something kind about how she really ought to get herself something newer, and there is a small assumption sitting underneath it, and the assumption is that she cannot.

And Nadine, rather than correcting that, says: yeah, one day.

Every time. For eight years.

She says it because correcting it would mean saying actually I prefer this, and that sentence sounds, when she rehearses it, like a woman making the best of something, which is the exact thing she is trying not to be taken for.

So the true sentence sounds like the false one, and she says nothing, and everybody in her life believes she is stuck.

Her sister said in the spring, with real affection, "When you get on your feet a bit, we'll go look at cars."

And Nadine said, "Yeah, one day."

And her sister squeezed her arm.

And Nadine drove home with no payment due on the first of anything and felt, briefly and confusingly, poor.

A preference that keeps getting heard as a limitation

Let me put down what I am not doing, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to tell you that old cars are always the wiser choice. Sometimes they are not, and the arithmetic goes the other way for plenty of households, and this site does not sell one answer.

And I am not going to guess at what your car needs. Anything that shows up in it goes to somebody qualified with it in front of them, and a preference for no payment is not a preference for driving something unsafe.

What I want to look at is the eight years of yeah, one day.

You have not been left to arrange your own security, and Scripture says He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. Hebrews 13 puts that sentence directly against the love of money as the reason a person can be content with what they have, and the Spirit of God is what makes that a fact about eight years of a car that keeps going.

Here is the verse, and the word people skip is the one that changes it.

But godliness with contentment is great gain.1 Timothy 6:6

Gain.

Not: contentment is an acceptable substitute for gain. Not: contentment is what you settle into when gain does not arrive. Paul uses the commercial word, the profit word, the one his readers used about a transaction that came out ahead.

He is not consoling anybody. He is making a claim about what actually adds up.

And the context sharpens it, because a few verses earlier he is warning about people who suppose that gain is godliness, meaning people who measure a life by what it has accumulated. Against that, he says: here is the real gain, and it is godliness with contentment.

Which means contentment is not the consolation prize in that passage. It is the thing being recommended as the better position.

You are not making the best of something, and Scripture calls contentment gain rather than a substitute for it. It is written that godliness with contentment is great gain, which uses the profit word deliberately, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a real description of a woman with no payment on the first.

You have been living inside the thing Paul actually recommends and describing it as what you are stuck with. 1 Timothy 6 sets contentment against accumulation as the better arithmetic, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that a settled fact rather than a way of feeling better.

Say what you actually prefer

Here is the practical thing, and it is one sentence and it is going to feel strange the first time.

The next time it comes up, do not say yeah, one day.

Say: Honestly, I like not having a payment. It suits me.

Fourteen words. And here is what they do that the rehearsed version does not.

They lead with I like, which is a preference, and a preference cannot be argued with. Nobody can tell a person they do not like something.

They give a reason that is about fit rather than about money. It suits me is not a defense and it is not an explanation, and it does not invite anybody to check whether her circumstances qualify.

And they are true, which means they will come out easily, whereas anything constructed usually does not.

What that sentence will not do is stop people offering. Some of them will keep offering, because offering is how they love her. But the assumption underneath it changes, quietly, and after two or three times it changes for good.

You have permission to state your own preference, and no verse anywhere requires a person to accept somebody else's reading of their life. 1 Timothy 6 puts contentment on the gain side of the ledger, and the Spirit of God is what makes fourteen honest words an act of agreement with that rather than a defense.

And I want to say the thing about the drive home, because that is the part that costs.

She felt poor. Briefly. In a car she owns outright, with nothing due on the first, driving home from a conversation with somebody who loves her.

That feeling was not information. It was the residue of a sentence she did not correct, and it will keep arriving as long as the correcting does not.

You were never poor in that car, and Scripture puts the accounting somewhere no monthly figure can reach. It is written that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth, which is Luke 12 stating the measure plainly, and His Spirit is what makes that steadier than a feeling on a drive home.