I have just read the story of Victoria Hunt on the mobile website of the Huffington Post which has simply blown me away! She is a 51 years old self-made millionaire with several houses, stocks and other investments in Columbus, Ohio. She is so cheap that she pees in a bottle and then, empties it in her garden, so as to shave a couple dollars off her monthly water bill! She has her freezer on a timer so it only runs 12 hours a day and takes showers at her gym to save electricity and water. She also dumpster dives and forages for food, sometimes even in her front yard. She eats some of the weeds in her garden and now picks her own dandelion roots for herbal tea, instead of paying $8 per box. Her main hobby is to gather, both in dumpsters and in the forest, things like coins or boxes of fresh pastries and cakes! All in all, bills, groceries and even health insurance included, she lives on just $12,000 per year.
But it was not always like that. 25 years ago, she was a single mother living in a trailer park and receiving government assistance. So, to be sure she will never be poor again, she enjoys being frugal and saving money. She stopped working 3 years ago; but before that, she was driving a 16-year-old Corolla with broken windows, and admits that a lot of people made fun of her.
There is no argument that she is one of the worst cheapskates ever. However, she also reminds me of the brother of the prodigal son who lived like a slave in the middle of abundance. You can read what I wrote about this here. True greatness begins in the mind. You are truly great when there is no longer any smallness in you and you do nothing at a mini or micro scale. How can you have millions in the bank and you gather in dumpsters or eat your landscape weeds? She could be eating in restaurants and giving generous tips; or she could be providing a job to someone by hiring a chef who will cook for her; but she is not doing that. She finds a sense of security and peace in saving money, forgetting that in today’s USA, banks are no longer safe: we saw it in 2008.
Likewise, at some point in the desert, the children of Israel were frustrated and started crying and craving for meat saying: “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.” (Num 11:5) Cucumbers? Melons? Leeks? Garlic? Come on! These are people who left Egypt rich (Ex 12:35-36); and not only that, they were en route to abundance. Later on, in spite of the fact that they had God Almighty, the God of Hosts with them, they chickened out in front of a couple of giants. Just like Miss Hunt, they suffered from a fear of lack syndrome: fear that money may lack; fear that power to back them up would lack…
We may stumble unto prosperity; but we will never really enjoy it if our mindset is not free and ‘prosperous’. It is an anointing in which one flows. You see it in the spirit, you become one with it in the spirit, it comes, and then, you naturally enjoy it and flow in it.
May God bless you as you conduct yourself with greatness.
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