What happens when your hobby catapults you into an amazing and lucrative career? How would life change if you struck it rich, hit the big-time and found yourself transformed into a major star?

For Lori McKenna, 39, who writes and performs country anthems for penny-stretching women, the greatest dividend of unexpected fortune has simply been relief from worry. Sure, this mother of five, who dropped out of community college because she didn’t feel comfortable being a pregnant student, has traded up to a bigger house in her sleepy hometown of Stoughton, Mass. Plus, she swapped her Ford Windstar for a Toyota Sienna. But furs and Ferraris are not even in the mix.

Lori and her husband, Gene, “aren’t really motivated by money. Family is more important to them than anything else,” explains Lori’s father, Frank Giroux, 73, who lives nearby.

DIY Dollar Saving

With some edits, [her song “Unglamorous“] pretty much reflects the warmth and chaos of the McKenna household. Lori, who last year traded up to a 10-year-old, 2,800-square-foot colonial home in Stoughton, still does three loads of wash a day and scrubs the toilets of the four bathrooms. (”I’m not good at outsourcing,” she concedes.)

Her friends shiver under the refrigerator-like conditions of the new McKenna manse, but having lived in a modest house with a wood-burning stove, she says with a laugh, “I acclimated to the cold. We still keep the heat at 65 degrees!” The family is more likely to eat courtesy of Lori’s six-quart Crock-Pot than to indulge in filet mignon or other fancy food. “I can make a beef stew in that thing that will feed us for three nights,” she brags.

Lori is aided and abetted in thriftiness by her husband, Gene, who goes through the big new house unscrewing the recessed lights he deems superfluous. Lori, her father confides, is “pretty good” at saving and managing money, but Gene “is even better.”

Lori had hoped that the sudden income torrent her career triggered would lift the breadwinner weight off Gene’s shoulders, “but he still worked 75 hours of overtime last year” at the gas company where he is employed, says Lori. “That’s two weeks! He’s just a worker.”

For the complete article, check out the March 4 issue of Quick & Simple magazine or visit quickandsimple.com.