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.

More than any other time of the year, the holidays are about tradition. Many country stars also have at least one thing they revisit every season that makes the holidays special — a food, a song, a visit to a special friend, you name it.
 
Jack Ingram has a classic gift-giving tradition: “On Christmas Eve, I listen to ‘Pretty Paper’ by Willie Nelson and wrap all the presents that should have been wrapped before Christmas Eve but aren’t,” he says. “Then I wait up all night to see if Santa Claus will come down the chimney. Then I wake up all the kids at 5 in the morning and ask, ‘Is it time yet?’”
 
Blake Shelton shares his holiday with a longtime country favorite. “About 15 years ago, I moved to Nashville and worked for Anne Murray’s publishing company,” he remembers. “While I was there I ‘borrowed’ one of her Christmas albums. It has become a Christmas tradition that I play the album every year. I don’t listen to a lot of Christmas albums, but Anne Murray tops my list every year.”

Sunny Sweeney remembers learning about giving during the Christmas seasons of her childhood. “When I was little, Momma and I would go deliver meals on wheels to people who couldn’t leave their houses,” she says. “We did that for years when it was just the two of us.”
 
Friends are a big part of the holidays for some artists. “It’s a tradition back home in North Carolina that, on every Christmas Eve, my family and I go to a close friend’s house, have dinner, and gather up all the kids — even the young ones — and play a game of hide-and-go-seek,” says Jimmy Wayne. “Sometimes it last for a few hours.”
 
Says singer-songwriter Lori McKenna, “My husband and the kids and I walk to my neighbors house every year for New Year’s. We like staying home on New Years Eve — and this is perfect because it’s a party where the kids are welcome and it is within walking distance, even in the snow.”
 
“When I get home to Georgia for Christmas and Thanksgiving, I go see a lot of buddies,” says Luke Bryan. “My dad has some land, and we’ll get a jeep and ride around and quail-hunt and talk and visit and hang out. It’s more of a social thing than hunting.”
 
That’s nice — just don’t shoot any reindeer!