10 Inspirational People Who Live Kick-Ass Lives by Rejecting Lifestyle Inflation
Real examples of how great life can be when you prioritize living over stuff
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“Sleep-Well-at-Night Finance series” essay list
If You Want "Sleep-Well-at-Night" Finances, Stop Listening to The Noise™
You CAN Live an Incredible Life on a Relatively Small Amount of Money
Use the "5 Pillars Rule" to Change Your Relationship with Money Forever
For the last installment of this Sleep-Well-at-Night-Finances series, I was determined to talk about lifestyle inflation but I wasn’t sure how to approach it in a way that you won’t have heard before.
The usual “don’t inflate your lifestyle when you get a pay raise” schtick is important - perhaps the most important topic in personal finance - but there is already so much written about it all over the internet.
IMO, the most impactful way to prove a point is to use real-life stories. So I thought - who do I know who has made a success of their life — whatever that means to them — by rejecting lifestyle inflation?
10 of my friends and family immediately came to mind. People who have achieved everything from realizing their entrepreneurial dreams to traveling to giving their lives to the service of others.
Before we get into it…
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10 Inspirational People Who Live Kick-Ass Lives by Rejecting Lifestyle Inflation
1. Steve the all-American-boy-turned-Croatian zealot
Steve is the guy who during college assumed he would grow up and do the usual. Get married, get a job, have a kid, and move up both the housing and career ladder. After all, that’s what everyone else around him was doing.
That is until he started to travel in his twenties. In his mid-thirties, he found his place - Croatia. It pulled him in and hasn’t yet let him go. He swapped suburbia for Zagreb and found his peace and happiness in a small, simple existence filled with everything Croatia.
He tells me he’s never been happier.
2. Andrew the opera singer
Andrew has a voice loud enough and strong enough to fell a tree. He has sung in some of the most famous Opera houses in London but by his own admission, the job isn’t particularly stable. You can be out of work for weeks or even months at a time, such is the nature of a freelancing singer.
He manages to live his career dreams because he bought a small, cheap one-bedroomed apartment in an unfashionable part of London some years ago. He’s now in his fifties, still in that small apartment, still singing with a passion.
3. J-one the explorer
J-one is my best friend. She lives with her husband T-one and little baby, Tiny One. Tiny One is just 6 months old and is about to go on her first round-the-world trip, traveling for 6 weeks around Indonesia and Thailand.
The three of them live in a rent-controlled one-bedroomed apartment in one of the cooler parts of Berlin. They don’t have a lot of money but they do have the determination and a strong desire to expose Tiny One to as much travel as possible as young an age as possible.
All made possible by that cheap one-bedroomed apartment.
4. My little brother the wedding photographer
Although I think my brother would like to inflate his lifestyle a little bit, he hasn’t because his wedding photography comes first. I’ve — of course — known this dude since day one and I have never seen him more confident or happy than when he is behind the camera.
He’s prioritized that feeling over a lot of other temptations from a bigger house to a fancier car.
5. Rocco the Never-Retiree
You probably know
's work - we promote each other a lot. He's a guy who has eschewed lifestyle inflation for a life he actually wants. That life includes travel, living in cities, and writing for a living.He knows traditional retirement isn’t going to be an option for him — as it won’t for so many — so he’s decided to work less hard for longer in a job he loves, thus affording him a pretty sweet life for the duration.
6. Jess the Aussie-turned-Spaniard
Jess was working through the ranks of her job in Melbourne when they offered her the chance to move to their Spanish branch. It meant taking a pay cut, moving away from everyone she knew, and downgrading her Australian house to a one-bedroomed apartment in a small Spanish town.
It wasn’t an easy decision, but she decided to go for it and see what Spain had to offer.
It turns out it offered her a new way of life complete with a new partner, friends, and experiences. Although at times it’s stressful for her (moving abroad is never plain sailing) it’s always exciting and life-affirming.
She’s has no plans to return to Australia any time soon.
7. My parents the OGs
I don’t have to look far for inspiration about what’s possible if you stick the middle finger up to lifestyle inflation - I only have to look at my parents.
In the 90s they bought a small house and lowered all their fixed costs in order to fulfill their dreams - my mother as an artist and my father as a charity worker in Romanian orphanages.
Whilst they didn’t always get it right (they’ll be the first to admit the scales occasionally tipped towards deprivation), they still managed to live the lives they wanted by keeping costs low.
In their late seventies, my mother is still painting and my father is still teaching English in Albania. Which just goes to show - you can reject lifestyle inflation at any age.
8. Graham the Georgian
OK, he’s not quite Georgian but he has lived in the country for the last 5 years. Graham is my husband’s oldest friend and both of them lived in Britain’s most lifestyle-inflation-obsessed region - Essex. In that part of the world, the pressure to buy fancy houses, cars, clothes, and everything else was all-encompassing. But not for Graham.
Instead of following his classmates and securing a job in insurance or banking in order to make the dollar dollar, Graham moved to Georgia (the country) and opened a crayfish restaurant.
Because when you don’t have huge outgoings, you can do batshit crazy things like open crayfish restaurants.
9. Lawrence the Podcaster
Lawrence realized that London was eating him — and his wine podcasting business — alive thanks to the high cost of living.
So he moved to one of his favorite places in the world in Eastern Europe specifically so he could a) integrate into his local wine community and b) keep his costs low in order to give his business breathing space.
Where he lives is cheap - very cheap. But instead of taking advantage of that to “live like a king,” he still lives simply because he has prioritized his business.
And it’s thriving because of this.
10. Shawn the Queen of Tapas
Shawn is Canadian-born but moved to Seville in Spain in 1993.
She is known as the Queen of Tapas and will show you an excellent food-stuffed time in Seville. She has made food her life, starting a tapas tour company from scratch, all made possible because — you guessed it — she keeps her outgoings as low as possible.
This is the last installment of Sleep-Well-At-Night-Finances.
Next week, we’re moving onto an 8-week series called “Unbusy Yourself.” Particularly pertinent as Christmas and the New Year rolls around.
Ill see y’all next week.