luxury

How to Live in Luxury… Even on a Budget

Angela Manning Finance , ,
How to Live in Luxury… Even on a Budget

Maybe you’ve been in this situation before: you feel like you deserve a lifestyle upgrade, either because you are overworked or you just need some luxury in your life, but the only issue is your income isn’t aligned with those aspirations. Conventional wisdom would say that you need to save up – demarcate certain luxury goals, like a vacation, new vehicle or fancy dinners, and start putting money toward them.

The only problem there is that you want to live in luxury now, not later when you have the money. Thankfully, there are a few easy ways to add a little luxury in your life without emptying your wallet. Consider these your hacks for living like a rich person while you earn a normal wage.

Lease Your Luxury Car

You may not be able to buy a Benz or a Bentley, but you may be able to lease one, especially if it’s used. Because leases only make you pay monthly for the cost of depreciation during the lease term, and because a car does a significant amount of its depreciating in the first couple years, you can find used luxury cars at industry-leading lease prices for low monthly payments.

Learn to Cook

When eating out at fancy restaurants, the vast majority of what you pay for is the service of the wait staff and the time and expertise of the chef. But if you learn to cook like a chef, you can eat restaurant-quality food, with fantastic ingredients, every night of the week. You’re probably saying, ‘that sounds too hard’, and no one can fault you for being sceptical, but there is a wealth of resources online – through YouTube tutorials, recipe and technique blogs and forums – that can help you fast track becoming a better cook.

Consider Product Testing

Get paid to get things. That sounds way too good to be true, but it is the exact job description of an at-home product tester. Through a product testing agency, you are given a number of different products to test that correspond to your demographic – could be electronics, could be games, could be beauty products. You use the products, review them, photograph them, and then (usually) you get to keep them. Plus, it pays a competitive rate and you can do it while you’re doing your other job. It really is a good hack for getting free stuff.

Join a Mistake Fare Finder

Need a vacation, but can’t justify spending an exorbitant amount on international flight? Luckily, every so often, airlines will post what is called a “mistake fare” – essentially, a fare they post in error that is far cheaper than the normal price. For instance, New York to Shanghai might be $1300 normally, but reduced to only $700. These fares are notoriously hard to find in the wild, but there are “mistake fare finders” that use computer programs to comb for low prices. You can sign up for mistake fare finders online, either through an email newsletter or by joining a Facebook group.

Who says you need to spend lavishly to live luxuriously? With a few clever hacks, you can live like a king on the pay of a pauper.

Living in Luxury; It’s All A Brain Trick

Angela Manning Health ,
Living in Luxury; It’s All A Brain Trick

Source: Unsplash

Living in luxury is something that many people aspire to do. There are those who easily find themselves surrounded by luxurious items and there are some that have to do a lot of work to get the luxuries that they have. There are those that can do a little searching online with sites like Modvisor.com and find thrifty ways to obtain a little luxury here and there in their life. No matter the method on how we obtain our luxuries, there is some science behind why everyone in some way craves a little luxury in their life. That’s right, even our wants for the finer things in life start in our head by our brains sending signals based on many different things we have experienced.

One of the things that our heads naturally do is assume that because something has a higher price tag, it is better than those similar things that cost less. I know it sounds a little absurd that our brains act like that, but it is very true. There have been many studies done on this very subject. For example, a large group of people were rating the flavor of wines they were tasting based only on the price tag on the bottle of wine. The bottles that had higher price tags were rated as having a better taste. The study has also been done where high price tags were put on cheaper bottles of wine and the bottles priced higher and were rated as better than those with lower prices, when in reality the wines with the lower prices were actually the more expensive wines.

The same theory is true for high fashion clothing. Our brains naturally associate better quality with higher prices and name brands. We not only associate quality with these things, but high price tags and popular brands also make us feel more luxurious. There is an extra bounce in a woman’s step when she puts on a pair of shoes made by an exclusive designer. This bounce comes from us hearing through so many types of advertising that these things are what the stars are wearing. It tricks our brain into feeling like we are richer than we actually are. Men and women alike are affected by little tricks like this. You can put two men in an identical suit, but if one carried the Armani label and the other had no label at all, the man in the labeled suit would feel more important, even if the only difference in the other suit was that the labels had been removed.

This doesn’t only extend to things such as wine and clothes. There are things around us every day that can affect how luxurious we feel. There is nothing out there like the feel of driving a brand new car. However, we feel completely different behind the wheel of a Lexus than we do driving a brand new Chevrolet. What is even more interesting is that we can be driving a used Lexus and still feel more luxurious than we would driving a new Chevrolet. It all comes with how our brain reacts to hearing the word “Lexus.” It is automatically associated with money and luxury; whereas, most people associate “Chevrolet” with a simple car or truck.

This need for luxury spreads everywhere in our life. All over our homes, we have electronics and many of us are very brand specific in the things that we purchase. This is because we have heard those brands are better and are of higher quality than the brands that cost less. From things like the cell phones in our pockets to the computers we use in our homes, and the appliances we use in our kitchen; we choose these items many times based on the brand name and price alone without doing much comparison for lower priced items. Our brains naturally think that because they cost more, they must be better.

There really is nothing sacred when it comes to how our minds react to luxury. However, it even works on the smallest things in life. Name brand products at the grocery store just make us feel better than if we buy off-brand products, even though many times the items are made by the very same manufacturer. The only difference is the label that is slapped on the side of the packaging. This isn’t only groceries though, we feel the same about cleaning products, office merchandise, or even the plates and glasses we eat off of.