Lifestyle Inflation

Why everyone stays sad despite making more money?

Do you know the story people tell you about how any amount of money will never be enough? If you have a house, you want a bigger house and then an even bigger one. This article is about this phenomenon.

Concept

Lifestyle inflation (Lifestyle creep) is a phenomenon that occurs when as more resources are spent towards the standard of living, former luxuries become perceived necessities.

Basically, what is a luxury today will become a necessity the moment you become habituated to it.

This is the reason why many people stay sad no matter how much they earn.

Introspection

The reason behind this phenomenon is that we compare our future to today and we always want our future to be better than today. This means you have to always keep doing more and more every day and continue to be like a hamster on a wheel who will stay on the wheel no matter how fast he runs.

Solution

To escape this cycle, you must develop a mindset to not relate materialist things to long-term happiness. A big car is just 1 month of happiness and then it will only become your car. Instead of using materials as a source of happiness use people as a source of happiness because this is the only source that is unlimited. Spend time with people, help them, take help, listen to their sorrows, share your sorrows, and so on.

I know this sounds like teaching from a holy book. So I have a solution for all the young readers.

This solution is — A decade of frugality

You have to spend 10 years with the exact same level of comforts you have today i.e. no extra luxuries for the next 10 years.

This means, if you use a 15k phone today then you will only use phones worth 15k

If you drive a 5 lakh car today then you will drive a 5 lakh car for the next 10 years (not the same car but same value).

Mathematically, this way your expenses will remain the exact same for 10 years.

Benefits

· More savings going into long term investments

· Learning how you can stay happy even at your present level of comfort

· Change source of happiness from things to people