Skip to main content

Are you falling into a lifestyle trap?

You can also read this on BeingFinWise
__

 Almost everyone wants to have an amazing lifestyle - with best possible food in best possible places, awesome travel destinations, a swanky car, few trending gadgets, elite memberships and many other symbols which can proudly announce- "I have arrived".

 Yet a lot of us get so obsessed with chasing this lifestyle that before we realize, we are on a downward spiral and caught in the vortex of lifestyle trap. This becomes more pronounced when our income/ sources of earning fails to keep pace with lifestyle inflation led spending.

 And this is a sure shot sign of you falling into lifestyle trap. The best step to avoid chasing lifestyle. The next best option is to realize that you are falling into this trap.

 Here are five signs that you are falling into a lifestyle trap.
  • You are looking to upgrade your "I have arrived" possessions like iPhone, car, Fitbit etc. rather too  frequently. And often when you don't even need them or exiting one would more than suffice.
  • Your definition of affordability is characterized by easy access to loan. For instance you can "afford" to upgrade your car to Honda City because you are eligible for something like Rs. 999,999 car loan.
  • You have made more than half serious inquiry or even taken a personal loan for funding your day to day wants and desires, something you could have done without.
  • You are short of cash since few days before the salary day, thanks to the ongoing end of season fashion sale, eating out 5 days a week, attending expensive concerts etc. And alongside, you are also probably wondering how will you manage to pay your credit card bill in full.
  • Any rise in income is followed by a disproportionate increase in expenses because - you have "arrived"  in life.
While chasing a good lifestyle is not something that I should be sermonizing about, but if chasing this lifestyle has some serious long term financial implications, maybe you need to rethink.

 It's better to prevent falling into lifestyle trap rather than looking for solutions when it is late and may come at a cost.

Comments

Post a Comment

Shop @ Amazon

Popular posts from this blog

We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented

(Disclaimer: I am NOT justifying any action or behavior. I am just speculating why people usually act so) _________________________________________________________ “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented” – The Truman Show (a 1998 movie starring Jim Carrey) The above line explains a great deal about why we hold on to some beliefs as gospel truths, and form our judgment about things and act in a specific pattern. This movie (which I feel is still quite under-rated!) had Jim Carrey, a person whose entire life had been a live, non-stop, unedited television show. He lived in a world which was completely artificial; everything, everyone knew that everything were fake. But the person was real. His emotions were real. He was conditioned to a certain realities of world, and believed in it. The makers of the show did not want to show him what the ‘actual’ world was. He was made not to want to explore the outside world, made to fear things that could have led him ...
5 comments
Read more

Da Vinci code : The movie

Yet another weekend comes Yet another weekend is about to be squandered doing nothing ... But this time, I managed to watch a movie, the much awaited 'da vinci code'. Was quite disappointed when the controversies surrounding it managed to postpone the release of the movie by about a week. But this weekend, I managed to watch it - adding to the list of very few Hollywood movies I have seen. Having read the book, I was more excited to see the movie, and with Tom Hanks, The excitement was even more. So there I was, seated at a not-so-good-yet-expensive multiplex. I am making an assumption that most of the people who are watching the movie would have read the book. I may be wrong. Maybe, many of us old be tempted to believe the 'facts(???)' stated in the movie(in fact the book), we usually love what is spicy, especially if it is said with such conviction as in the book, where the demarcation between the 'fact' and 'fiction' are not exactly distinguishable. D...
Post a Comment
Read more

Law of increasing competition !

"The first step of reaching the top is getting through the crowd at the bottom" How often we think to cross one level of competition, and be assured that rest of the going would be smooth, just to realize that competion has just increased ! As a child we often didn't know what we are headed for. Later on we make a decision, usually the one that would lead to something more comfortable later in life, or colloquially "do this, then there is fultoo aish". As a child I used to think that if I get good grades in school, life would be comfortable. Maybe comfortable meant "bed of roses" to me. In engineering, all the old school style of competition seemed somewhat trivial ! Bt still there is a big fight to get those coveted jobs, but again, on reaching "there", we often end up realizing that just to be ahead of the crowd, you have to compete a lot. During those job/graduation days it is a dream to get into any of the coveted b schools leading to a w...
1 comment
Read more

Games Students play

It is not about sports like soccer, cricket or TT; nor about some indoor games like chess or computer games. How often we hear words which on surface convey a simple meaning but deep inside the meaning may be totally different ?!. It is about these ‘games’. Formally defined, games are a form of ulterior transaction, and which leads to a definite payoff. Ulterior transaction is the one, which on surface may appear to be completely normal and without any hidden “trick”, but at psychological level it may mean something totally different. For example it may appear as if an adult is talking to an adult (adult – adult transaction), but at psychological level the ‘adult’ speaker may be talking to a child (adult-child transaction). (No more technical jargons from now onwards!) How often we hear the phrase “In US it isn’t so; actually there it is …” At the surface it may seem like a mature adult talking to another, stating plain facts. But at other level it is telling that “I have been to USA”....
1 comment
Read more

A matter of choice ...

You have 2 options, and you have complete freedom to choose any of these. Each option leads to an outcome which is one of those given below 1. You are happy and everyone believing that you are not and sympathising with you. 2. Everyone believing that you are happy, while in reality you are far being so. Which one will you choose ?
6 comments
Read more