163 | Luxury Living on a Budget

There’s a common perspective that spending on luxury and being financially responsible are mutually exclusive. But that’s not the case at all.

It’s possible to spend on luxury in a financially responsible way to make sure you’re still able to achieve your goals.

In this episode, let’s talk about spending on luxury, including some ways that I have incorporated luxury spending throughout my financial journey.

• two views of luxury and financial responsibility
• spending on luxury items
• spending on services
• spending on experiences
• the key to spending on luxury in a financially responsible way

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If you’re ready to learn the mindset and strategies to master your money, learn how to work with me here.

You’re listening to Wealthyesque. We are a community of lawyers who believe that true wealth is having control of our time. I’m Rho Thomas, and as a busy wife, mom, and former Biglaw associate, I know all too well the tension between the culture of the legal profession and pretty much everything else you want to do in life. That’s why each week, I’m bringing you the information and tools you need to improve your money mindset and manage your money to create true wealth. Because ultimately, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and flexibility the money affords.

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. Today we are talking about spending on luxury. And let me preface this conversation by saying that luxury is whatever it means to you. So it doesn’t necessarily have to mean luxury designers or specific things. It can be that but it can also be just the little things that you don’t need, but that make life a little bit better or easier or that bring you joy. There is this view that buying luxury things or spending on luxurious things generally is frivolous, and it’s financially irresponsible. I was in this forum once and a woman posted about wanting to buy a Celine bag like a designer purse, and there were many people who were like giving her suggestions and things like that because she hadn’t 100% decided that she wanted to get that one. And then there were other people who were saying that that was frivolous. Now she waste her money in that kind of thing. And there is a similar view, maybe it’s the other side of that view is this belief that if you have a budget, if you’re managing your money while you’ve got your money together, then you must not be doing or spending on luxury type things. So remember, I posted once about building wealth and budgeting and somebody commented something to the effect of like you can’t ball when you’re on a budget, and I just disagree with that view because I believe that you can fall on a budget and actually if you have a budget and that’s the perfect way to ball right like you plan how you’re gonna spend your money. And if you decide that you want to spend on luxury things, then you can do that. I think this whole view that luxury and financial responsibility don’t mix lead to so many people feeling guilty about the things that they spend their money on or the things that they want to spend their money on. Like if I were financially responsible then I wouldn’t be buying this, but it also leads to some people judging other people for their choices like the post with the girl who wanted to buy the bag. But that’s not necessary right. As I say all the time. It all comes down to using your money intentionally. So if you’re into luxury to some extent like many of my clients are like I am, that’s okay. You just want to be strategic about how you spend on those things just like anything else, so you don’t throw yourself off track with your financial goals. So you can spend on luxury items and experiences in a financially responsible way. You can be financially responsible and spent on luxury things. The two are not mutually exclusive. We paid off almost $500,000 of debt between 2016 and 2021. And we have built our net worth from negative $342,000 to positive six figures. We’re working our way to a million dollar network. And along the way, we have incorporated luxury in different ways in our lives. We’ve done it differently at different points of our journey, but we’ve always been able to do it. So I wanted to share just a few examples of what that has looked like for us over the years. So you can see how you can be financially responsible and still spend on luxury things. The first one is my very first luxury designer purchase. A lot of my clients are surprised to learn that my very first purchase from a luxury brand was while we were in the middle of our debt journey. It was a pair of heels from Valentino. And the way I did it was using my fun money account. So if you’re not familiar with that concept, my husband and I each get a set amount of money each month to spend whatever we want however we want no questions asked and I saved mine over a number of months and like 2017 or 2018 or something like that to buy those shoes. This is the same account that I’ve used to buy other designer things over the years and I’m not into luxury designers at the level that some people are like there are some people who collect luxury bags and shoes and stuff like that. I’m not at that level like I have a few things but I do both kind of the high low aesthetic. The next one is hiring a cleaning company to clean our house. We did this after we had our second child because it felt like we were working all week and then we were spending all day on Saturday trying to clean and it was tough with two kids two and under. Plus we just wanted to spend more time with them. And a lot of my co workers had people who clean their houses and they were surprised we were still cleaning ours. I was surprised at how affordable it was. And I was thinking that it was way more expensive than that and when I tell you it was the best investment like they came in they clean the house from top to bottom and less time and it was taking us to do just one floor and we have stuck with them ever since. So cleaning. Having a cleaning company to clean our house like outsourcing that was a great investment and one of the ways that we spent on luxury. The next one is taking vacations. So even before we finished paying off our student loans, we still took vacations. You don’t have to have your finances completely in order to take trips. We did so differently back when we’re still paying off our debt. But we still did it. So we took vacations in places that we could drive to. We stayed in Airbnb stuff like that. So it wasn’t that expensive. Since paying off our student loans. We have a lot more money to play with to be able to incorporate more luxury into that travel. So we usually take two major ish vacations a year like two week long or so vacations and we set money aside in the months between vacations to be able to pay for those trips. We will now spend a little extra to flag Delta comfort like I like the space. I like getting on the plane first and being able to sit down and get settled especially when we’re talking with our kids. I like not having to worry about whether I have to check my carry on like all of that. We haven’t done first class yet. We went to California last year my husband wanted to do first class but of course the kids were older now they need their own tickets. And we were looking at a flight to flight school. We’re gonna be like $11,000 And we were like, No, we’re not doing that. Along the same lines, I like Uber Black, especially when I’m traveling by myself. I like that they are professional drivers, or at least in most cities. They’re professional drivers because I’ve learned that they’re apparently not in some cities, but also but also note that I live in Atlanta, so I drive a lot. I don’t live in a city where I take Uber all the time. I know some of my clients were in New York and DC use Uber and Lyft and stuff like that way more often. Like that’s one of their primary methods of getting around. And so since I drive, it’s not something like that a huge cost for me, right? It’s not something that I do often. If I were in one of those cities where I was taking it more often. Maybe I wouldn’t do like every time I don’t know, but I account for that higher cost and planning our travel spending so that I can spend without worrying about the additional cost. So those are just a few examples of how we have incorporated luxury over the years from physical items like the shoes to services like our cleaning service, you know stuff it just makes life easier to experiences like our vacations and I will say here that I don’t believe in the whole philosophy that you’re wasting our money when you buy stuff like you should only spend on experiences. I like to buy some stuff and that’s okay. It’s okay if you like stuff to overall the point is that it’s not categorically irresponsible to spend on luxury things. In fact, when you are financially responsible and you manage your money, well, it makes it easier to spend on those things. It’s all about balance. So you don’t want to have a Chanel bag and $20 in your account. You don’t want to go to brunch and all the best places and be stressed about which credit card has enough space left to pay for it. You don’t want to have amazing vacation experiences and be scared to open your bills after. Instead, you want to incorporate luxury into your spending plan at whatever level you’re able to. That way you make sure that you’re not taking yourself completely off track from your financial goals. When you are indulging in luxury spending. And if luxury isn’t for you, that’s fine too. But luxury and financial responsibility are not mutually exclusive. That is the whole point of this conversation. And listen, if this view on spending is interesting to you, you want to learn more about how to manage money the way that I do I invite you to come work with me. I’m opening a membership group where we’ll be talking all about topics like this one, so head to rho thomas.com/waitlist. To learn more and to get on the waitlist so that you don’t miss it. All right, that is it for this week’s episode. Come connect with me over on social media. You can find me most often on LinkedIn rho Thomas and Instagram at I am rho Thomas. Subscribe to the show and we review both of which help more people to find it and please think of a friend or to look at us as information and share the episode with them. As we close out friend I pray that you take the information you learn here, apply it in your life and open up to the realization that wealth is available to you. As you do that consistently. Week after week. You’ll continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth and live a life of freedom choice you deserve. Talk to you later.