The Art of Intentional Lifestyle Inflation

Over the past several years I’ve made a ton of short term sacrifices so I that I could create the life I wanted to be living. I was recently thinking about how the line items in my budget are way different now than what they are three years ago. And I realized – my sacrifices are starting to pay off!

I am all for practicing delayed gratification for the greater good. However, at a certain point when all those choices start to payoff you can transition into the life that you were working toward in the first place.

I’m to the point where I’m making way more money than I was three years ago, have no consumer debt, an investing plan, and large savings. Because of this I’ve been slowly allowing myself to increase my spending on the things that matter to me.

I like to think of this as intentional lifestyle inflation.

Here are some of the things I’ve slowly added into my budget.

A New House

I grew up in a house down a long driveway that sat right in the middle of the woods. Some of my best memories are of my brothers and me riding four wheelers, fishing, and making bonfires at the pond. I wanted my girls to have some of these memories too.

Earlier this year my husband and I found a deal we couldn’t pass up on a 19 acre property with a large farmhouse. The house is down a long driveway and right smack dab in the middle of the woods!

So far it has been great. The girls absolutely love walking through the property on a daily basis and I love that I can step out of my backdoor and be in nature. As far as a home and property is concerned I couldn’t ask for anything more.

The house, even though more expensive than our previous house, was well within our budget. We’ve even constructed an eight year pay-off plan for this home.

Animals

Next came animals. I’ll admit this was a little less planned out! (Well, just part of it.)

Since we now have a ton of room for animals to freely run and don’t have to worry about neighbors we’ve went from 1-9 animals pretty quickly.

We now have two dogs, five cats, and two rabbits.

To be fair the cats weren’t part of the plan. The previous owners of the house left the cats here so we just got stuck with them. On the Brightside they pretty much do their own thing all day and leave us be.

Everyone in my family is a huge animal lover. We plan to use this property to build our mini farm so many more animals will be added over the coming years.

Activities for the Girls

I used to only let my kids do a very limited number of activities because of budget constraints. Now, I’ve instead been letting them try out different sports so they can figure out what they enjoy most.

So far we’ve done gymnastics, t-ball, and today will be the first day of cheerleading.

(These sports are not all at the same time. I wouldn’t be able to handle that!)

Both of my girls are completely different. I don’t want to force them into an activity. Instead, I’ve just been giving them option to try things. (They passed up on soccer, for instance.) And from there we can figure out what they like the best and then go back down to 1-2 activities per girl.

I am super grateful that I’m now in a position where I can let them try out many different activities.

Intentional Lifestyle Inflation is Not a Bad Thing

Intentional lifestyle inflation is not a bad thing. I’m not recklessly spending more money – I’m spending money with a plan, based on what’s important to me.

I think it’s easy to get trapped into the save, save, save mindset. But money should be used as tool to create a better life and that’s what I intend to keep on doing.