Do You Know Anyone that Lives "Above Their Means" But In a Good Way?

[Shagnasty]

Let me explain what I mean by the title. This thread is about people that somehow lead a more luxurious life than their income would seem to allow. There are lots of tips and tricks to do that. This is not about going into debt to maintain a lifestyle. It is about figuring out to maintain the highest standard of living (by your own standards) that you can without going into debt.

This type of thing appeals to me. When I started looking for a house in the Boston area four years ago, I had very specific requirements. Most of you probably know that Boston real estate is insane much like San Francisco and a little better than NY. I still wanted it all including space, land, nice neighbors. etc. All of this had to cost less than $400,000. They said it was impossible. I found and bought the mother of all fixer-uppers. Here is the result. (http://maverickpace.com/v-web/gallery/album07/010_10) . It is a fully restored circa 1760 colonial on 2 1/2 acres. It is not the biggest or fanciest house around but the home itself and the land are spectacular and I know people with 4 times our income that don't have it as nice. I did take three years of near constant work to do though. It is not for most.

When I bought a car, I found that I could be a generic sedan new or I could find a BMW with 40,000 miles for the same price. I took the smooth ride. My wife had her BMW given to her as a work bonus.

We have friends all over the world and my wife is in an international buisness. We sometimes fly to Europe for a few days or a weekend. Usually, one of us gets a ticket purchased and we just buy another one for a few hundred dollars. Hosts buy meals and things while we are there. It is probably cheaper than firing up the minivan to take the family to Sheboygan.

I took the estimated $700 that it would take to buy a decent new computer and built one myself for the same money that is much better than anything offered at the time.

Everything I do is like this. Does anyone have any stories or, better yet, tips on this type of thing?

[phall0106]

I don't know if this qualifies or not, but I shop very carefully for new clothing. I work in a very upscale office, and everyone but me has a working spouse (who makes very good money), so it can be difficult to fit in appearance wise. I shop for very nicely made (expensive) clothing at consignment stores. My most recent purchase was a very nice, lined black jacket. I'd seen a similar one in the store the weekend before on sale for $89--this one was marked $6.95, and was 50% that day. This is very typical. I'd say my entire wardrobe for winter is probably valued at several thousands of dollars, but actually probably cost me less than a few hundred.

I also shop at garage sales and refinish a lot of the furniture I have. Due to my limited means, I've gotten very talented at making something look expensive when it's not. People who come to my house are always amazed and comment me on how beautiful it is. Then, I give them the tour and tell them about the furniture ("this was set out in an alley for the trash men. I brought it home, stripped off the peeling paint, stained it and replaced the hardware.") and they are stunned.

It's a good feeling for me, knowing that I have "quality" stuff, but didn't pay out the nose for it.

[Shagnasty]

Those are some good examples phall0106. My wife and I do both of those two to some degree. The 1760 colonial house is our first and obviously we needed a ton on new furniture but it had to be both functional and in a style that fits the house.

We got lucky on that one. We have this older neighbor that has an incredible eye for "junk". I don't know where he finds the stuff, but he fills an entire barn with stuff throughout the year and then has barn sales throughout the summer and fall. Some of the stuff just needs to be refinished or have minor repairs and some is ready to go. For example, I got a set of 5 shaker style chairs that needed to be refinished for $80. I told him what types of things to see if he could find and I have bought and refinished about 20 pieces altogether for a total cost of less than $2000. This included some big items like a huge oak desk.

I never, ever buy clothes at full price. There is a TJ Maxx right down the road and I just drop in sometimes to see if they have any good deals on something I might need. There is a huge outlet mall close by too and they have some high end everyday clothing. I usually wait for it to be on sale there and I get most things at 50% - 75% off retail.

This is a strategy that I don't hear about very much. You always hear about people trying to cut corners to save money or people spending into debt to maintain a lifestyle. What about those of us that use tricks and ingenuity to maintain a higher lifestyle than most others in our income bracket?

[Sam Stone]

If you live in a climate that supports it, driving a 'classic' car can be a very cheap way to own something nice.

For example, a new BMW might be $40,000. A restored 1965 Corvette might also be $40,000. But in ten years, the BMW will be worth $10,000, and the Corvette might be worth $60,000. In other words, the Corvette will cost you nothing to drive, and you might even make enough money on the investment to pay for the insurance and maintenance.

We did much the same thing with an airplane. We bought an airplane when I was 28 years old, and we didn't have much money. People couldn't believe we could afford it. But in fact, we bought it for $11,000, I did a lot of the maintenance myself, and eight years later we sold it for what we bought it for, so we flew for the cost of gas and oil. In the meantime, the way we afforded it was that I kept driving my 13 year old car for a few more years, which was fine since it was a 1983 Camaro that ran perfectly and still looked like new.

We just finished our basement, and I built a home theater in it. I did most of the work myself, built my own screen, built a projector mount for the ceiling, and found a business-class projector for cheap that works great when fed from a PC DVD player that does all the scaling you'd expect from an expensive projector. The entire room including furniture, acoustic treatment, all the electronics and everything was about $15,000, and if we had had it all done professionally would have cost probably 3 or 4 times that amount.

We also got lucky and bought our house just before the real-estate boom, and it's appreciated more than 30% in the last four years. We could never afford to move into a house like this today.