The Most Rewarding Everyday Luxuries, According to Science

Katie: Welcome back to The Money with Katie Show, Rich People. I'm your host, Katie Gatti Tassin, and buckle up, because today we are talking about how you can live a life of luxury on the cheap, and what luxury actually means. 

Because growing up in the northern Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio, that glittery, sprawling metropolis, I had a very specific vision of what luxury meant. It was my friends who had Dooney & Bourke handbags and their parents who drove Volvo SUVs and Mercedes sedans. A luxury lifestyle was synonymous with Pottery Barn catalogs and over-the-top Christmas decor, and even participation in expensive, exclusive sports leagues. In short, I guess what I'm trying to say is that luxury meant the ability to spend lavishly on mostly tangible material goods that signaled a certain level of stability. 

But as I have become an adult and purchased some of the aforementioned brand-name goods, I have noticed something that might sound a little cliche on the surface, which is that true luxury is typically found in much smaller moments. So today I wanna dig into the ways to make daily life a little more indulgent, enjoyable—dare I say, richer. And the way different cultures tend to place more emphasis on slowing down and living a more moment-to-moment, indulgent life without manifesting that desire as consumerism, which is what tends to happen in the US. 

We'll talk about practical, effective ways to improve your experience of your everyday life without derailing your financial goals, which is important, right, because this is The Money with Katie Show. Because don't get me wrong, it is nice to have a nice handbag and it is fun to drive a fun car, and it's exciting to give exciting gifts, but often the feelings of luxurious indulgence, stability, and joy that we think these larger purchases will provide actually do something a little bit more like this: So there's this big, in-the-moment spike that absolutely feels good, maybe even amazing. It releases this big dopamine rush and that spike may last for a few days or even a few weeks, depending on the size of this purchase, how frequently you're interacting with it, right? But then it forms kind of a long-tail plateau, which means it's a very expensive way to experience a dopamine rush from your money. And if you're very wealthy, the magnitude of your riches may render it a lot less expensive. See also that comparison we did a few months ago where we looked at how a Cartier bracelet for Kylie Jenner is the same proportional amount of money spent as me going and buying a cold brew in the morning.

So scale definitely matters here, but most of us are not yet wealthy enough to casually purchase designer items and luxury vehicles and sprawling homes just on a whim. Many of us save for years or even lifetimes in order to do that, because most of us live in the real world where we have real obligations like debt, dependents, or in my case, a dog with never-ending health problems. And in a go, go, go culture, this can mean that merely having these goals is gonna take precedence over enjoying our day-to-day lives, and that anything that detracts from the singular pursuit of meeting those objectives, no matter how minimally, is an irresponsible use of time and money. But is that actually the most rational way to approach our goals in our lives? We'll be right back after a short break. 

So how can we create these frequent moments of indulgent luxury without needing to be the offspring of Chris Jenner? In other words, how do we experience decadence in our daily lives, less like a giant spike with a plateau and more like a gentle, undulating, sustainable wave? 

There are three main areas where I think these little luxuries typically show up most. And this is our food, our homes, and our bodies. These are, in my mind, the highest-leverage changes that we can make, because of how inherently sensory these experiences are and the time or frequency with which we spend in or around them. 

For example, this amazing paper from PWL Capital found that frequently making small experiential purchases was more predictive of happiness than infrequent large purchases. And I think it all starts with kind of a simple realization, which is that time is money. And you've probably heard this before: Time is money. And normally we interpret this phrase to mean that time is valuable because you can trade it for money, as in, you can use time to create more money, which is great. But there's another relationship between time and money that's worth acknowledging, because typically when you don't have a lot of money, you also might not have a lot of time. So imagine a working parent who's maybe taking care of a child while working a demanding full-time job. Maybe they're still early in their career. This person is neither money- nor time-rich, right? Both are scarce resources that are to be guarded in their life. 

And simultaneously, having a lot of money typically means you have more optionality and the ability to outsource to buy yourself more time. For example, Jeff Bezos, his 24 hours in a day are not equal to my 24 hours, because Jeff can have a full-time staff that's cooking his food and cleaning his house and managing his appointments and caring for his children and doing all the other things that most of us normies have to somehow fit in our 24 hours. Now, I think a wealthy person like Jeff, they may choose to be a busy workaholic. They may choose to fill their time with work, but they technically wouldn't have to, right? Their lives would not fall apart if they took a few weeks off work. So someone with a lot of money can move about the world at a more leisurely pace, simply because there are fewer problems that they cannot throw money at, which is aspirational as hell. Probably a place we're all trying to get. 

Because when a flat tire or some other inconvenience that might really just be an hour's worth of work for someone with wealth and maybe it kind of ruins your day a little bit, a flat tire for someone that's living paycheck to paycheck, that could threaten to unleash a domino effect of consequences that literally ends with homelessness. It's not an inconvenience. So I think that that really impacts our mentality and the way that we approach our day-to-day. 

So yes, time and money, these things are very correlated, but I'm gonna assume that you probably fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, time and money-wise, which means you have a very interesting opportunity. I think that we often believe that we will approach our lives in a slower, more leisurely way and stop rushing from one thing to the next when we have hustled an adequate amount, when we have eclipsed a certain number in the bank or we have achieved a particular title at work, and that the latter is required to unlock the former. But as anyone who has ever spent 12 minutes in a major European city will tell you, and I personally will shortly, leisure is not and should not be reserved only for the wealthy. And if you can't spend a lot of money, you can sometimes spend a lot of time instead.

Slowing down is, in some ways, one of the most luxurious things that you can do, and it's totally free in your existing free time. Enter the “slow living” movement, which is a lifestyle that people say helps them make their lives more balanced; it increases mindfulness. It's really this lifestyle trend that has an implicit financial tone. So I wanna talk about some of the other small purchases and habits that can really engender that feeling of indulgence and of slowing down. 

Our guest today, Melissa Jean-Baptiste of Millennial in Debt, paid off six figures in student loan debt on her financial journey, which is not exactly a charge that lends itself to spending lavishly on a luxurious life for the years that you are paying off debt. I asked Melissa how she thought about creating intentional luxury within the bounds of her financial parameters and her debt payoff journey. Here's a snippet of our conversation. 

Melissa Jean-Baptiste: I am first generation Haitian-American, and I went to a private university and graduated with two degrees, and if anyone is familiar, you do not really get a lot of financial aid for your master's degree. You'll get a lot of loans, but not grants and scholarships. So I had to fund the majority of my grad year with student loans, and I went into education. I was a high school English teacher for 11 years, and around year three I got the big idea that I wanted to buy a house. I thought like, okay, you're 25, this is what 25-year-olds do, they buy homes. And to my surprise, no, they don't. Not as easily as they used to. And so that was actually my first introduction to debt to income ratio, just the concept in general, because when I graduated from college, I actually never even called my loan provider. I got the letter in the mail about the six-month grace period, and then I got the options of what I could pay monthly, and on a teacher salary, I was making $48,000 a year back in 2011, and I could not afford the $1,200 standard payment. So I chose the $200 payment, because who wouldn't make that decision at 21 years old?

And at 25, that's when I actually learned that I was on an interest-only payment plan. And so the $50,000 that I borrowed when I graduated started to balloon. And around 2013 it was now $80,000. And so on a $48,000 salary, I didn't have much wiggle room. I thought I was the cool kid with the car note; I had a new car, I had my phone bill, my insurance, and I'm like, okay, that's really all I can afford outside of maybe nails and going to brunch. And so when I really got that realization like, oh, you're gonna live with your parents until you're 65 unless you do something different, that's when I really started tackling my debt. And when I did tackle the debt, I ended up paying off $102,000 by 2018.

Katie: Oh my gosh. Wow. That is wild. So I wanna talk about this journey that you went on and in that period, you paid off so much debt so quickly. How did you create intentional luxury in your life within the bounds of your financial journey during that time? You don't wanna be miserable for years just to get out of debt, right? So I'm curious how you thought about that. 

Melissa Jean-Baptiste: So initially, of course, listening to the older archaic money lessons, I was living a miserable life. I didn't really understand that I could pay off debt and I could do fun things or things that mattered to me. And it wasn't until I started having money conversations with friends and family that I learned what values spending was. I learned that, oh, I don't have to punish myself because I am in debt. And so what I would do is I created a sinking fund annually to tackle one loan, right? So every year I'm like, okay, I'm gonna pay off this loan. And when I would pay off that loan, I would also have money set aside to celebrate. And that celebration would look different every year. When I finally paid off the huge loan with 16% interest, I took myself to London, and that was like, I was saving all my pennies. I was scraping, side hustling, doing all those things, because I knew once I paid off that $14,000 chunk, I really wanted to go and celebrate in something that matters to me. And travel is huge on my values spending pyramid hierarchy.

So I always try to put aside money or try to save those travel points on my credit cards to make sure that I'm prioritizing something that matters, which is visiting the world, seeing what's out there outside of just New York. 

Katie: What I like about Melissa's approach is that she focused on saving for things alongside her aggressive debt payoff schedule, which really highlights how psychologically empowering it can be to embrace treating yourself while you work toward a goal. And while her version of treating herself was about saving up for something big, as we've already discussed, that's not the only way to enjoy your journey toward a goal. We are going to unpack the ways in which slow living can achieve that in a little bit.

But in the meantime, at the other end of the slow living spectrum, let's talk about what it's like to not live slowly, because that is really my entire life. I have struggled with this rushing feeling, this underlying anxiety, for my entire life. And all my former teachers and managers loved it. They called it my “innate sense of urgency,” which I guess is great in the capitalist framework, but not so great when you have a really hard time slowing down. But I've asked myself many times, what am I rushing toward? What is driving this sense of, oh, I don't have enough time. I have to make sure I get X, Y, Z done. In some ways, there's this underlying belief that the life that I'm living right now is a dress rehearsal for something else. And that the real thing, that's gonna come later at some unspecified date once I earn it or work hard enough or make enough money, and that I'm preparing for something in the future. But what if it's not a dress rehearsal? What if I'm already living the real thing right now? Would that change my approach? 

The first time I went to Europe, I was 25 years old and I was traveling for work. So I went to Amsterdam and we landed, we're trying to fight jet lag. And so I went out to lunch. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon on a Monday, and I stopped at this cafe on this very cute cobblestoned street. Kind of felt like a time warp. And working-aged people, people dressed in business casual, they were scattered around tables, sipping coffee, reading, physical paper newspapers, smoking cigarettes. Many were there before I got there. And then they were still there when I was leaving. And I was just amazed by how slowly and how calmly these people were enjoying a Monday afternoon. I remember, I think I even said aloud, “Why are these people not at work right now?” It just looked so bizarre to me in my American frame of mind. And I kind of imagined myself taking a two-hour midday espresso break and I felt literally naughty at the thought of it. 

And I know that I'm painting a very hilariously stereotypical picture of a European lunch, complete with chiefing packs of cigarettes. But I noticed the same thing when I went to visit Scandinavia last year. Copenhagen's bars and restaurants, they were crawling with people at 11 o'clock at night on a Tuesday. Stockholm's cafes were buzzing with energy all day long. Lunchtime in Oslo had a very similar phenomenon to what I noticed in Amsterdam, which is that while I showed up, sat down, ate, paid, and left, the people at the tables around me lingered with their friends for hours. Now, this isn't to say that people don't go out to eat for long meals in the US—that would be preposterous—but I have a feeling that if you clocked the average time spent at a leisurely weekday meal or just relaxing in general by the average person in the US versus the countries I've just mentioned, you would find the baseline orientation in the US and our culture is toward speed and efficiency. While the baseline orientation in a place like maybe the Netherlands is enjoyment. 

And it's hard to quantify that energy shift, but that's really what captured my attention the most, because I had not been primed at all by any of these stereotypes about Europe before I went to Amsterdam. My egregious ignorance to other cultures shielded me from all of that, don't you worry. But it was something that I clocked everywhere I went. And by the time I left, I felt this intense longing for the same thing. My misplaced sense of urgency felt very awkward against the backdrop of a more leisurely pace of life.

And at one point, my husband and I, we were standing by the canal and we see an on-duty police officer playing fetch with his canine partner in the canal, throwing the ball for him for like 20 minutes. And we were like, what is going on? Where are we? Because these people were not on vacation, at least I don't think they were, given their work clothes and their briefcases and the fact that they were speaking the local language. But it was interesting the way slowing down really enhanced every aspect of my sensory experience while I was there. And I noticed things that I typically would not notice in my day-to-day life, when my attention is reserved for higher-level thinking.

Melissa Jean-Baptiste: When you travel and you see other places, you see how they actually value rest, and rest is at the top of their list. And it's not something that's a reward; it's something that's a necessity. And same thing, I went to Amsterdam this past summer and I'm like, even the people who were on their bikes getting ready to go to work, it was so calm. Their rush hour is definitely not like any rush hour that I've ever seen in the United States. They're just chilling, strolling, no aggression. And that's just, I hope one day to be able to retire outside of the US just to enjoy rest as something that is a part of day-to-day and not a reward.

Katie: But all of this talk about different cultures raises an important point. Humans are very, very susceptible to their environments. Certain music, lighting, smells, views, can trigger emotional experiences that alter or enhance our mood. This is why fancy restaurants go to such extreme lengths to get the details right. Have you ever been to a restaurant where the bathroom is even trendy and on theme? They know that the food is gonna taste better and you are gonna be more inclined to spend more money and enjoy your experience and come back again if the vibe is perfect. And it's easy to overlook these things as silly or frivolous or wasteful, but that would be a mistake.

Some research even suggests that beautiful spaces can make us healthier, and it's well-documented the way in which living in nature has measurable health benefits. But you are probably not running a Michelin star restaurant, though if you are, hello, would love to stop by. You are living a life, and you have scores of priorities and demands on your time. You probably have goals and challenges, struggles you're facing, and it's important not to underestimate the impact of the little things. And fortunately, most of those little things come with little price tags. We'll be right back after a quick break.

Okay, so let's break down some ways to implement these little changes in the three main areas we highlighted earlier: our food, our homes, and now our bodies. I've already made myself a little hungry with the restaurant mentioned. So we're gonna start with food. Food can be an outlet for leisure as well as an area ripe for romanticizing. 

Number one is freshly chopping, slicing, or grating your ingredients that we all typically purchase pre-made. Henah taught me a new word when we were developing this episode: mirepoix. Apparently it means the basis for cooking. So think garlic, I assume like carrots and onions and stuff. I don't know, Henah, weigh in. Cheeses, et cetera. But this is one that's actually cheaper than the quote unquote “more functional” alternative. But it can really elevate a home-cooked meal and turn it into more of a sensory experience. 

The second thing is making fun cocktails (or mocktails, hey) at home, using fresh fruit or mint, a shaker, and then other simple, inexpensive ingredients like sparkling waters or simple syrups. In a similar vein, you can also buy a set of quote unquote “fancy” glasses; they don't have to cost more than 20 bucks at a Target or a TJ Maxx. But drinking everyday beverages out of fancy glasses is kind of fun. Eating at a table that's properly set; there are always so many flowers in the summer in Colorado, so sometimes I'll just snip one and stick it in the glass as a centerpiece or in a drink, which is free, minus the dignity points that I have to give up when I'm scavenging around in my yard with craft scissors. But hey, you know what? Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

And a moment for dinner parties, because while I have never actually hosted a dinner party before, I really want to, now that I have learned how to cook. I just think it would be so fun and indulgent to have a dinner party where you're hosting your friends in your home. It's really interesting, the research on this. Some studies have found that eating with others actually makes food taste better. It enhances feelings of joy and subjective well-being. And I think, of course our generation typically does this at restaurants, but you wouldn't have to. That does not have to be the default. So I think if you're trying to do this more frequently without breaking the bank, getting into that dinner party habit, hosting one another can be really fun.

Okay, now moving on to our homes, and cost-effective ways to enhance the vibes of the environments that we exist within. Okay, so the first thing is swapping out the lightbulbs in your home with warmer lights, and switching out harsh overhead lighting for lamps or candles. It is absolutely wild how big a difference this makes. I have a very close friend who literally will not allow people to use overhead lighting in her home. She hates it so much. The second thing is moving around furniture just to try something new, or tossing out clutter that gets in your way. 

So I have a favorite example of this as well. I heard a story about this woman who had a cabinet in her kitchen and it opened the wrong way. And so it was a cabinet she had to go in every day, but it would always bang up against the wall. She struggled to get things in and out of it, dealt with it for years. And then finally one day was like, “This is absurd. I'm just gonna go spend the $5 on the hardware and fix this myself.” And she did. And so if there's anything else in your home that's kind of a frequently used, broken, annoying, but relatively easy to fix thing—I know our downstairs toilet, the water always runs, and it would take five seconds to fix it and we just don't—spend a Saturday fixing them. 

The third is showcasing the things that you love. So think books, cards from your friends, pictures from your trips. I think minimalism chic and all things beige really took the interior design world by storm. And I do love a tidy home, don't get me wrong. But being surrounded by physical reminders of the things and the people that make you happy can also be a huge mood boost that is not expensive. 

The next thing is deep-cleaning your home. So I have this favored ritual Friday afternoon cleaning or Friday night cleaning. I learned this from the Girls’ Night In newsletter several years ago. And it's this idea that you spend the time to kind of turn cleaning your home on a Friday night into a ritual. So maybe you have the windows open, you're playing some fun music, and it basically allows you to have a very clean home all weekend. So while you're there and you're sitting in your home, you can really enjoy it the entire time, versus saving it for Sunday.

And if you don't have the time or energy to do a deep clean, no sweat. I totally know how that is on a Friday. But there are a few key little things that I like to do before the weekend starts that are pretty quick, but tend to make the vibe different, which is taking out the trash or recycling bags, replacing them so you have empty trash bins, running the dishwasher and unloading it so you've got a nice empty space there. Multipurpose spray on the counters, cleaning down surfaces, and putting away any items that have made their way onto the counters or tables over the course of the week.

And the last thing is just investing in a couple of neutral items. So think pillows or blankets for sitting areas, or even upgrading a piece of furniture that you spend a lot of your time on. And I don't think that this has to be expensive. So for example, we watch a lot of television, which anyone who subscribes to the newsletter knows, because every week I have a new show in the Fun Finds section, but we bought a sectional from someone else for 200 bucks. It has become my favorite piece of furniture that we own because we love melting into it and watching our shows on it every single night. Doesn't have to be fancy or expensive, but it can be worth it to spend a little bit of money to get a piece that you are really going to enjoy spending your time on.

And finally, our bodies. So this is one that I feel most people might overlook because it's not something that's outside of you, but your body is around you all the time. So treating yourself to things that feel luxurious can be wonderful. Now, my first thing is gonna sound a little ridiculous, but I have seen this trend on FI/RE (financial independence, retire early) places and forums where it's almost become bragging rights to have socks with holes in them or underclothes with holes in them. That “Oh my gosh, I'm worth a million dollars and my socks have holes in them,” it's a weird flex; I don't get it. But I do think buying nice socks and nice underwear that fit you well and do not have holes, which is a subtweet to myself as well, because I've definitely gone way too long before replacing, can be a really nice way to just have a little bit of luxury in a piece of clothing that you're gonna be wearing probably every day. And if that's not an option, just trying to mend things that you own where possible, so you don't have rogue toes jutting out of your socks-and-Birkenstocks combo. 

The next thing is adding something like eucalyptus leaves to your shower, or DIYing an at-home bath when you're sore, or using at-home items to give yourself a massage, like rolling your feet over a tennis ball or hip flexors over tennis balls if you have tight muscles. Just something that's gonna take that daily routine and elevate it a little bit.

The next thing is wearing “real” clothes or doing your hair and makeup occasionally, even if you are not doing anything or going anywhere except working from home and walking your dog. I think during the pandemic, I definitely got into this habit of pretty much always wearing pajamas or pajama-adjacent clothing. And I would pretty much never do my hair or put on makeup, and I generally never really put myself together. And sometimes I think there's something that just feels a little decadent about enhancing yourself on the outside for yourself. 

And the last one isn't a body thing, but more of a disrupting your normal routine thing. So doing things that might just feel a little bit indulgent, like reading a book in the morning before you start your day. So usually when I go to get coffee from somewhere, I get it to go. I scurry in there, I pick it up, I blast off into my routine. And sometimes I was like, wow, wouldn't it be nice if I just actually got it for there, walked in, sat down, sipped it out of a real mug, and maybe read a book for 15 minutes in the presence of other humans? Like, oh my gosh, what a thought. Because even when I make coffee at home, I have this bad habit. I'll scroll Reddit, I'll scroll Twitter while I drink, or I'll start barraging myself with emails. And if I'm trying to cultivate a slow environment or a calming environment that feels a little indulgent, reading a book, or hell, even watching a TV show can set a calmer pace for you where you aren't immediately faced with someone else's political opinions or terrible news first thing in the morning.

Now on the body stuff, I do think that there's also something to be said for days where you don't change out of your pajamas and you do spend the entirety of an afternoon in bed or on the couch reading a book. Watching movies like that is one of life's greatest joys. That is my ideal Sunday, like add some rainy weather and…oof. But being able to employ both paths as necessary—either the “I'm gonna get put together today 'cause it's gonna make me feel better as I sit through seven Zoom calls” and the “I'm going to wear the same sweatshirt for three days in a row and then rewatch all four seasons of Never Have I Ever, because this is my long weekend and I make the rules”—they're both indulgent freedom in and of itself, but it's ultimately just about creating feelings around intentionality and agency and joy by using the things in our lives that we typically do not really notice or think about.

And that's really the point here. We're pulling levers that don't compromise our financial well-being. We're not unwinding by going off on a four-day online shopping bender that's gonna wear off as soon as all this stuff arrives, or drowning our sorrows in overpriced, bottomless brunches. We are looking for relaxation and leisure in the simpler areas that the research would actually suggest are more impactful anyway, because I think there is a perception that you have to already be rich to enjoy luxurious things, or that it has to be somehow very time consuming or expensive. Here's Melissa. 

Melissa Jean-Baptiste: But the truth is that if you manage your money in a way where you're adding yourself into your budget, and it doesn't have to be immediate, because a lot of times people are like, “Well, I want a $5,000 wallet.” Me too. But if I'm gonna put myself in my budget and I'm going to try to figure out how I can bring this piece of luxury into my life, I know that it's going to take me a little longer, and that is okay, right? We don't need to have it right away as long as we're working towards it and making sure that our needs, our goals are met. I think that's what's really important. So luxury is not only for the rich; it's just how we access it is going to be different, and it's going to take a different amount of time, depending on where we're at financially. 

Katie: Melissa also just released a book about building generational wealth and realizing that your past financial mistakes do not have to define your financial future. 

Melissa Jean-Baptiste: My book is called, So…This Is Why I'm Broke. And it's all about financial literacy, building generational wealth, which is extremely important, not only in the messaging of my brand, but also for myself, for my family, for my future. And I also wanted that to be accessible for other people who look like me, who sound like me. I am not like, “Oh yes, I studied finance in college,” though, that's not my background. And I think a lot of people oftentimes find that if they don't have a finance background or if they've made a lot of money mistakes, or if they don't look like the person on the cover of the books they're reading or the websites they're looking at, that they don't stand a chance. And I want to show them, listen, I was overdrafting for Coach sneakers in high school and in college; I was trying to buy a house with no savings account. So your mistakes do not make you incapable of learning, of adapting or building wealth. And I talk about it all the time. I started investing $121 as a teacher 'cause that's all I could afford. And I'm like, “Yeah, who cares about investing? Who cares about retiring? I'm just trying to live my life,” and now I have a six-figure portfolio 10 years later. And it's important that I talk about the amount of time, because I don't want anyone to think, “Oh man, I'm behind,” or “Oh man, I need to do this tomorrow.” 

Katie: Even if you're currently digging your way out of a financial hole or feel as though you have a lot of competing financial priorities that make splurging on luxuries feel unrealistic or irresponsible, remember that science would suggest the smaller things are more likely to have a lasting effect anyway. So if you try any of our favorite tips, send us an email at moneywithkatie@morningbrew.com and let us know. 

All right, y'all. That is all for this week. I will see you next week, same time, same place, on The Money with Katie Show. Our show is a production of Morning Brew and is produced by Henah Velez and me, Katie Gatti Tassin, with our audio engineering and sound design from Nick Torres. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and additional fact checking comes from Kate Brandt. 

Okay, Henah, how do I say this word? Mirepoix? Mirepoix. Okay, I'm gonna give it a shot.