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Over the past year of running Frugal Asian Finance, I have discussed the various frugal aspects of our lives.
It ranges from doing weird things like using toilet paper as tissues to normal frugal hacks like not using cable.
Today, I will do something different from the norm around here. I will let my imagination fly.
That’s right. Truth be told, sometimes I do fancy a lifestyle of luxury that totally differs from the frugal lives that we have.
In fact, Joe at Retire by 40 also has plans for when he’s super rich.
And today I will share with you all what it looks like.
1. Have a master chef to cook delicious meals for us every day
Neither Mr. FAF nor I like cooking. In fact, it’s a chore we have to do in order to get fed and save money.
We’re grateful we have food on the table, but we are not enthusiastic cooks.
Whenever we get tired of spending hours in the kitchen making something that usually turns out to be average or worse, we keep telling each other that we will need to improve our cooking skills.
Better yet, in the future, we will hire a master chef when we are super rich.
We love eating out, but going to restaurants, ordering food, and waiting for the food to arrive takes time.
We want to eat delicious food in the comfort of our home without having to lift a finger.
Below are our requirements for the chef:
— Male (I don’t want Mr. FAF to compare my cooking skills to another woman’s. Yes, I can get jealous.)
— Be able to cook delicious food from different cultures, especially Chinese and Vietnamese food: Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, etc.
— Be creative (optional). He should be able to make up his own recipes and make tasty dishes no one has ever had before.
Our chef will make something that looks pretty and delicious like this every day!
2. Eat out at fancy restaurants whenever we want.
Thanks to Buzzfeed and Youtube, I found out that there are a lot of expensive dishes out there in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
I can enjoy those dishes vicariously through Youtubers, but I really want to know what they taste like and whether it’s worth the money.
Some of those foods can cost as much as our monthly grocery budget.
We like to have a master chef at home, but sometimes I’d like to try expensive food with my hubby.
Related: 3 YouTube Lifestyles I Want To Pursue When Financially Independent
3. Travel the world and stay at 5-star hotels
We can travel on the cheap and travel hack. But I want to just go online, purchase business class tickets, book an exotic resort and go.
We won’t have to worry about taking advantage of reward points, picking inexpensive hotels, packing instant noodles with us in case we get hungry at night.
Traveling will be a breeze since we can go anywhere and anytime we want.
Money won’t be a determinant of our travel destination. If we want to go to Hawaii for 10 days, we will. If we want to stay in London for a week, we will.
On those trips, we will book the fanciest hotel in town and enjoy their buffet breakfast and any amenities that they offer.
If we get tired of traveling in the middle of the trip, we can purchase tickets the night before or even on the day we want to go home. We won’t have to worry about how expensive the tickets are. We will travel on a whim and as our hearts desire.
Mr. FAF told me that some company out there is developing commercial trips to the moon or somewhere in the universe. We would love to try that as well.
Related: Hubby Decided Not To Be Cheap – Our $1,400 YOLO Trip
4. Buy a big house
Whenever Mr. FAF and I pass by a mansion in the DC area, we would say that one day we will buy one ourselves (which I don’t know if or when it will happen).
In the world of luxury, we would buy a big house with 10 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, and 3 kitchens for us, our kids, Mr. FAF’s parents, and my parents.
When we have a lot of people living together, tension is likely to arise.
That’s why we want to have 3 separate kitchens. Mr. FAF and I can share one while our parents can use the other two if they’d like.
Related: The Pros & Cons Of Living With In-laws
5. Housecleaning service
With such a big house, I would also like to have cleaning service once a week so that neither I nor our parents will have to do the cleaning.
Believe it or not, cleaning can also cause tension among family members when someone thinks that the others are not doing enough to help out.
I would like to prevent unnecessary stress and arguments when we live together as a big family.
Whenever I hear others say that they get their house “professionally cleaned,” I would dream about the day when Mr. FAF and I have enough money to afford it on a regular basis.
We will have a squeaky clean house without me toiling for an hour or more. I can spend that time playing with our kids, hanging out with Mr. FAF or just relaxing instead.
Related: Housework – The Financial Decision In A Marriage
Conclusion
As you can see, our luxurious life would consist mostly of eating good food, traveling lavishly, and having a big property with professional services.
I would love to conclude by saying that I probably wouldn’t feel happy with all the luxuries above, but I won’t. I haven’t lived that life that, so I honestly have no idea if I will be happier or not.
I would love to try it one day, but I don’t know when that day will come. All I know is that for now Mr. FAF and I still need to cook at home, eat out at inexpensive restaurants and food courts, go on road trips and stay at cheap hotels, live in a modest home, and clean the house ourselves.
I think the key here is for us to be happy with what we have but never stop working towards our dream regardless of whether that dream will come true or not.
Related:
Why I Love & Don’t Care About Money At The Same Time
How Frugality Helps Me Work Better At My Job
How Fearing Layoffs Affects Our Financial Decisions
5 Things We No Longer Do To Save Money
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If I could have a personal chef, I’d be on that, like, yesterday. As much as I like to cook, it can be a big time sink and I don’t always have the inclination or energy. While in our frugal stages though, it is nice having a baseline level of cooking skills. Have you guys considered ever going to a cooking class, maybe as a date?
I totally agree. Cooking can be so time-consuming. One of my ex-roommates said she loved cooking though since it was like an art to her. 😀
We have considered going to a cooking class but are too cheap to pay. We just look up recipes on the internet and YouTube :”>
Hmmm, #1 and #4 and #5 we are pretty identical on. But those things I can do guilt free only if we have $5+ million dollars or more. That’s considered hyper luxury for me though. If I had a chef, I don’t think I would go out to eat anymore!
This a fun post to think about! Maybe I’ll write a follow up to you guys :3
Hmmm… I have $15 million and don’t really think those items are affordable on a regular basis. Not when mansions cost $5-10 million in a HCOL area. We occasionally splurge, e.g. had a $2000 family meal for 3 in Singapore and travel a lot, but definitely keep an eye on the budget.
Oh wow, if we were super rich I’d go to culinary school so I could learn to cook all the delicious foods. Cooking is my favorite hobby and so calming. But I get that many people don’t like to cook!
We got bumped up to business class on one trans-Atlantic flight, and I would definitely pay to fly that way if money was no issue. The lay flat seats are as awesome as they sound.
The other thing I would get is a beach house! Or maybe we’d just rent a nice beach house for a month every summer. Even if we could hire out all the maintenance, the stress of the second home may not be worth it. But I would like to spend my summers with Lake Michigan in my backyard.
I have never flown business before, so I’ve always wondered what it’s like to sit in that chair and eat all that business class meals hehe. A beach house sounds great! I would probably rent one so that we won’t have to deal with all the taxes, repairs and maintenance. I feel like I’m more motivated to work harder and make more money now 😀
Good luck! That sounds like a nice lifestyle. There are people that live like that in real life. I wonder if they’re any happier than you and I.
I don’t know about a personal chef. I’d rather eat out. A personal chef sounds like a lot of trouble.
Now that I think about it, a personal check does sound like a lot of trouble. I mean, we will need to live with them or close to them somehow so that they can serve us anytime we want. I was thinking more about avoiding long waits and food poisoning at restaurants hehe.
I’ve got an extremely rich friend with every one of those things, including additional houses in resort locations and his own pilot and jet to take him there on a whim. His household staff, including chef, provide awesome wholesome food. But truth is, we are the same age and both happily early retired and we both have more than we need. I’d say we are both equally happy because enough is enough, and enough times 100 is just digits sitting in investments and no doubt takes a lot of his time to manage.
Oh wow it’d be super interesting for me to talk to someone who lives such a lifestyle. I don’t think I know any millionaires or super rich people in real life, so everything I mentioned in the post comes straight from my imagination (and maybe movies/TV shows). Glad to know that you are enjoying your retirement 🙂
I love striving for these things. In reality, I bet you wouldn’t be much happier than you are already. The beauty is in the dream. I like to tell my kids…may you never truly reach your dreams. Happiness lies in getting 90% there.
I agree with you! I think it’s nice to imagine all the nice guys we want enjoy with lots of money.
We thought that we would be much happier after Mr. FAF started working. But everything is still the same. I don’t eat out at TGIF or go on expensive trips like we thought we would. We were super happy when Mr. FAF was interviewing and got the offer though. We couldn’t stop talking about it every day for a month straight! 😀
I think this is a great “vision board”. I predict that the housecleaning service will happen sooner than the others – especially with 2 kids (and also because its more affordable).
#1 & #2 are pretty cool – I’d like to try those as well for a short while 🙂
Oh haha I’ve thought about professional cleaning a lot. Let’s see how things turn out with baby #2. 😉
It’s always nice to dream, but I know it’ll not make me that much happier.
It’s much like Diderot’s Robe.
Eating out lots of delicious food was great, but I also had to work out a lot just to maintain it.
With house keeping I know people that are very careful with house keeping careful now, as there have been cases of theft. Too big houses are a pain to clean yourself already.
I once thought about buying cool supercar, but after trying a friends one, there actually pretty uncomfortable, high maintenance, and too impractical for regular activities. Not to mention green envy.
In the pursuit of ownership, be careful that they don’t end up owning you.
I think there are two kinds of frugal people/blogs. There are the ones who are frugal out of fear of not having money if something bad happens, and who actually want to be rich at the end of the day, and own lots of things and be financially free and then there are the ones who have a different outlook and are not into materialism and consumerism and are opting for a different lifestyle to the norm. I think I fall into the latter category – I am not pursuing frugality as a means to get financial freedom, or out of fear of not having enough money on a rainy day, but as an alternative lifestyle, curbing my impulse buying, protecting the environment by creating less waste, etc. As such the lavish lifestyle does not appeal. I have a friend who is very, very rich from a rich family and lives in Asia. All she does is travel. She gets back from one trip and straight away is off again with a whole entourage of people on another trip. She will fly from the United States visiting the big national parks to going on a Mediterranean cruise, then to the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan. She will take a private plane just to go fishing. All she does is enjoy herself, all of the time, constantly. (She has grown up kids and is married.) Most of the time she travels with her children. I don’t desire this lifestyle at all. It seems so empty. I could think of many things that could be done with that money that would benefit society. I personally prefer to try to put back into society and live a useful life. I think that gives more real joy in the end and counts for more in the long run and in eternity.
It would be all about services for me – mainly anything to do with cleaning/maintenance/repairs!
My husband is basically as good as a chef and he is also my chauffeur 😉 but if I was single then yes to a chef for sure.
I would want to try flying first class and I think we would shoot for a house in a more central neighbourhood probably – ideally with double bedrooms instead of single and also a garage!
What a fun post to read Ms FAF!! I remember going on a cruise to Alaska and when I was relaxing in our cabin I saw their brochure of other cruises they offered and one was a 4 month cruise around the world starting at $20K each. I thought it would be more expensive but after thinking about it, staying in a small cabin wouldn’t sound fun for 3-4 months straight.
Very fun, and original, post to read! Nice list too.
I really like to cook, but a part time master chef would still be awesome.
A huge house would be nice as well!
While you’re thinking big, why not add a butlet for your giant house? Let someone else deal with the maintenance and upgrade issues! This one is my current fantasy, as I look at all the small fixes and few large ones that my house cries out for right now.