Cost of living may be defined as the amount of money needed to sustain a certain level of living, including basic expenses such as housing, food, taxes and health care. As reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price, it’s a measure of what typical consumers pay for retail goods and other items.
But the real cost of living is far higher. Beyond our teen years, few of us our live our dreams. Our aspirations. Our goals. That symphony you conceived. That killer app you thought up. That design. That song. That marathon. That painting. That book. That achievement. Even that trip or nest egg.
The 99th percentile are not just the hyper rich. More often they are the hyper focused. The ones who shed family and friends on the way toward their goal, be it success, money, or fame. The rest of us–we compromised.
Allen Saunders wrote, “Life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans” more than twenty years before John Lennon put it into a song. (Typical. Someone famous gets the credit.) Because paying the rent, changing the diapers, mowing the grass, washing dishes, even hanging out, solitaire or Facebook or Snap Chat all come first.
That dream, that image, that goal fades farther and farther away. Eventually we lose sight of it amid the clutter of life. We settle for … less.
The cost of living is your dreams.
As a Matter of Fancy 