Today, my wife and I sent the kids to a friends house for a sleep over, while we went to a fancy italian winery/villa style restaurant.  For just the 2 of us, the experience cost $120.00 dollars!

So what did we have to eat, you might be wondering?  My meal consisted of antipasta salad, sea scallops and red wine (Tuscano).  My wife’s meal consisted of steak, antipasta salad, rose wine and a small piece of cake.

Travel back in time 10 years ago, and I would have never paid for such a meal.  It would be way to expensive for me back then.  Even today, I can’t afford to have meals like this often!  Believe it or not, this is the most I’ve spent on a meal for the both of us.

So you might be thinking it’s a special occassion, but it really wasn’t.  It was just a new restaurant that we decided to try out.  We could have ordered the much cheaper pizza, but we wanted to see if this restaurant was as good as we heard it was.  So we ordered more expensive meals (but not the most expensive)!   The next time we go, we’re going for the pizza!!!

This is called Lifestyle Inflation, and it’s basically where we increase our upper range of spending whereas before we would never conceive of spending so much for such a temporary thing as a meal!

Maybe it is just a one time splurge, but maybe not!  I definitely need to get a better grip around my spending or else I’ll doom myself to never have any wealth someday!

-MR