Beating the High Cost of Living

The only way I've ever figured how to beat the high cost of living -- is to move to a lower cost market.  That of course, means identifying how the markets perform relative to one another.  It's not unlike finding the better performing stock -- from those that are underperforming.  Values have always been relative as a general rule -- but beyond that, highly individualized by personal tastes and judgment.  

Many people believe that they have to buy only what one particular seller wants to sell -- and not that they can go to another.  Sellers of course, will try to convince their potential customer, that they are the only game in town, and there are no other sellers -- anywhere, at any other price.

But one of the distinct advantages, if not the greatest, of living in these times, is the realization that there are virtually endless markets, as well as exchanges, that merely require one to locate those agreeable to such an arrangement -- which is very unlike lives in an earlier time, when marketplaces were much more limited, and the weight of tradition forced one to believe they had no choices.

Critical to this development, was the availability of information, and the ease of obtaining it.  Despite that, many will simply deny the real possibility of making choices other than the only one they have always made -- rather than has been satisfactory and fulfilling or not.  They may be conditioned to believe that all variance from the "normal," is futile, and always leads to a greater disappointment and disaster than their accustomed course.  If the denial is great enough, they may even convince themselves that they are living in "Paradise," and there can never be any better -- as punishing as their present situation is -- with its endless toil and dimming prospects that it can ever get better.

They don't want to even believe that life could be different -- other than it has been, even as they keep getting worse.  The golden years to them, is always a greatly embellished past -- that has almost no resemblance to any reality.  They're even convinced that though life for most was abject and miserable for virtually everyone in those "glory" years, they would have been the king or queen, because that was the literature (legends) of those times was all about.  Even better and more convenient if that history was unwritten, and fabricated by those who are the most self-serving and self-aggrandizing -- because there is no record that can be verified.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion -- by which they mean theirs -- and not each their own.

Again, it is information that rues the day.  If one is taught to deny the new, life will predictably be very difficult -- with no possibility of any other.  That is simply rejected from the beginning.  Instead, they want improvement -- but the cultural imperative, is that there be "no change" -- because everything is perfect in "Paradise," or we wouldn't be calling it that.

But those who stray from the "political correctness" and mass conformity at any cost, discover whole new worlds waiting for them -- oftentimes, with no one else even aware of them.  Do such places still exist -- or will one be the last one buying a microcondo in San Francisco or New York as the only possible alternative?

That is the beauty of being "retired" at this particular time: one can live anywhere -- and not just begin a second career in retirement, but begin a second life -- with the advantage of Social Security and Medicare -- if one is up to that challenge their previous life has been merely a preparation for.  The younger, the better -- at realizing that.