#XRBIA Chembur Central – Making Lavish Living Affordable


wealthymattersMumbai is a city where real estate is so expensive that a lot of people, even those who are far from poor, make do with tiny homes in old dilapidated buildings and others resign themselves to living in far off suburbs in the MMR where homes are cheaper and then suffering the inevitable long commutes into the city.

Now the problem of living so long in an environment where we train ourselves to expect less by way of lifestyle, as an inevitable compromise to get on with the business of making money in Mumbai, is that we often forget to open our minds enough to ask if this much of compromise with the quality of life of ourselves and our children is really inevitable. For those of us living a cramped life in really old houses, are there no other locations where the houses are newer and the social infrastructure comparable to those in older neighbourhoods of the city ?And for those of us commuting for hours everyday, are  there no better located homes, such that long commutes are cut short and we literally find time to actually live life in the Maximum City? Read more of this post

The Lipstick Index


wealthymattersRecessions mean that Ferraris stay in showrooms and designer dresses on shop racks, but lipstick bucks the trend: in hard times, women buy more of it, as it is an affordable indulgence. That, at least, is the idea behind the “lipstick index”, a term coined by Leonard Lauder, the chairman of Estée Lauder, a cosmetics firm, in the 2001 recession. Believers in the theory trace the phenomenon back to the Depression, when cosmetic sales increased by 25%, despite the convulsing economy. But reliable historical sales figures are hard to find.

The growing popularity of lipstick in India seems to bear out this hypothesis.

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