Living Rich #2: Sleeping Like a Billionaire
So you want to live like the rich do?
You’ve come to the right place. I’ve spent years thinking about this topic, and I’m sure that it is entirely possible to live as well as a billionaire without spending loads of money.
I’m going to begin our investigation with an activity that is not normally associated with wealth. I am talking about the six to eight hours you spend every night in bed.
It may seem crazy to begin this series by talking about sleeping—but, other than working, it is probably the most important thing you do in terms of your invested time.
Getting a blissful night’s sleep is something we all want. And for good reason: Studies show that people who sleep well are healthier, happier, and even wealthier than those who toss and turn at night.
So the question is: “If money were no object, how would you get the best possible sleep?”
One thing you would surely do is purchase a great mattress to sleep on. With a billion dollars in net worth, you’d buy yourself the best mattress in the world.
Another thing you’d do is buy great pillows and sheets—again, the best that money could buy.
And, of course, there are many other things you could do… such as staying away from stimulants before bedtime and practicing meditation and so on. But we are not going to talk about that in this essay. Living Rich is about having the best things money can buy.
So that’s what we are going to talk about today: how to discover the best mattress, sheets, and pillows that money can buy.
Unless you have slept on a really good mattress, you may not realize what a difference it makes. I spent the first 40-something years of my life sleeping on ordinary mattresses. I thought that tossing and turning all night was normal. How wrong I was.
Almost 20 years ago, K and I spent a few nights in The Benjamin, an expensive midtown Manhattan hotel. Our bedroom was beautifully decorated but a bit small. The size of the room made it difficult to spend too much time there during the day. But the mattress we slept on was distinctly better than any I had ever experienced. We slept like babies and did so again the following night.
We were so impressed with the mattress (and the linens, too) that we asked the concierge if he happened to know what kind they were. Not only did he know, he handed me a brochure about them. Apparently, we weren’t the only guests who’d asked about them.
This was actually the beginning of a trend in “super beds” that luxury hotels were getting into at the time. Today, you can buy the mattresses and linens you sleep on from many hotels all over the world.
For me, it was a revelation. I had never before given a second thought to bedding. I had never imagined that I was sleeping like a pauper because of ignorance. I hadn’t realized how much better sleeping could be when you are sleeping on a high-quality mattress tucked into high-quality sheets.
By the way, we bought that mattress from The Benjamin and slept comfortably on it until about a year or two ago. It started to feel like it was losing support at the sides. It was still relatively comfortable, but I was tossing and turning more than I had been. I assumed it was me, but I talked to a friend in the mattress business, and he told me that it was time to buy a new one.
This is a happy coincidence for Palm Beach Wealth Club members because, as I write this, K and I are busy trying out all sorts of beds (mattresses, box springs, and these cover pads that are popular today).
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The mattress has to be comfortable. It has to make you feel like you died and went to heaven the moment you stretch out on it. It also has to be engineered to give you proper spinal support so that you wake up feeling like a million dollars. And, finally, it has to be durable. It must be made to last—without losing the support it’s giving you—for at least 10 years.Quality matters. And when it comes to mattresses, quality means comfort, support, and durability.
I’ll explain more about this in a minute. Right now, I want to make a more general point. When it comes to living rich, many wannabe-rich people have all the wrong ideas. When they imagine winning the lottery, they see Palm Beach mansions, Rolls-Royce limousines, and Rolex watches.
They picture these objects because they are well-established and widespread symbols of wealth. Owning such symbols, they believe, will give them the feeling of being rich. In fact, there is no relationship at all between owning prestigious objects and enjoying wealth.
Having great wealth will give you the option to buy the most costly things. But the most costly things do not necessarily have the most quality. In fact, they rarely do.
This is true with mattresses. You may find this hard to believe (I did when I first researched the subject), but it is possible to spend as much as $30,000-60,000 on a mattress! (Members of Sweden’s royal family refuse to sleep on anything but a Hastens mattress. With its handcrafted frame secured with wooden pegs and hand-tied springs, the Hastens retails for $59,000 and up.)
But if you survey the entire field of what is available, you will discover that you can buy the best mattresses in the world for just a fraction of those prices.
In other words, the discriminating person—the person with the rich mind—always shops for quality. The indiscriminating person—the person with the poor mind—shops for price.
Our goal for this lesson in living rich is to discover the best-quality bedding in the world. I’ve asked Suzanne Mulligan Born (our research professional) to survey the bedding market and discover the best ones in terms of comfort, support, and durability.
What we have found is that the world of bedding has—in some respects—changed a great deal in the past 20 years. Although the most expensive beds in the world are still made very much the way they were made 100 years ago, there are new kinds beds (latex, hybrid, etc.) that must be considered today.
So it is a bit complicated to define quality in bedding. Support and durability can be measured scientifically. But comfort is relative to the individual sleeping on the bed.
In addition, there are three distinct types of quality mattresses—innerspring, “memory” foam, and organic latex.
In the accompanying report, Suzanne explains the differences and gives you useful suggestions for determining which kind of mattress you are likely to prefer. In each area, she rates the mattresses that receive the best consumer ratings for comfort and support. She also reveals their record for durability. And finally, by factoring the comfort and support ratings against the years of expected durability, she provides you with a handful of recommendations—Palm Beach Wealth Club’s Best Values.
One Final Secret…
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