The Difference between Standard of Living and Quality of Life

Sometimes, standard of living and quality of life are used interchangeably; but they are actually two independent terms each with a different focus and impact on your life. When youre thinking about your current and future goals, its a good idea to understand both of these concepts and see how they relate to each other.Standard of LivingYour standard of living is defined by the way that you can afford to live, which makes it dependent on your salary, bills and savings. It determines the neighborhood you live in, the type of material goods you can buy, the type of vacations you can take, and so on. Standard of living does have some optionality to it, because although you may be able to afford very expensive items, high-priced neighborhoods, etc. you dont actually have to choose to spend your money in that way. Instead, you can choose to live below your means. However, you can also choose to live above your meanswhich means you create a standard of living that your income cant actually support. While you can live below your means forever, living above your means is not sustainable and will eventually catch up with you. It could also create so much debt that it severely impacts the real standard of living you can afford now and later. Quality of LifeYour quality of life has little to do with income. Instead, it focuses on your ability to spend your time doing those things that mean the most to you. While someone with a low income may have to spend more hours working and have fewer personal hours, their quality of life can still be determined by how they decide to spend those few hours of personal time. The quality of your life is also affected by your health. Because your wellness can impact what you can invest in living life the way you want to. Investing in Standard of Living and Quality of LifeYou can make important moves right now to help boost both your quality of life and standard of living in the future.

• Get healthy, and stay healthy.
• Save money. This can increase your quality of life by allowing you more time to do what you want and less time to work. It can also increase your future standard of living by helping you afford more, later.
• Stay out of debt. Debt ties up future dollars for purchases you want to make today. Having little to no debt in the future means having more money for improving standard of living later or investing in time for quality of life.
• Get to know yourself. You can only have a high quality of life when you actually know yourself and understand what you enjoy doing.

Striking a BalanceStandard of living and quality of life dont have to be mutually exclusive, but they are tied together to some extent. They feed into each other with sacrifices made in one helping to bolster the other, but balances can be achieved. For example, for one who wants a high standard of living, there may be intense sacrifices in time early in life as they work to amass enough wealth to realize their standard of living goal, but once they do amass that wealth, they can then begin to relax and may be able to increase their quality of life substantially. For others, their focus on quality of life brings about a standard of living that they enjoyso there seems to be no sacrifice at all. When youre carving out your dream for the future, take a careful look at how both of these concepts fit and start making decisions now that will allow your individual priorities to be realized later.