For the last eight months, I’ve been renting a flat for £4,000 a month, eating in fancy restaurants several times a week and spending £400 on designer shoes without a thought.
I would never have classified myself as a big spender before, but after discovering that I have ten years left to live, I plan to enjoy life to the fullest, without worrying about the price.
My life changed after I got Covid in 2020. I was 69 years old and in the best shape of my life: I was a gym member and had a personal trainer. I was the type of woman who ran past people on escalators.
But after contracting the virus, I was hospitalized and then had to stay in bed for five months. When I finally started leaving the house, I kept fainting, despite having no history of it, and ended up in the ER three times.
One nurse joked that she deserved a VIP pass because she was there so often, but the reason was much less funny. She had heart failure and needed cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), in which electrodes are inserted into the heart, coordinated by a pacemaker.
The estate agent showed me a luxury rental in Wapping, east London, and I fell in love.
After discovering she has ten years to live, Carole Railton plans to enjoy life to the fullest, without worrying about the price.
Half a million people in the UK have pacemakers, about a third of them, like me, for the most severe type of heart failure. In our case, the machine beats for us and is the only thing that keeps us alive.
The life expectancy of those with this highly invasive device makes for grim reading; I’ve been told I’m around ten years old.
Before the surgery, I decided to sell the three-storey house in north London that I had lived in for 32 years because I could no longer climb the stairs.
I decided to rent; With a decade left, what sense would it make to invest all the money you had in one purchase?
The estate agent showed me a luxury rental in Wapping, east London, and I fell in love. It was on the Thames, all glass, with an incredible view of the Shard and Tower Bridge. I saw boats, cars and planes go by.
Yes, it would be a lot more than I had ever spent on property (at £4,000 a month I was going to spend almost £50,000 a year on rent), but it was worth it.
My house sold for £1 million and I started doing the math to figure out how much I would need to enjoy the rest of my life each year. I have no family to give my money to, so I had ten years to spend my budget.
An accountant advised me: “I want you to spend £10,000 on yourself before you do anything else, to have a different perspective on life.”
Carole says she spends money on things that make her feel good, which she admits is mostly food.
Changing my spending habits has been liberating. It’s not that he hasn’t lived a boring life. On the contrary, I visited 100 countries and worked in 47, including in recruiting for companies like IBM and Xerox.
But prioritizing my own desires, without worrying about the future or how much I would have saved, was completely new.
Since I no longer own a home, when I have a problem like a leak, I simply call the landlord to fix it. It is one of the greatest luxuries of my new lifestyle. Just like the taxis I take everywhere: I gave up my driving license and almost always take taxis instead of public transportation.
I got rid of all my furniture because I don’t want anyone to have to go through my belongings for decades. I toyed with the idea of getting a chef, but then realized I no longer had kitchen utensils and preferred to go out to eat anyway.
The rest of my £10,000 splurge went towards luxuries I had never dreamed of having. I threw away my old John Lewis sheets for a set from Ralph Lauren, which cost around £400, spent hundreds on exotic ferns for my balcony and had my make-up done at Nars, where I now buy all my beauty products.
And I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on fancy sleepwear (the glass walls mean I can no longer go around without clothes) and custom-made jewelry that doesn’t disrupt my pacemaker (I can’t wear metal).
I spend on things that make me feel good. That’s mostly food. I go out to enjoy a delicious meal every few days; my favorite is a fish restaurant overlooking the Thames.
I’m on track to spend the money two years faster than planned, but I’m not worried. If I have to, I’ll rent somewhere else for a little less.
I had to teach at a university in Bangkok before I felt bad and I would still love for that to happen. If I take off for Thailand, I’ll skip business and go straight to first class.
Focusing on myself, along with the lack of stress I now feel about money, has also made me feel better health-wise. A month ago I couldn’t walk even five minutes. Now I can and I hope it is a sign of things to come. I have lived a full life, but I believe my next few years will be the best yet.
- As told to Charlotte Lytton
