Forbes.com maintains a ‘Cost of Living Extremely Well Index’ - known as the CLEWI. In 2006, the CLEWI increased by 7%, while the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 4%. This intrigued us here at Luxury Reporter - the cost of living a luxurious lifestyle seems to have increased at nearly twice the rate of the general cost of living. We decided to do some digging.

Well, we dug as far as clicking the link to view the CLEWI chart. Here’s what we found:

If that’s hard to read, please don’t feel bad. It’s hard for us to read at that size, too. The important thing, though, is the relationship between the orange line (the CLEWI) and the blue line (the CPI) - the gap between the two lines has been steadily widening from the mid-1970s (the very left of the graph) to 2006 (the very right of the graph).

Far from being an isolated incident, the 2006 pattern of disproportionate increase in the cost of living extremely well (we love that phrase!) is actually ‘normal’, at least in terms of what’s occurred over the last 30 years.

Before getting too excited, it’s important to realize that there are definite limitations to these indices. For one thing, the numbers are obtained by totalling the purchase price of a list of items, and this list changes over time - at least some of the items that added up to a luxury lifestyle in 1976 probably no longer cut the mustard. As a result, the lists are updated to remain relevant. This limits the value of making comparisons that span 30 years.

On a lighter note, here are some of the items on the CLEWI list that raised eyebrows here:

• A Forbes subscription (who can blame them, though?)
• A starter electric train set
• A pair of shotguns from James Purdey and Sons
• Psychiatrist consultations
• A facelift

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