How to Feel Rich Without Being Rich: The Art of Living Well with Limited Money

By Ranjot Singh Chahal

In a society that measures success by possessions, income, and status, many people feel poor no matter how much they have. How to Feel Rich Without Being Rich challenges this illusion and shows that true wealth has little to do with money — and everything to do with how you see, value, and live your life.

This book explores the deeper meaning of richness: time, health, peace of mind, and meaningful relationships. Through mindful living, gratitude, and simplicity, it reveals how to experience abundance every day, even with limited financial means. You’ll discover that comfort, joy, and fulfillment can exist without luxury — and that the richest people aren’t always the ones with the most money.

With practical insights and psychological wisdom, each chapter guides you to rethink your habits, reshape your mindset, and live with greater purpose. You’ll learn how to spend consciously, find beauty in small things, and build a sense of financial peace that no economic situation can take away.

How to Feel Rich Without Being Rich is more than a guide to saving money — it’s a philosophy for living well. It reminds us that the greatest treasures in life are often invisible: contentment, gratitude, love, and inner peace. When you nurture these, you don’t just survive on less — you thrive with more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inkwell Press
• Release date: Oct 8, 2025
• ISBN: 9789781995149

Book preview

Ranjot Singh Chahal

How to Feel Rich Without Being Rich

The Art of Living Well with Limited Money

First published by Inkwell Press 2025

Copyright © 2025 by Ranjot Singh Chahal

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

First edition

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Contents

Chapter 1: Rethinking Wealth

Chapter 2: The Psychology of Enough

Chapter 3: Simplicity as a Superpower

Chapter 4: Spending with Purpose

Chapter 5: Building Financial Peace

Chapter 6: Happiness Beyond Materialism

Chapter 7: Gratitude & Mindful Living

Chapter 8: How to Find Luxury in Simplicity

Chapter 9: The Freedom of Financial Boundaries

Chapter 10: Living the Satisfied Life

Chapter 1: Rethinking Wealth

We live in a world that speaks the language of money with native fluency, yet remains largely illiterate in the dialects of true prosperity. To utter the word rich is to conjure an immediate, almost universal imagery: sprawling mansions, gleaming supercars, private jets, and the shimmering aura of financial infinity. This imagery is not accidental; it is the carefully curated product of centuries of cultural narrative, decades of targeted advertising, and a socio-economic system that equates net worth with human worth. But what if this entire framework is a magnificent, gilded cage? What if our relentless pursuit of this narrowly defined wealth is the very mechanism that impoverishes us? This chapter is not an indictment of money, but an invitation to a more profound inquiry. It is a call to dismantle the monolithic definition of rich and reconstruct it on a foundation that sustains, rather than depletes, the human spirit. We will journey through the true meaning of being rich, dissect society’s flawed blueprint for success, and finally, uncover the real, non-negotiable currencies of a life well-lived: time, health, and relationships.

What Does Rich Really Mean?

At its core, to be rich is to possess a superabundance of a valued resource. The catastrophic error of our modern paradigm is the wholesale reduction of that resource to a single, tangible asset: currency. This conflation is a form of perceptual blindness, one that leads us to pour all our energy into accumulating financial capital while remaining oblivious to the draining of our more vital accounts.

True richness, therefore, is not a number in a bank ledger; it is a state of being. It is the experience of profound abundance across the multiple dimensions that constitute a human life. A person with a moderate bank balance who has boundless free time, vibrant health, and deep, loving connections is, by any functional measure, far richer than the billionaire who is a slave to their calendar, their body is failing from neglect, and their relationships are transactional or fractured.

This expanded definition introduces the concept of Wealth Portfolios. Just as a wise investor diversifies their financial assets to mitigate risk and ensure stability, a wise individual must cultivate a diversified portfolio of life assets. A hyper-inflated financial portfolio coupled with bankrupt personal, health, and time portfolios is not a sign of success; it is a recipe for existential crisis. Let us consider the pillars of this true wealth portfolio:

Financial Wealth: The tool. It provides options, security, and the means to solve certain classes of problems. It is a critical and powerful tool, but it remains a means, never the end.

Time Wealth: The canvas. It is the non-renewable space upon which life is painted. An abundance of discretionary time—time that you control and can direct toward your chosen pursuits—is a fundamental component of richness.

Health Wealth: The vessel. It is the physical and mental capacity to enjoy the other forms of wealth. Energy, vitality, and a mind free from debilitating anxiety or depression are the prerequisites for experiencing any form of abundance.

Relational Wealth: The meaning. It is the network of deep, trusting, and loving connections that provide joy, support, and a sense of belonging. Humans are neurobiologically wired for connection; without it, all other wealth feels hollow.

A person is truly rich when these portfolios are in harmony, each sustaining the others. Financial wealth can buy time-saving services and better healthcare, but it cannot buy a single extra second of life, it cannot guarantee genuine health, and it cannot purchase authentic love. The relentless pursuit of money at the absolute expense of time, health, and relationships is the ultimate bad bargain—it is trading the finite and precious for the infinite and impersonal.

How Society Defines Success (and Why It’s Wrong)

Society’s definition of success is not an organic emergence; it is a constructed narrative, engineered and perpetuated by powerful systems with a vested interest in its continuation. This narrative is a three-legged stool built on Visibility, Comparability, and Consumability.

1. The Cult of Visibility: Society measures success by what it can see. The corner office, the luxury brand logo, the exotic vacation photos on social media—these are the metrics. This creates a performative wealth culture where the appearance of success becomes more important than the substance of well-being. We are driven to curate our lives for public consumption, investing in symbols that signal our status to strangers rather than in experiences that nourish our souls. This external validation becomes a drug, requiring ever-larger doses to achieve the same fleeting high, trapping us in a visibility loop where we work harder to buy more to show others we are successful so we can feel successful enough to justify the work.

2. The Engine of Comparability (The Hedonic Treadmill): Success is defined not in absolute terms, but in relative ones. It’s not about having enough; it’s about having more than the Joneses. This traps us on the hedonic treadmill, a psychological phenomenon where as we acquire more, our expectations and desires rise in tandem, nullifying any permanent gain in happiness. A promotion and a raise bring