For the past 8 months, Carole Railton, has been renting an apartment in London for ￡4,000 ($5,062) a month and spending ￡400 ($506) on designer shoes without a thought. She says her life changed after she caught COVID in 2020. She was 69 and in the best shape of her life, the type of woman who would run up the escalator. However, once she got the virus, she was hospitalized and then bed-bound for 5 months. Suddenly, she began fainting, despite having no history of it. It turned out that Carole had heart failure and needed cardiac re-synchronization therapy, where electrodes are inserted into the heart, coordinated by a pacemaker. Doctors told her that she had about 10 years to live. She was forced to sell her 3-story townhouse she had lived in for 32 years because she could no longer climb the stairs. That’s when she decided to rent — with a decade left, what would be the point of tying up her money by purchasing a home? Her house sold for ￡1 million ($1.2 million), so she decided to do the things she’d always wanted to do. She threw out her tired old sheets and bought a Ralph Lauren set for ￡400 ($506), spent hundreds on exotic ferns for her balcony, and got her makeup done professionally. She also goes out for expensive meals every few days, and she’s planning a trip to Thailand. “I’ll be bypassing business and going right to first class,” she said. Carole says she believes the next few years will be her best.
