(MONEY Magazine) – No version of the American dream is fully realized without the addition of some things we don't really need -- but would be poorer without. In MONEY's poll (see page 20), 43% of the respondents said being able to afford an occasional luxury was a very important element of their dream. In the past decade (motto: ''He who dies with the most toys wins''), a list of such personal rewards would have dripped with conspicuous-consumption icons: Vuitton, Rolls-Royce, Armani. In the '90s, however, the trend is toward possessions that are soul-satisfying and often give lifelong pleasure. Such indulgences frequently require financial sacrifice. To the outside observer, they may not seem worth it, but the people pictured here and on the following pages know better.

The loving restoration For Martha Lanigan, 45, the day of epiphany came in 1984 while visiting her mother at the family farm in Silver Spring, Md. Lanigan was house hunting for an old place she could afford on her $40,000 salary as a Treasury Department program analyst. Glancing across broad fields, she spied the remains of the early-19th-century farmhouse next door. ''I felt affection for it, respect, all the things I didn't feel for other houses I'd seen,'' she recalls. The vintage property held particular meaning for Lanigan. She had lived there for two years as a small child, while her family's new home was being built. The five-room white-painted brick farmhouse, empty since 1980, was owned by a local developer. Lanigan quickly offered $38,500 -- basically the value of the land alone -- for the two-thirds-acre parcel and the house. ''I had $10,000 saved already, and the seller agreed to take a note for the rest,'' says Lanigan. Then she began paying off her loan. ''I saved every penny I could,'' she recalls. For three years, she took no vacations and bought few non- necessities. Finally, by 1987, she was ready to take out a $113,000 construction loan -- partly to finance the first plumbing and wiring the house ever had. The process took two slow, painstaking years. By the time she moved in last year, her total bill, including the original cost of the house and land, came to $175,000. At the moment, the house would probably fetch about $190,000, not that much + more than Lanigan has put into it, but she is unconcerned. ''I don't plan ever to sell it,'' she says. ''I'd really like to pass it on within my family.''

Allegra, the horse When she was a little girl in Owatonna, Minn., two hours from Minneapolis, Suzy Dorsen, 35, liked to pretend she was Dale Evans or Annie Oakley. But her style and ease on a horse were not just make-believe. ''Adults at the farm where I rode said I had a knack with animals,'' she recalls. While her parents' modest income didn't cover buying her a horse, they could afford to finance Suzy's second love, a flute. So instead of becoming a cowgirl, Dorsen grew up to be a professional flutist, giving lessons and performing in community orchestras. After marrying Peter Dorsen, a Minneapolis doctor, in 1981 and starting a family, which now includes Bria, 8, Gabi, 4, and Katarina, 18 months, Suzy had little time to lament her lost dream of owning a horse. After Katarina's birth, however, Suzy found herself drawn back to the Owatonna farm where she had ridden as a child. Before long, she was taking lessons twice a week. At times, she remarked on her lifelong wish to own her own horse. Those times weren't lost on Peter. Last February, Suzy's birthday gift arrived on four legs. Allegra is a three-year-old, chestnut-colored American Saddlebred show horse -- built for beauty rather than speed. And she is expensive. Her $8,000 price, which came out of an inheritance from Peter's mother, was only the beginning. Monthly stabling and training for the horse and four-times-weekly lessons for Suzy at a stable in Lakeville, 20 miles outside Minneapolis, come to $530. Add in weekly lessons for Bria, and the tab comes to about $7,000 a year -- a hefty chunk of 46-year-old Peter's $85,000-plus annual income. Sensitive to Allegra's mighty bite out of the family budget, Suzy has tried to economize. She spent $350 for a used saddle instead of $1,000 for a new one. ''But there's no way I can financially justify owning such a beautiful creature,'' she admits. ''I don't even try.''

Grown-ups' baby grand Every Monday evening, Jim Johnson hurries from his downtown Atlanta law office, where at 42 he is a $100,000+-a-year partner, to the Georgia Academy of Music, where he is just another struggling piano student. Just as his lesson is ending, his wife Nancy, 34, rushes in with Tom, 6, and Katherine, 3, hands them off to Jim and sits down to her own lesson. This breathless game of musical piano benches started early this year after three years of discussion. Forgoing the family vacation, the couple paid $5,900 for a new Weber baby grand and signed up for lessons at $22.50 per 45-minute session.

Nancy's passion for the piano flowered five years after abandoning lessons as a teenager when her family moved to an apartment. ''It was clear I wasn't going to be concert material, and my folks decided to sell the piano instead of paying the expense of moving it,'' says Nancy. ''I didn't object at the time, but later I began to feel that I'd missed the chance to develop a special skill, one that would move me beyond being just average.'' Jim's attraction for the ivories grew, unaided by any lessons. Because his military family lived in half a dozen places from Germany to Bayonne, N.J., his parents never agreed to buy -- and then move -- the piano he always wanted. It hasn't been easy being adult learners. Jim quickly mastered the rudiments of reading music, but finger dexterity has proved harder to develop. He practices for an hour around 9 p.m. several nights a week, after the kids are in bed. Though Nancy already had basic proficiency, finding a full hour or more to practice is difficult with two active children in the house. ''So I rely on short, frequent periods every day, during mornings when the children are at school,'' she says. ''Sticking with it, getting a little better as I go along, makes me feel very good about myself in a way that working on needlepoint or my exercise bike never did.'' For Jim, the reward is relief from an intensive work life. ''I'm a litigator. My day is often very confrontational,'' he says. ''Music is just the opposite, a way of harmonizing things.'' Still, Johnson's enthusiasm has its limits. When asked by his teacher to play in her annual recital, he declined. ''Can you imagine? I play Twinkle, Twinkle and some fifth-grader knocks off the Goldberg Variations?'' he laughs. ''That's the nice thing about being an adult learner. You get to say no when you want to.''

Awesome journeys Watching Jack Graham man the powerhouse supplying electricity to a sawmill in Cottage Grove, Ore. (pop. 7,090), you would never guess he had Egypt on his mind. But like Special Agent Cooper in another Northwest logging community, Graham, 60, is a man of surprises. Despite a modest income of less than $35,000 a year, he has spent $6,000 on three-week archaeological tours of Egypt in each of the past four years. Says Graham: ''After the first trip, I couldn't wait to return. Seeing the first columns ever built, the first temples, left me awestruck.'' Like others captivated by the Arab world, Graham has been a romantic since his boyhood in Los Angeles. ''I loved Beau Geste and the French Foreign Legion,'' he recalls. ''Then I read a book about a kid who runs off to the Merchant Marine, and I knew that's what I wanted to do.'' At 16, the minimum age in 1946, Graham went to sea, traveling as far away as Japan and Arabia. Later, he joined the Navy during the Korean War. He finally settled in Cottage Grove, 15 miles south of Eugene. He has worked there at the Weyerhaeuser sawmill for 27 years. For decades, his love of faraway places was fed by reading ethnographic magazines like National Geographic. ''But you get to a point where you wonder if it's too late to do the things you always said you'd do,'' he muses. ''So I decided to go to Egypt.'' To date, he has visited most of its major cities and archaeological sites. In October, he explored turquoise quarries near the Sinai desert, originally mined as early as 2700 B.C., and the ancient city of Memphis, where he is shown, below, with the reclining statue of Ramses II. Graham calls himself a loner. But his passion for Egypt is changing that. In 1988, he went to San Jose for a reunion of his first tour group and to New York for a Cleopatra exhibit put on by his favorite tour leader, Robert Bianchi, at the Brooklyn Museum. Graham pours all of his resources into his trips. ''I can't put any money away for my retirement; traveling takes it all. In fact, I try to work as much overtime as I can to make sure there's enough,'' he says, adding: ''If somebody told me five years ago I'd be doing all this, I'd never have believed him.''

Art for heart's sake Until a visit to Taos, N.M. three years ago, Karen Peters, now 46, had never thought of herself as an art collector. Seeing the work of R.C. Gorman changed her mind. A Navajo artist, Gorman draws his inspiration from the matriarchal society of his native culture. ''I loved how his paintings are about women as individuals,'' she says. ''You can tell that the artist respects women in the way he paints them. They have dignity, strength and purpose.'' Like Peters herself. A Vietnam War widow who raised her daughter Lisa alone and supports her 74-year-old mother, she struggled to succeed on her own and - did -- becoming an expert in the containment and disposal of toxic waste. She now heads the hazardous-materials program in Orange County, Calif., earning $66,000 a year. Peters' initial plunge into art cost her $1,800 -- for a Gorman lithograph called Concha (seen behind her in the photograph above). ''She's my favorite,'' says Peters, who hung the piece in her bedroom. ''I identify with her. She's very strong, very still. I actually feel her company when I'm in the room.'' Her second acquisition, Trading Woman, also cost $1,800 and depicts a Navajo woman awaiting customers for her jewelry, which she has spread out on the ground. Peters has filled her three-bedroom Orange County condominium with such colorful work. Since 1987, she has spent $13,800 on five more Gorman lithographs and two ceramic urns that are now worth $20,200. ''I've even picked out my next two purchases -- if I can ever afford them.'' The prospects of doing so are excellent. Two years ago Peters began law school at Western State University of Law in nearby Fullerton. ''Law school is a way to make sure that my options are open when it comes time for me to do something different,'' Peters says. But for now, squeezing out additional money for works by Gorman has meant doing without such other indulgences as weekend trips and new clothes, two of her previous pleasures. ''I miss the trips, but I never really needed so many clothes,'' remarks Peters. And the works of art are a better treat, anyway, she insists. ''Women often feel that spending money on themselves takes it away from someone else, that our needs are less worthy. The artwork reminds me that I can take care of others and still provide for myself.''