For me, I'm working on aligning downtime, lifestyle costs, and gritty realism to create a cycle of expenditure with benefits. Essentially, gritty realism's long rest (typically 7 days) can be reduced by your lifestyle cost. Lifestyle being a seldom used mechanic in the PHB. A squalid lifestyle means you aren't eating, you live on the streets, and a long rest can take upwards of 9 days, but it's free. However, a comfortable lifestyle is 5 days for a long rest, and costs 2gp per long rest cycle. Higher lifestyles cap at a 4 day long rest, but offer benefits like faster downtime activities (scroll scribing, research, working, theivery, etc) but cost upwards of 200gp per cycle at the highest. This also includes the benefits that lifestyles afford, like contacts, status, and information. Lastly, since long rests take a while, I homebrewed mana potions, and purchasable HP potions, more money sink if you wanna stay out adventuring.