I use a homebrew version of lifestyle expenses in the dungeon crawl campaign I’m currently running. The cost of each lifestyle is not just about food and lodging, but also about gear maintenance and resupply. Wretched to poor covers basically gear maintenance and there is a chance of something bad happening during the week of rest, such as getting sick or attacked. Comfortable to Wealthy means your character has covered the costs of gear maintenance, but also decides to eat well and get adequate rest. Therefore the character gets a bonus for the next incursion into the dungeon. The decision to spend 210 GP for a week of wealthy living and get a buff is balanced, however, by the fact that 1GP equals 2XP in this campaign. So players have a choice of getting a short term buff at the cost of levelling up slower.
I also use this with long rests that are a week long, during which the characters are either partaking in downtime activities or just bumming around. Sometimes the downtime activity is enough to cover the costs of the lifestyle chosen or more. A player can choose to have their character live like a wretch for a week, then win big in a pit fighting match, thus keeping more gold for better gear and levelling up. The gamble though is that on a roll of 1-5 on a D6, something bad happens to the character while living wretchedly, as mentioned above.
If I was running a grand fantasy campaign where the characters were trying to save the world from Baelzar the Wicked and his horde of oozes, I wouldn’t bother. But that’s not the atmosphere or tone of this campaign. I wanted to ground the players into the world and make them feel like they were nobody’s becoming somebodies. Making them pay for food and shelter reminded them that their characters weren’t beyond the basic needs of life. It also gives them a sense of accomplishment and progression, as they see their characters go from sleeping in a ditch every week and eating rations, to lodging in the best room at the inn and enjoying the finest of wines.
It’s a little more bookkeeping than I’m used to (I track all gold coming in and out for the party), but it’s helped shape the style and tone of the campaign more than I thought it would.