Lately, I’ve been talking a lot about a pesky phenomenon known as Lifestyle Creep.

What is Lifestyle Creep?

“Lifestyle creep refers to the phenomenon where discretionary consumption increases on non-essential items as the standard of living improves. With lifestyle creep, luxury goods and discretionary spending become perceived as a right to have and not a choice—as a necessity versus a want.“ -Investopedia

In other words, you EARN IT and BURN IT, baby!

 

In last week’s article, I shared how my cost of living crept up and up, mostly unnoticed by me, following each pay raise and promotion. Eventually, it got to the point where keeping up with my own way of living was keeping me stuck in an unfulfilling career choice.

Living paycheck to paycheck is no way for a person to live, but that’s where I found myself.
In case you missed it, here’s the link.

This week is all about owning your Lifestyle Creep to keep it from gobbling up all your hard-earned moolah!

Let’s keep this short and jump right in!

 

6 Tips for Managing the Creep

 

1. Have goals that are written down, reviewed often, and are reflected in your budget. When faced with the choice of adding yet another t-shirt to your wardrobe or being $40 closer to booking your dream vacation to Italy, you might find yourself less tempted to buy the shirt. 

 

2. Reward yourself, strategically. Give yourself wiggle room and have a place in your budget for fun so you don’t feel deprived. Just like with a crash diet, deprivation leads to binging. 

 

3. Pay yourself first. Allocate a certain percentage of each paycheck to be automatically deposited to savings and carry this over with every raise and promotion. If you’re already living comfortably, throw every dollar of that extra money toward your life goals and see how much faster you can turn them into reality.

 

4. It’s ok to upgrade but do it slowly, over time. If you feel like you’ve done without a lot of things it is tempting to upgrade everything all at once when you finally have the means. As you build up your savings make gradual upgrades to things that improve your quality of life, and feel zero guilt about it! 

 

5. Surround yourself with like-minded people who share similar goals. Peer pressure is powerful so make sure you’re under the kind of pressure you want. 

 

6. Avoid comparison and keeping up with the Joneses. This includes the virtual Joneses too. Unfollow the accounts that tempt you to spend on impulse or make you feel inadequate. The Joneses are broke and behind many of those pretty pictures, you’ll find a mountain of debt and overwhelmed humans. 

 

Tell me in the comments what I missed!
What would you add to this list?