Don’t Fall Victim to Lifestyle Creep | Ep. 256

Intro/Outro: You know what it is, that’s right. It’s time to talk money with your money, nerd and financial coach. Now tighten those purse strings and open those ears. It’s the money talk with Tiff podcast.

Tiffany Grant: Hey, everyone, and welcome to another. episode of Tiffany’s take where I answer your money questions. If you want your question answered on the podcast, just go to www. moneytalkwitht. com forward slash X Tiffany. In today’s episode, I wanted to talk about lifestyle creep because it’s something that can happen to all of us if we’re not careful.

 What is lifestyle creep? Lifestyle creep is the gradual increase in spending as your income increases. As you get raises or, you know, as you get new jobs, then you slowly start spending more money, to make sure that you spend most of it, you know, that type of thing. And it can really be detrimental to your financial health.

. It’s so easy to do. I see it all the time. And some of my clients where, you know, we work on getting them raises or getting them a new job. And they’re like, Oh my gosh, like I’m making way more than I’ve ever made in my life, but I still don’t have any money. That is the definition of lifestyle creep.

 It’s something to definitely be aware of. . If you realize that you’re on a hamster wheel, okay, like for instance, you know, you just got a new job making way more money, but now you’re still not having any money. You may be experiencing lifestyle creep. And some of the negative consequences are not being able to save or your debt increases tremendously.

you might look up like, Oh my gosh, what happened? And it may be that your lifestyle is now outpacing your income, or you may be experiencing financial insecurity, or maybe you realize that you can’t do some things that you really want it to do.

Even though you make more money and when you were making less money, you may have been able to do it. You might be experiencing lifestyle creep. I have seen in my work where this has happened to not only me, but also some of my clients. And one particular case, we work together. We’ve been working together for quite some time and They were able to increase their income at least double.

Okay. Now they’re making well into the six figures. And they’re also with a partner that makes well into the six figures. Now, we were down to no credit card debt, nothing. And. When we met again, now we’re, we’re talking five digit credit card debt. And it’s really becoming a stressor.

And I’m like, you know, let’s go back and let’s see what happened. And lo and behold, it was lifestyle creep. as you feel like you’re making more money, you’re like, Oh, I could do this. I could do that. I could do this. But then what happens is. You look up and then now you don’t have any money again, and you may start charging things on cards just to try to keep up with yourself or, you know, you may start signing up for things that you’ve always wanted to do, but instead of pacing it out and spacing it out, you try to do it all at once.

And that is just a way to you know, just wreck your financial stability even personally, I have kind of experienced lifestyle creep before when I was married, definitely. And I ended up in credit card debt again when I was like almost done. Actually I didn’t have any credit card debt.

I just had my student loans. And now I have credit card debt again because that lifestyle creep, you know, we were making a lot of money and it was like, Oh, we could do this, we could do that. But unfortunately, when you’re an entrepreneur, you have really good months, you have really bad months. And that lifestyle creep really snuck up on us.

 There are some things that you can do to avoid lifestyle creep. And these are things that I didn’t do when I was married. I was like, let me tell them, you know, some of the mistakes I made when I experienced this phenomenon. And I will say, you know, any other time in my financial journey, I was very intentional with these things.

And that’s how I know that they are really important. First budgeting it is a super important to have a solid budget and that can keep your lifestyle creep in check. Right. . If you already know how your money is flowing and you’re sticking to that, then when you start adding things to that budget, you’ll be more aware like, Oh, you know, maybe I just added private school for the kids, or maybe I just added, you know, this, that, and the other, but now you.

Can see it happening versus just doing it. And then after the fact, going back and checking your budget, make sure as you’re adding new things for your lifestyle, because there’s nothing wrong with treating yourself. Make sure that you’re adding it to the budget so you can see how it affects everything else.

Okay. You may be like, okay, well, Tiffany, how do I start a budget? I’ve gone over this and other episodes, which I’ll link into the show notes. And I have blog articles on this, but basically you just want to write down all your income, then write down all your expenses. That’s the easiest, boil it down to the simplest thing possible.

And you can do that with a piece of paper. And. All you’re doing is looking and making sure that your expenses are less than or equal to your income. And if it’s not, then you want to start, you know, removing some things, or if it is, and you have some money left over, then you can start allocating that to your financial goals.

What brings me to my next point, set some financial goals. I know a lot of people, you know, they might have a. , vague idea of what they’re trying to accomplish financially. Maybe it’s, Oh, I want to pay off my credit card debt or, Oh, I want to buy a house, you know, or whatever it is, right? You want to make sure that you set very intentional financial goals.

And I like to use the smart goal philosophy, which I went over in another episode, I’ll link it to the show notes, but you want to make sure that you set some smart. goals. And smart means specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time constrained. When you do that, you’re able to clearly see not only what the goal is, how you’re going to measure it and how you’re going to get there.

And that’s another thing that I help my clients with as well. Now, you also want to make sure that you practice contempt, right? Practicing gratitude, you know, it helps resist the urge to spend more as income increases because you’re no longer in the habit of saying, Oh, well, you know, they just went on a trip to Jamaica.

Let me see if I can go, you know, that type of thing, or let me just go not see if I can go. Let me just go. And then you come back and now you can’t pay your bills. , You want to make sure that you’re practicing gratitude and contentment with what you have. Now there’s nothing wrong with going on a trip to Jamaica.

I love to go to if you want to pack me in your suitcase, but sometimes we get into the FOMO. You know, we might see a lot of people doing something and we’re like, Oh, we want to do it too. Or you might see a lot of people, Oh, let’s take for instance, the Beyonce concerts here lately.

And you know, people coming back and saying they can’t afford their rent. They can’t afford their mortgage, you know, all this stuff. They spent it all on Beyonce. Like that’s what I’m talking about. When, when we’re thinking about contentment, be grateful for what you have. And try to resist the urge of FOMO because.

If you try to match everybody, you know, you never know what people are doing. Like you might see somebody and they just went to the Beyonce concert. I’m only using Beyonce cause it’s fresh. They just went to the Beyonce concert and you know, they’re seeing all their pictures. They look fly. They had a good time, blah, blah, blah.

But you don’t know that financially, they just had to put all of that on a credit card cause they didn’t really have it. You know what I’m saying? But all you’re seeing is. the positive aspects of what happened. You’re not seeing the negative aspects of what happened. So make sure you keep that in the back of your mind, that everything that you see on social media, everything that’s portrayed to you by people may not be the situation, the real situation.

So once you start having that mindset then you can start saying, Oh, you know, that looks like they have fun. Let me give it a like, but you know, I know what I can afford. That’s not in my budget right now. whatever the case may be that will prevent you from overextending yourself when you don’t have to, you know, for me.

One of my bucket list items is to go to carnival in Toronto and a lot of my friends just went this year and I was like, Oh, go girl. Oh, you look good. You know, I hope they had a lot of fun, but I knew that I didn’t have that in my budget. And so I wasn’t going to overextend myself to make it happen this year.

I’m like. I’m only 32. There’s so many years left for me. I’ll make it there eventually, so when you start having that perspective it really helps your finances and going back to gratitude, you know, every morning, one thing that I do is I. write down at least three things that I was grateful for this morning.

And it could be something as small as waking up or it could be, seeing the sunshine through my curtains, you know, that type of thing. And that allows me to have a good day for the rest of the day, because I’ve already started with something positive. And then another thing you could do is do it at night.

So I know a lot of people, they practice gratitude or writing a gratitude journal at night. And you’re just saying, you know, writing down what is it that you’re thankful for that happened that day. Right. And that’s another thing that can allow you to keep gratitude top of mind. So that gives you an idea of what lifestyle creep is, how you can prevent it.

And I encourage you all to stay aware of lifestyle creep. Take proactive steps in preventing it, making sure you budget, making sure you have realistic goals, make sure you have gratitude and forget about FOMO. You know please share your experiences or tips on social media or via email, email me and let me know what you thought of this episode or send me a DM, or just.

Tag me on Twitter and tweet about it. I want to know what your experiences with lifestyle creep or any tips that you found was helpful. And if you want your question answered on the podcast, just go to www. moneytalkwit. com forward slash X Tiffany, and I will be more than happy to answer for you. .

And if you want. To learn more about these different career business and money topics, go to www. moneytacotea. com. Thank you so much for joining me today and your support as always, please be sure to subscribe, leave me some reviews, share the podcast with others. It really helps other people find us.

And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. Bye.

Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening, joining, and being a part of the money talk with TIFF podcast this week. You can check TIFF out every Thursday for a new money talk podcast, but if you just can’t wait until next week, you can listen to previous podcast episodes at moneytalkwithtea.

com or follow TIFF on all social media platforms at moneytalkwithtea. Until next time spend wise by spending less than you make a word to the money wise is always sufficient.

Tiffany Grant: It’s a little bit of everything. It’s a little bit of everything.