Lifestlye Creep

If your spending is eating your savings, you might be experiencing 'lifestyle creep'

Updated July 15, 2022 12:17 AM ET 
By Ruth Tam, Michelle Aslam
NPR: Life Kit Tools To Help You Get It Together

The cost of your lifestyle can creep up on you, like mold festering in your refrigerator. You don't notice it until one day — bam! — the impact is clear, and it's not pleasant.

When did you decide to join all these subscription services? Have you always shopped online so frequently? When did you go from batch-cooking dinner to getting sushi delivered?

Without much thought, all these charges add up to a much larger bill at the end of the month. This uncomfortable growth is called "lifestyle creep" or "lifestyle inflation," and it happens when you have access to more money.

Maybe you've advanced in your career and have a higher salary. Or maybe during the pandemic, you've had fewer expenses and more discretionary income. Perhaps you've moved in with a partner and are sharing expenses. However you got here, now you have more cash in your bank account, and instead of investing or saving it, you've only ballooned the cost of your lifestyle.

Writer, artist and financial planner Paco de Leon shares tips about how to manage your money, as well as your emotions, to achieve inner wealth and prevent lifestyle creep.

It's A Good Time To Save More. Here's How

Save money dynamically
If you're making more money, your savings rate should also increase. Adjust how much you save based on what you earn. If you have the option, ask your employer to make a direct deposit into your savings account so that the saved money is automatically set aside.

During times of inflation, it may be harder to do this, but always pay attention to how much you're saving and whether it's going up with how much you're earning.

Avoid impulse purchases with a "buy list"
To avoid impulse purchases, make yourself what de Leon calls a "buy list." Put the items you desire on a list. Then, after a predetermined time (like a week or a month), if you still want that thing, go ahead and buy it. You can even build the concept of shopping off your buy list into your life so you have items and experiences to look forward to.

De Leon says a buy list "re-creates the experience of shopping" but prevents her from buying things carelessly.

Know that it's OK to treat yourself sometimes
It's OK to spend some of your money on yourself! Staying strict with your spending can cause you to "explode in ways that are not so great," says de Leon.

To "satiate the beast," she gives you permission to treat yourself. Just do so thoughtfully. Ask yourself, "How do I expect this purchase will make me feel? What do I want it to make me feel? What feelings am I trying to avoid by buying it?"

Asking yourself these questions before treating yourself can help you avoid the "hedonic treadmill" — the never-ending pursuit of one "thing" to bring us happiness after another. Although buying a gift for yourself can give you pleasure initially, research suggests you often return to how you felt before — that is, until you settle on a new "thing" to make you feel happy and the cycle begins again.

Ask yourself: What is enough?
Lifestyle creep can show up in both our tiny lifestyle choices and our big ones. Everything from a daily coffee habit to a desire to live in a single-family home is a reflection of the life we want for ourselves and how much we're willing to spend to achieve that lifestyle.

When you're thinking about what will make you happy, de Leon says to be careful about measuring contentment through a consumerist lens, because it's rarely just one thing that will make you happy. You may think you want just a nice jacket, she says, but then you need attractive shoes to go with the jacket. When you're on the hedonic treadmill, it's never just one thing.

The antidote to lifestyle creep, de Leon says, is deeply considering the answer to the question, "What is enough?"

Often, our life goals are this moving target, says de Leon. To decouple these goals from material things, think about how you want your life to feel on a daily basis. Ask yourself what would truly make you happy and joyful. What would that cost you? How much money do you need to make, how much money do you need to save for emergencies and what do you need to invest for the future?

Use these answers as building blocks to get to a place where you can appreciate what you have instead of always desiring more.
Work on your mental and emotional health

"Our relationship with money is a mirror," says de Leon. "How we choose to spend or not spend our money is a reflection of how we feel about ourselves."

Insecurity, jealousy and other negative emotions can lead us to spend money needlessly. Take care of yourself so that when you have to make financial decisions, you're in a clear state of mind and less easily influenced by outside factors. A good night's sleep, breathing deeply, listening to music that makes you feel happy and spending time with people who appreciate you for you can go a long way.

"The more you work on your relationship with yourself," says de Leon, "the more you're going to see your relationship across all other things in your life improve."

Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or sign up for our newsletter. The audio portion of this episode was produced by Michelle Aslam, with engineering support by Brian Jarboe. We'd love to hear from you! Email us at or send a voice note to LifeKit@npr.org.

Spend savvier, save smarter:
5 tips to stop stress-spending

Updated December 18, 202410:10 AM ET 
By Lauren Migaki, Andee Tagle
NPR Life Kit

This story was originally published on Sept. 23, 2020, and has been updated.

We've all bought things we don't need: that candy bar at the grocery store checkout, those aspirational ice skates we definitely plan to use this winter.

Unnecessary spending looks different for everyone, but regardless of our financial situation, we could all stand to stretch our dollar a little further. Tiffany Aliche, better known as the Budgetnista, is a personal finance expert and educator — and she gets it.

"We impulse-shop because it feels good in the moment, right? It's like the Band-Aid," she says. "It's the cool glass of water on a really hot summer's day."

It's OK to do a little comfort shopping, especially in these tough times — "but what I've learned is to impulse-shop within parameters," Aliche says. Don't let short-term wants get in the way of your long-term savings goals.

Here are a few ways to start curbing that stress-spending and start saving a little smarter — today.

Make a budget. Don't just ballpark it in your head — write it down.

"Get a clear visual picture of what your money is doing now. The rule is, if it's not written down, then it's not a budget," Aliche says.

Once you've factored in necessities like food, shelter, water — and savings — then factor in fun. Whether your fun budget is $5 a week or $50 a week, it's important to set that money aside. "Money is not just meant to be responsible with — you're supposed to enjoy money, to use it as a tool to make your life better," says Aliche.

She speaks from personal experience. After over a decade as an early-childhood educator, Aliche lost her job and her home in the 2008 recession and had to move back in with her parents. After rebuilding her financial life from scratch, she decided to share the wealth and became a financial educator.

"I don't believe in over-sacrifice," says Aliche. "I impulse-shop as well. But what I've learned is to impulse-shop within parameters. So I give myself a weekly, if not monthly, budget where I can buy things within that budget."

Need it, love it, like it, want it.

Before you reach for those fun-budget funds, Aliche has a bit of advice. She says to ask yourself, " 'What are the things that really make me happy? What are the things that really bring me joy?' "

To keep those priorities straight, Aliche says she has a sticker on top of her computer that says, "need it, love it, like it, want it." And before hitting that purchase button, she wants to make sure that what she's buying is a love — that it will bring lasting joy.

"Likes are short-term joy. That means less than a year, I'll have forgotten about this thing," she says. "Wants are just instant gratification where not even a day later, I'm not going to be interested in this thing."

Sound familiar? We have all purchased some wants — whether it's a bright purple sequin T-shirt or an artsy tote bag from a concert or Rollerblades that are now gathering dust in the closet. These wants are particularly damaging, Aliche says, because "not only am I spending money that I don't have, but I'm actually making my life less enjoyable because these things don't give me lasting joy."

Don't worry if it doesn't come easily at first, Aliche says. "It's a muscle that you have to practice. Do I need it? Do I love it? Do I like it? Do I want it?"

Figure out your "noodle budget."

What is the bare-minimum amount of money that you need to keep going? What are the things that you can drop if times are tough? Aliche calls this her "noodle budget" (noodle as in ramen noodles, which she eats when things get tight). "For some people, it's peanut butter and jelly; for some people, it's rice and beans," she explains.

When you're strapped for cash, you should be able to cancel your cable or Netflix subscription and switch to ramen noodles before tapping into your savings or (gasp) retirement savings. "Focus on your budget now and what you can do now, so you don't take from your future," she says.

And if spending is still an issue, Aliche has a suggestion: First, cut up your credit card. But if you're the kind of person who has auto-saved credit card information into your favorite websites, you've got to go a step further. Call your credit card company, Aliche says, and tell it that you lost your card.

"They're going to reissue you a card. And when it comes, you're going to cut it or put it away," she says. Aliche compares it to digging a ditch and says if you don't want to keep digging deeper and deeper into debt, you have to put the shovel — your credit card — down.

Create and maintain a savings plan.

You should have between three and six months' worth of emergency savings. Set it up in an account that has a good interest rate. Aliche says it's also worth putting this cash in a bank that isn't associated with your checking account, so it isn't convenient or fast to transfer that hard-earned savings.

"Automation, automation, automation," Aliche says. She recommends automatically withdrawing your savings and your bills into separate accounts each month.

Don't cheat your future self — your Wanda!

Being responsible with money can be a drag. Instead of impulse-buying a plane ticket to Paris on a credit card, it means saving that money slowly over time. Aliche's way of making this drudgery more fun is a woman named Wanda.

"I have named my future self. Her name's Wanda. She is sassy and a little bit of a gossip," says Aliche. "Wanda is 70 years old. And I think to myself, 'It is literally my job now, as Tiffany, to take care of Wanda.' And so if I say, 'You know what? I would actually rather have cable now. ... Wanda, you'll be eating ramen' — that's not fair!"

Visualizing and naming your future self is a joyful way to think about saving for your future. "It's everyone's job to take care of their older self," Aliche says. "So what can you do now to make sure that your Wanda doesn't have to work as hard?"

Finally, remember to give yourself a break.

It is, perhaps, an understatement to say that we live in tough times. Aliche says it's important to give yourself a break if you make a financial mistake. "It's OK not to be perfect. It's OK not to know the full way. So be easy on yourself — do the best that you can."

The podcast portion of this episode was produced by Andee Tagle. We'd love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org. For more Life Kit, subscribe to our newsletter.