 TITLE: What Is Lifestyle Creep and How Can You Prevent It? CONTENT: Lifestyle creep happens when increased income leads to increased discretionary spending. Lifestyle creep can take the form of an ever-escalating taste for the finer things or a growing slate of regular expenses that sap money from your savings account. Think higher and higher rent, hobbies that consume your cash, gourmet food, new and improved electronics, pets and kids, subscriptions and memberships, splurging on entertainment—you get the idea.\nThe problem with lifestyle creep is that it can edge out larger financial goals such as creating emergency savings, contributing to retirement funds or putting money away for a down payment on a home. Without you realizing it, your newfound lifestyle can take priority over your financial security. Even if you're earning a generous income, you might end up living paycheck to paycheck or incur unaffordable amounts of debt. This kind of spending is heavy: If you experience any disruption in income or have an unexpected expense, you will almost certainly have trouble paying your bills.\nA few common signs of lifestyle creep:\n*   **Living the dream**: Things you used to think of as aspirational or luxury spending have become necessities.\n*   **Here today, gone tomorrow**: Spending on things like streaming subscriptions, expensive haircuts or $12 espresso is done without a second thought. At the end of the month, you don't know where your money went.\n*   **A life of its own**: It's not only one-time expenses that sting, but the fact that one becomes more comfortable with increased day-to-day expenses. Your new income may have let you leave packed lunches behind, but your $22-a-day lunch habit at the restaurant close to your office costs you $154 every week. And that's just for lunch, the most in-between meal of the day.\n*   **Can't go back**: Once you become accustomed to your new lifestyle, the idea of going back to the way you lived before in order to save money seems regressive. END