After spending time with a loved one recently, I’ve noticed my deep sense of worry for her, and a strong desire to help her make changes. During our time together, she shared reflections on her successful career, high income, and the lavish lifestyle she and her husband have built - driven by status, societal pressures, and their desire to provide the best for their children. Despite their significant income and assets, they lack the freedom to spend enough time with their kids, enjoy stress-free vacations, focus on health, meet their children’s unique needs, and pursue their passions.
Her situation is a familiar one for many: she started with a prestigious job in a city she hadn’t envisioned living in, spent decades climbing the ladder, and built a life centered on conveniences and rewards for working so hard. A big house in the "right" neighborhood, private school tuition, club memberships, luxury travel, and daily upgrades slowly created a life barely covered by an income ten times the national average. Now, with little flexibility or mental space to consider alternatives, her lifestyle is entirely mismatched with her ideal wealth vision.
Lifestyle inflation is one of the greatest financial risks we face. I often hear people say, “I want financial independence, but I don’t want to give up my lifestyle.” Unfortunately, our lifestyle can become a trap - dictating where we live, how long we work, and how much we earn, while limiting our choices and dreams.
Avoiding this trap doesn’t mean rigidly restricting (because that is unsustainable) and splurging. Instead, it requires consistently aligning our spending habits with our wealth vision, preserving both financial well-being and personal freedom. Becoming aware of lifestyle inflation is not the hard part, no matter how defeating it can feel. Course-correction is the real challenge.
Preventing or Correcting Lifestyle Creep🏡 🚙
Below are some themes that may help if you feel like you've built a lifestyle that doesn't match your values:
Understand Spending Habits
Explore your spending patterns and trace them back to decisions you’ve made. Have misaligned decisions led to high fixed expenses that don’t align with what is most important to you?
Let Your Vision Motivate You
Create your wealth vision based on needs, desires, and dreams. You’ll be way more motivated to move towards this vision than to practice strenuous budgeting.
Anchor Your Wealth to Your Fulfillment
Wealth isn't about infinite accumulation but about achieving a state where you can say, "I just want to know that I can [live my dream]." This reframes wealth as a tool to reduce uncertainty and make dreams more predictable.
Build Predictability
This is where financial strategies come in. Building wealth comes down to practicing healthy habits, and those include tracking finances, planning for future expenses, and building portfolios to accommodate those through passive income, appreciation, tax planning, and diversification.
Address the "What If I Want More?" Question
Yes, the human tendency to want more is real, and the fear of it affecting our future is valid. The solution lies in mindfulness and adaptability. Pay attention to how different aspects of your life make you feel, and let this (not societal pressure to spend a certain way) guide your evolving wealth vision. If the things that bring you the most joy become more expensive over time, that’s not inherently bad. Trust in your ability to adapt and adjust your strategies to support your new wealth vision as it evolves.
If you find yourself worrying about how to sustain your current lifestyle, or whether your finances can support you in your future lifestyle shifts, come back to your vision and values- and don't underestimate your adaptability.
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