Living paycheck-to-paycheck can be exhausting. It is easy to feel hopeless when caught in that cycle. The thought of a promotion sounds great! But extra income does not automatically solve all your problems. According to a recent article by U.S. News and World Report, paycheck-to-paycheck living is common in most income brackets.
“You’ve heard the seemingly outrageous stories of families who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars and still can’t make ends meet. How can that happen?
One of the biggest reasons that high-earners struggle to pay their bills is lifestyle creep. Here’s how it happens: As people gradually earn more money, they begin to buy more expensive things, and those purchases often result in a lot of debt, maintenance, taxes and expensive insurance bills. Over time, the bills required just to keep and maintain those expensive items can gobble up your income, leaving you with all the old worries and more career stress than before.”
The article explains the overall best way to avoid lifestyle creep is maintaining (or lowering) your current bills. . . even if your income increases.
U.S. News and World Report also goes on to lay out five specific ways to avoid this continuous struggle, and how to realistically combat each set of circumstances.
Visit their website here to read the full article, and get more advice on how to avoid the lifestyle inflation in your own home.