You're listening to lifekit from NPR.
Hey, everybody, it's Marielle.
There's this personal finance phenomenon that's happened to many of us.
It's called lifestyle creep.
When you start to earn more money, you also start to spend more money.
Paco de Leon is a writer, illustrator and author of the book finance for the people.
So as your income grows, you're throwing down money like it's no object, until one day you look at your bank account or your credit card bill and realize it is.
And this topic gets complicated, right?
Cause it's normal to want to improve your quality of life, to get that bigger apartment with the dishwasher or that ad free subscription for your music streaming.
But we still need to know what we're spending money on.
And these choices should be intentional.
We don't want them to creep up on us.
So on this episode of Life Kit, which first aired in July of last year, journalist Ruth Tam talked to Paco about how to avoid lifestyle creep.
And part of that comes from understanding your emotions.
This is NPR's life kit.
I'm Ruth Tam.
What are common ways lifestyle creep surprises people?
Let's get some examples out here.
Sure.
Housing is such a huge cost, right?