Okay, shouldn’t your average person know whether or not money is just magically slipping away? Well, no, because half the time people don’t even notice them happening until their bank balance is looking a bit confused at the end of the month. And no, this isn’t one of those “stop buying lattes and you’ll be rich” lectures, or avocado toast, or matcha, or whatever Boomers and Billionaires like to repeat. Life is too short to hate yourself for spending four dollars on iced coffee; it’s fine to do that here and there. But yeah, generally speaking, you need to protect your finances from the unexpected, and well, you need to save in general.
Alright, so this is more about the stuff that actually drains money in the background, the stuff most people don’t talk about because they don’t even realize it’s messing with their future goals. Now, the advice isn’t “budget harder”, because yeah, that’s way too obvious here. Honestly, it’s genuinely just about understanding where money slips away without any real joy or benefit.
If money is going to leave your account, at least it should feel like it did something for you, right?
“Treating Yourself” has Become too Normalized
Alright, so this isn’t to shift blame on Parks & Rec, but the whole “little treat culture” is a major problem, well, it has been for maybe around a decade. But yeah, lifestyle creep is wild because it feels harmless. Now, what does this mean specifically? Well, you get a raise, or a better job, or even just a tiny bit more money coming in each month, and the brain goes “oooh, finally” and upgrades everything. Now, yeah, that does make sense, at least to a degree it does, right?
But slowly, those little upgrades become the new baseline, and that money disappears just as fast as it arrives. Now that’s specifically where the problem lies. Alright, so what exactly would be a good example of this? Well, it starts small, like swapping supermarket brands for premium, or going out for brunch a bit more often. But then it’s nicer clothes, slightly fancier holidays, and that’s when the bills and monthly costs creep up because that “upgrade era” never got paused at all.
So, have you been doing this? Well, it’s not about never enjoying anything nice. Honestly, it’s far from that; it’s more like, maybe, actually take a second and ask, “do I even like this upgrade that I’m paying for now, or did it just happen because everyone else did it too?” Besides, lifestyle creep is incredibly subtle; it takes months, maybe even years, for it to fully set its course. So, just look at your stuff, look at your habits, look at your groceries, have you fallen victim to lifestyle creep?
Thinking Investing is Only for People Who Love Risk
Which, yeah, this one makes sense, a whole bunch of people say “To the Moon” or “Buy the Dip” or whatever else Redditors say. Oh, and there’s cryptocurrency as well, can’t forget that one either. But yeah, generally speaking here, investing has been turned into a circus online. Because there’s those meme stocks, crypto, and those “get rich fast if you buy this coin now” posts make it seem like investing is basically gambling (but if you lose money, people will laugh at you all the way to the bank)
And because of all of that, so many people avoid investing completely. Again, it makes total sense, too. But real investing isn’t a casino. So that’s what you need to keep in mind here. Honestly, it’s boring, slow, consistent, and strategic. And it’s meant to be. It’s not meant to spike adrenaline. Literally, it means to be boring, and it needs to stop being treated as a get-rich-quick scheme.
But of course, it makes total sense if you literally have no idea what’s even safe (it’s not like articles, forum posts, and advice from content creators help either). But in this case, it just helps to look into financial planners to help you out. Well, not just with investing, but they’ll help you with other financial aspects too, like retirement (which you need to start looking into), assets, and whatever else.
Buy-Now-Pay-Later
BNPL services are basically the grown-up version of IOUs, except it feels like fake money. Yeah, seriously, this absolutely needed to be said! Like, mentally it just does something weird where people think “it’s only $37 every two weeks” and it feels harmless. Except when there are like twelve of those at the same time. Just generally speaking here, a lot of people fall for this, and yeah, it does take advantage of people who are financially struggling, which just makes matters worse.
How Many Subscriptions Do You Have?
Is this one a low-hanging fruit? Well, it might be? Now, it’s already a giant shame that almost everything is a subscription nowadays, right? So that’s the first problem here, like for shopping (like Amazon), having multiple streaming platforms, apps, and sometimes physical products even have subscriptions.
It could even be free trials that got forgotten, app subscriptions you didn’t even know were still active, random upgrades you thought were one-time payments. But yeah, all of this stings, and all of this does leak money. Do you actually need all these subscriptions? But yeah, just a quick audit every so often genuinely feels like a mini financial detox, like taking the bin out for your bank account.
Social Pressure Spending
Comparison is so normal now because everyone’s life is basically on display. People don’t realise how much of their spending comes from copying what others are doing just to avoid feeling “behind”. Well, not just being left behind, but just trying to keep up with friends (like if they invite you out for dinner or something). Look at the show Sex and the City, those girls are out basically every night, who even has that kind of money?
So, trips, clothes, cosmetics, clubs for the kids, tech upgrades, and dinners out can turn into social expectation spending. Really, it’s not worth the whole “keeping up with the Joneses” thing. Stop trying to keep up, and if you have a friend who’s so upset that you’re saving money by not going out to eat (even though you invited them to your place), are they really your friend in the first place?
