Asian Pear went through her income and compared it to her budget at her various stages of life (read it here).
She found that she spent less when she earned less, but when she started earning more, she spent more.
It’s basically what all PF’ers call lifestyle inflation or lifestyle creep.
I don’t knock it at all because when you make more, you DO feel entitled to upgrade a little, and I can totally understand where she’s coming from.
I was and still am NOT a natural born saver like Asian Pear… and I was a whole out, knock ’em down, drag ’em out SPENDER when I started working.
So it’s an opposite story for me, and I am experiencing what I’d call lifestyle DEflation…
(Although I should note that I think my lifestyle has actually improved, not deteriorated, so that may not be the right term.)
THE HISTORY
When I flipped burgers, I made $7/hour and brought home maybe $300 – $500/month (net), working insane hours (after school, maximum hours on the weekend).
Yet, I spent $300 – $400 on junk (ugh, I can just see my Bonne Bell collection of Lip Smackers now), and saved close to NOTHING.
Okay, let’s just say I saved nothing. Maybe $1000 at the end of 4 years of earning pretty good money for a 16-year old.
When I went to college and hooked a part-time clerical job, plus worked full-time on the side with my side business, I brought home around $2000 a month (net).
I spent every penny save for perhaps $1000.
A lot of it went to rent, food and tuition, but I sure as heck could’ve saved a lot more than $1000 if I had been smarter.
When I graduated and got my first big job, I brought home around $3700/month (net) and it was in that year that I faced my debt & realized I was going to pay it off in never if I kept spending like crazy.
So I buckled down & cleared it.
Enter today
Now that I’m a freelancer, I can bring home around $10,000 net a month when I actually have a contract, but it has to last for 4-5 months because there are times (2009 I’m looking at you!) when I won’t work at all.
Due to those freelancing circumstances, and because I’ve turned a new leaf (you know, towards minimalism and all), my lifestyle has deflated from spending every penny I earned, to watching my pennies and making the cash last for as long as possible.
And I love every minute of it.
Isn’t that funny?
That being said, I do spend on occasion.
I will willingly plop down $30 for a box of macarons just because I want them. Or take BF out to a $200 dinner.
Or decide to spend $92 just to park 4 days in my building … oh wait, that wasn’t a choice as much as it was a necessity 😛
The major difference now is I don’t spend like that all the time & I know my limits….. plus I don’t want to carry all that junk to Dallas when we move sometime in the near future.
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about 
It does depend on how you look at it! My DH and I definitely spend less than we used to (thank goodness!), but I think our lifestyle has VERY much improved, in part because we're spending our money on better (but fewer) things.
For example, we just got a Vitamix blender (refurbished, but still pricey). A few years ago we would have thought it crazy to pay nearly $400 for a BLENDER. We would have bought the cheapest thing we could find and then complain when it wasn't worth the counter space. But, then I think back to all the cheap crap we bought that we hardly cared about, not to mention all that really mediocre meals we ate out. We could easily spend $400 in a week and not know where it went (sort of how we got in debt). But we thought we were so frugal because most of the stuff we bought was cheap.
In contrast, this was a VERY well researched and planned purchase that was also in budget. And, yes, we are LOVING it. As strange as it may seem to some to get excited over a blender, we definitely feel that our lives and diets have been improved and that was well worth the cost.
But, of course, the things that really make us feel like we're living well aren't the things we own — it's being able to appreciate the non-material things like open space, not running around in shops, not worrying so much about what others think, enjoying long walks together, and so on.
Knowing I was moving across the country was a really quick way to get me to stop spending on STUFF, because really, it costs money to move stuff and I didn't want to own anything I wasn't willing to pay to move! Now that we've been here for 11 months or so, after not buying stuff for probably 6-9 months, I've definitely gotten back into the swing of buying and now I need to stop myself again! lol. I find that most of my clothing shopping happens at the beginning of summer and the beginning of winter, so if I can be better about budgeting myself for those time periods I'd be better off. I think right now there's so many darn good sales in stores, however, that I keep being victim to their advertising! haha. But yes, overall, when I make more, I spend more. Now I can barely understand how I used to survive off of $11/hr!
I'm a deflater, definitely. When I worked for minimum wage I blew it all. The more I made the more I realised I'm responsible for myself (called growing up) and could see the mistakes my parents – mostly my dad – made with money. Having tripped upon the Tightwad Gazette after I married into a financial mess, I really started paying attention and have never looked back. Result? Retired at 51.