{"id":59,"date":"2022-09-19T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/budget-comparison-lifestyle-creep\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T20:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T20:45:08","slug":"budget-comparison-lifestyle-creep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/budget-comparison-lifestyle-creep\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of Two Budgets: An Honest Look at My Lifestyle Creep"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Why I think this post was overdue<\/h2>\n

This blog post felt important for a few reasons. We so often hear from staunch FI\/RE advocates<\/span><\/a> about their spartan monthly budgets, Costco trips, and 10-day meal prep schedules, which allow them to spend less than $20,000 per year\u2014but we rarely hear from a staunch FI\/RE advocate-turned-aspiring-high-roller (hello, it\u2019s me). <\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t done a full budget breakdown in awhile but my 2022 budget (better known as a Frankenstein amalgamation of lifestyle creep and marital bliss) has more or less skated by, unexamined by the masses aside from a monthly spending review<\/span><\/a> or two rife with explanations and excuses (\u201cIt wasn\u2019t that bad if you exclude wedding costs!\u201d). <\/p>\n

I\u2019m acutely aware of my old, fiery takes floating around out there, most famously in bossy pieces like \u201cYou Need to Sell Your Car<\/span><\/a>\u201d and \u201cBeing a Hot Girl is Expensive<\/span><\/a>,\u201d wherein I saddle up my high horse to run average car payments and manicure costs through compound interest calculators and point to each with a big, fat, \u201cSEE WHAT THIS COULD HAVE TURNED INTO?!\u201d<\/p>\n

And while I mostly<\/em> stand by a lot of it and know it was coming from a good place (\u201cThis is not my opinion. This is math. You can have your Cayenne and eat compound interest, too. Just give it a minute.\u201d<\/em>), it\u2019s important to remember that\u2014when I wrote those articles\u2014I made less than $60,000 per year before taxes and desperately wanted to escape Corporate America, and assumed most of my readers did, too. No expense was safe from my Excel spreadsheet and \u201cdelete\u201d key, and I was weed-whacking through excess like a landscaper on speed.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until I started earning a relatively high income (but still agonized over $100 purchases) that I realized it\u2019s possible to indulge sometimes without being a morally corrupt cupcake of a millennial<\/strong>. I remember scoffing at friends who would pay $12 for avocado toast and silently judging their financial indiscretion, calculating how many minutes of retirement they had just sacrificed. Now, I join them (and occasionally foot the bill). It\u2019s called growth, people! <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not lost on me that I\u2019ve basically been using this line<\/span><\/a> as a jump rope\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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I know I\u2019m in a very privileged position, especially for a 27-year-old. Things have worked out well for me, and I\u2019m under no delusions that it\u2019s entirely because of any effort or unique brilliance on my part. I\u2019ve gotten very lucky on my income journey (more on that here<\/span><\/a>). <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Income<\/h2>\n

When I started Money with Katie, my salary was $60,000\/year (putting me in the middle 40%<\/span><\/a> of earners) and I made an additional $400\u2013$500\/mo. from teaching group fitness classes. My take-home pay (after 10% 401(k) contributions and taxes) was around $3,900\/mo.<\/p>\n

The pandemic was already underway by this point, and over the next several months, I began layering in freelance and contract work. This pushed my monthly income to roughly $10,000 after taxes. (In February 2021, according to my Wealth Planner<\/span><\/a>, I earned $8,759 from my full-time job and contract work, and another $2,672 from the fledgling Money with Katie.)<\/p>\n

Today, our reliable (joint) net income after taxes and 401(k) contributions is around $25,000\/mo.\u2014quite a far cry from $3,900\/mo. <\/p>\n

I share this to be transparent about the fact that it\u2019s not difficult to budget once you\u2019re earning more. <\/strong>As Gaby Dunn noted in this episode<\/span><\/a>, the best budgeters are usually low-income people who have<\/em> to maintain a powerful command of every dollar coming in. <\/strong>As a middle-income earner, my budgeting prowess was far<\/em> more impressive at $3,900 per month, because at that rate, each $100 expenditure really made a dent. Discipline was important. Now as a high-income earner, I\u2019m not a beacon of self-control and Excel savvy anymore, because generally speaking, anyone earning $25,000\/mo. will have no problem staying under budget.<\/em><\/p>\n

While I love my fellow personal finance content creators who all have multiple streams of income and 80% save rates, an 80% save rate shouldn\u2019t impress anyone if the \u201cincome\u201d side of the equation is a multiple 5-figure number. <\/em>It\u2019s far more impressive for someone earning, say, $5,000\/month to save 25% of their income. <\/p>\n

As Nick Maggiulli points out<\/span><\/a>, savings rates rising with incomes is one of the strongest correlations in personal finance literature. <\/p>\n

(This is also why it cracks me up when anonymous accounts make snarky comments on my content along the lines of, \u201cHa, so your money advice is just to work more?\u201d Well\u2026yes. That is <\/em>typically how one earns more, but I digress. Welcome to Late Stage Capitalism\u2014I\u2019ll be your host!)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Big expenditures: Then and now<\/h2>\n

I should disclaim off the bat that, in some ways, we\u2019ll be comparing apples and oranges today\u2014my \u201cold\u201d budget (from February 2021) is representative of my spending as a legally single woman with no husband or joint checking account to speak of. <\/p>\n

In an attempt to equalize the playing field a little, I decided to chop our \u201cjoint\u201d budget in half, pulled from February 2022 numbers for a neat, 12-month cycle. That\u2019s being awfully generous, though, considering more than half<\/em> of our monthly spending is directly attributable to me. Moreover, we\u2019ve experienced a sweeping increase in the price of just about everything<\/span><\/a> in the last year, and I think inflation itself is reflected in some of these figures (see? It\u2019s not all<\/em> my fault!). <\/p>\n

So, the numbers may not be perfectly aligned but this is my corner of the internet, so I make the rules, #RichGirls!<\/p>\n

February 2021: Housing for Just Me<\/strong><\/p>\n