Play · spending & margin
Lifestyle Creep
Updated 2026-07-31 · Sources: 1 · Concept: what happens to each raise
Nobody decides to spend a raise. It just arrives, and a few months later the money is gone and the month feels the same as before. This tool prices that: choose what share of each raise turns into new spending, and watch one career finish three different ways. It is not an argument that you may never enjoy a raise; it is an argument for deciding before the raise lands, because the default is 100%.
Predict first
Two people start at $60,000, get the same 3% raises, and save 10% to begin with. For 25 years one lets 80% of every raise become new spending; the other keeps spending flat and saves the rest. How much less does the first one have at the end?
Pick an estimate, or skip to your own numbers.
| Raises absorbed | Ending income | Ending savings rate | Wealth |
|---|
Savings earn 7%/yr, compounded annually, which is modest against the long-run U.S. stock average (~10%/yr nominal, per investor.gov). Raises arrive once a year; "absorbed" is the share of each raise that becomes new spending rather than new saving. Taxes, career breaks, and inflation are left out; the model isolates one habit so you can see what it alone is worth.
and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.Haggai 1:6
KJV. Haggai is rebuking a people who had panelled their own houses while the temple lay in ruins; the holes in the bag are a judgment on misplaced priority, not a general law of economics. The image survives the move to a modern paycheck: money that goes out as fast as it comes in leaves nothing behind, and the leak is rarely one large decision.