is everyone having a broke girl summer?
lifestyle creep is back and it's after our credit scores
Happy Sunday financial hotties! Lots of progress this week thanks to the insane productivity I’ve had while doing the FHG 30 day challenge.
This Wednesday is the first issue of Rich Girl Blueprints - a series where I’m analysing how our favourite self-made women built their wealth. Because curiosity didn’t kill the cat, it’s making us all richer.
I’m personally fascinated by the various moves people make in life: quitting jobs, taking on equity, building businesses… but what’s the return on all of those decisions and how do they actually affect your wealth? And how can we do the same?
P.S. built your wealth in a way you want to share? Whether you took on company equity, build and sold a business or started a side hustle or two… reply and let’s organise a chat!
This week we’re talking all about lifestyle creep and more importantly… how it’s creeping on our credit. More holidays are going on credit cards, and more holidays are being used to escape life. It’s a recipe for financial and emotional disaster. Let’s discuss.
𝜗ৎ In this issue:
Let’s work on your money together
I’m planning a payday workshop this month designed for you if:
You earn under £50k (or the international equivalent)
You’re doing okay, but winging it with money
You want to invest, save for holidays or an emergency fund, and still enjoy your skincare and social life, without budgeting all the time
What would help you the most?
In one session, I’ll walk you through:
How to build a monthly system that covers bills, goals, and fun
How to start investing
A simple payday routine you can repeat every month
Habits to stop falling off track
Would you rather I run this live before payday weekend (replays available), or release it as a pre-recorded session you can buy and watch anytime?
The high earners who don’t feel rich
There’s a Wall Street piece about families earning $250k+ who don't feel wealthy doing the rounds on social media this week. The families featured are spending £7,200/year on children's sports, £4,800 on utilities, and choosing organic everything whilst finding grocery bills overwhelming.
For context: The median UK household income is around £32k.
This is the lifestyle inflation pattern that always drives articles like this:
Earn more money
Immediately upgrade lifestyle to match
Feel financially stretched again
Repeat
When your lifestyle expands to fill your income, you WILL feel squeezed at any salary level. Every pay rise gets absorbed by lifestyle upgrades, so you never actually get ahead, you literally just get more expensive.
How to not end up like those families
Instead of asking yourself if you can afford things, ask:
Does this align with what I actually value in my life?
Am I buying this because I want it, or because someone with my salary would have it?
Will the people around me think I’m ‘behind’ if I don’t buy this?
If you're earning less than these families and feeling behind, remember: feeling financially stretched isn't about the amount you earn, it's about the gap between your income and your lifestyle.
The families in this article aren't struggling because life is unaffordable. They're struggling because they've made it unaffordable through their choices.
Next time you get a raise or bonus, pause and ask yourself: Am I increasing my lifestyle or my wealth?
Financial anxiety doesn't disappear with a bigger salary if you keep moving the goalposts. The only way to feel financially secure is to live below your means, regardless of what those means actually are.
And if you want the real ☕️ on articles like this, watch this:
Summer: when self-care becomes self-sabotage
Now here’s the link. Lifestyle creep is squeezing us, yes. But a lot of lifestyle creep happens during holiday spending.
My harsh big sister hat is going on, so brace yourself…
10% of UK adults are funding their entire summer holidays on credit cards or Buy Now Pay Later deals (in London, that jumps to 17%). This is on top of the crazy amounts we spend ‘prepping’ for holidays, too.
My translation: 1 in 10 people are turning their holidays into months of financial stress.
I’ve also noticed a trend on social media... we're choosing aesthetic destinations over actually exploring the world, picking places that look good on Instagram rather than places we genuinely want to experience - while justifying that through ‘I’d rather have no money than no life’.
Most people are so stressed, they think a holiday is the solution, when really they need to focus on building better daily habits and finding happiness in their actual life.
If two weeks in the sun once a year is the only thing making you happy, that's not a financial strategy, that's a sign your non-holiday life needs work.
But people often shun the alternatives like staycations and local adventures. Do we look down on them because they seem "poor"? Or because staying local doesn't give us that blissful ignorance we're craving - you can't pretend your problems don't exist when you're still in the same postcode, right?
Needing to leave the country to turn off your emails might be a boundary problem, and if you’re putting the holiday on credit, a financial problem too.
Expensive holidays to trendy spots funded by credit that leaves you stressed for months afterwards are not the answer. You deserve a life you love, so build it.
What to do instead:
Start saving now for next summer (£40/week = £2,000 by next July)
Choose holidays you can afford without borrowing
Evaluate what you are trying to escape from if your holiday is a wealth-signal
Critically analyse how much of your normal life excites you: how can you change things to stop holidays being the expensive plaster you stick on a few times year?
Weekly recommendations and top picks
Read: 50 things to do this summer - having had a sports day for my boyfriend’s 30th, I am a huge fan of this list. I’ve already bookmarked stargazing on the 12th!
Watch: Love Island, specifically Sarel’s debriefs - they’re the ONLY reason I watch reality TV - I’m the person that loves analysing people psychologically on these shows
Try: Kul Coffee - international readers, save this for when you’re in Edinburgh!
Avoid: the Oatly matcha milk - it was chock full of junk, way too sweet and a dull green. A no from me :(
Welcome back Close Friends ❤️🔥 Let’s get into it…
Close Friends: I’m trialling sending you a dedicated issue on Monday mornings! You will receive this first thing tomorrow. I’m packing these emails with a bunch of personal insights, resources and tips and it’s making the Sunday issues very long.
Hopefully, with your own dedicated issues, it’ll be easier for you to reference emails that are for your eyes only and also digest them without overwhelm. I didn’t want to send a huge email on you every Sunday.
I’ve also started to build you a mini-masterclass and tutorial bank due to high demand! If there are elements of the debrief you’d like more on, let me know. So far you’ve asked for more insights on my content planning process, reviewing business finances and projecting them, and creator-focussed financial planning. These are in the works for you and will be added to the resource bank, with the link being shared very soon!
You also get access to the Rich Girl Blueprints - first one is dropping this Wednesday the 16th! It’s on Emma Grede, and it’s a good one. She’s made a mix of equity/career based decisions that shot her net worth up into the hundreds of millions.
Speak to you tomorrow morning close friends - thanks for being here ❣️
See you in the comments,
— Dev xo