Nicole Lappin

speaker

4,192 appearances 114 recordings 2 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 9 Dec

Nicole Lappin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Nov 2025 with 2.

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Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin · “Don’t Be a (Lifestyle) Creep! How to Use Your Raise to Build Wealth” · 15 May 2025 podcast

By definition, as you know, lifestyle group means that over your career, you've been making more money, which is awesome, but you're not saving as much because the nice to have has become the need to have. So can you tell me when your last raise was and how much was that for?

Great. So my producer said that over the last seven years, you went from making $125,000 to $145,000. So overall a $20,000 jump. Yes. But you haven't seen that $20,000 jump in your savings, right? Not at all. So let's get to the bottom of that. I think this is where a lot of people fall into the lifestyle creep trap. They think, oh, my gosh, 20K more.

I can upgrade my apartment or splurge on that new car payment. Then there's also the inflation of it all. Does that resonate with you?

So why do you think lifestyle creep is happening to you? And tell me how it's played out and how it's manifested.

Yeah, it's both. It's price inflation and also lifestyle inflation. So double the inflation. Do you have a budget?

Why do you think that is?

That makes sense. So this might be an important piece of the puzzle. I think if we break down, I like to think of it as a spending plan. So it might be a little bit different than the company budget that you make. You mentioned over email that after taxes and benefits or take-home pay is around $3,600 a month.

Okay. So a lot of people divide their budgets according to the 50-30-20 rule. Have you heard of that?

Yeah. So 50 for necessities, 30% for wants, 20% for savings. It's a guideline and everybody's going to be different. You know, if you don't have a car and you take public transportation, you might be able to move those things. benchmarks around. So it's just a guide to start out with. So the 20% for the end game is for retirement, paying down debt, investing, all of that stuff.

So when you get a raise, you should take that net new money and apply the same budgeting role. So it's basically that ideally you don't use the whole thing for fun stuff. You can break it up, which makes it an overall win for you in the long run. So 50% of that going to necessities, 30% to wants, and at least 20% to needs.

savings or the end game if we apply that budget to you you would be 3600 bucks monthly for necessities you'd be about 2100 bucks for fun stuff and 1400 bucks for savings or investing is that feel on track with what you're spending right now or does that feel feasible

So that's just, you know, a boilerplate outline. You can layer in personal financial goals on top of that outline, like timelines when you might need that money and then break those sections down into smaller parts. You have some loans as well, right?

What kind of loans?

Okay.

Okay. And do you know the interest rates on them?

Okay. Do you know about the 7% rule?

So historically, the stock market has returned an average of 7% year over year, according to Investopedia. It's not happening right at this very moment. And past performance, of course, does not guarantee future results. But that's a large historical average. So if you're investing, but your interest rate on your debt is more than 7%, you're making losses and not gains.

Have you started investing at all?

Excellent. How's that going?

And do you have an emergency fund?

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