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From Lifestyle Creep to FIRE: Shifting Our Financial Story With Intention

When my husband and I look back on our financial journey so far, it's clear that the most important turning point wasn’t a big raise, a major purchase, or even a layoff; it was realizing how far our lifestyle had drifted from our values. 

It crept up slowly, as lifestyle creep always does, but what has gotten us back on track was stumbling upon the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement recently. 

Taking advice from the movement helped us reframe what we actually want out of life and made us more intentional about how money can be a tool to create the freedom we continue to seek through our minimalist, simple, childfree lifestyle.

It has also offered clarity on how our spending habits have shifted over the years. 

A Couple of Teenagers Spending Freely

Like many, landing my first part-time job suddenly gave me access to more money than I had ever had at my disposal. 

I had no savings goals in mind, and I didn't care what my hourly wage was; I was just excited by the freedom that came with earning my own money and all the fun dates I could go on with my boyfriend (now husband), as he got his first job, too. 

We were privileged that our parents covered our bachelor's degrees, so the money we earned was ours to spend. 

And spend we did. 

On gifts (something we’ve drastically scaled back on now), restaurants, clothing, gadgets, and eventually a month-long backpacking trip through Europe.

Thankfully, we are both frugal by nature, especially my husband, so our spending habits never got "out of control," and by that I mean, we were never spending more money than we were bringing in. 

We knew enough from our parents to understand the value of money, but we didn’t yet have any long-term goals. 

Looking back, it was our first taste of lifestyle creep just in a low-stakes way.

DINK Life: Learning to Save Together

After our bachelor's degrees, we moved in together and entered the DINK (dual income, no kids) life.

I was in grad school, earning a stipend, while my husband jumped into industry. 

It felt like we were finally starting adulthood, with real paychecks and real decisions to make.

At first, we planned to stay at our parents’ houses to save for a house of our own, believing the classic advice that “rent is throwing away money.” 

But after a pivotal conversation with my sister and her husband, who shared a more balanced view on renting, we decided to move in together, and nearly 10 years of renting later, we’re so glad we did.

Once living together, and therefore sharing a lot of our expenses, we started actively tracking our money together every month (a practice outlined to us in that pivotal conversation), and built up an emergency fund. 

Money Tip: Track every dollar you spend as it’s the simplest, most powerful way to face your spending habits and take steps towards financial freedom. 

Tracking our money was the first financial habit that stuck, and it gave us control, and, most excitingly, the confidence to say "yes" to opportunities, like when my grad school research took me to places like Prague and Hong Kong, and we turned that into travel adventures. 

We weren’t making much, but we felt rich with our simple lifestyle and our next goal was clear: get married!

We cooked at home, didn’t own a car (still don't!), built up our savings for our wedding while still maintaining 3-6 months' worth of expenses in our emergency fund, and taught ourselves all about the magic that is a TFSA to get started on investing.  

We thought we were doing everything right. 

And we were. 

Until we made more money...

Making Bank: When Lifestyle Creep Took Over

After I graduated, my husband and I entered high-paying jobs within a couple of years, and suddenly, we had real disposable income... and we used it. 

Lifestyle creep didn't creep here; it ran at us, and we ran with it. 

Treats, eating out, generous tipping, gifts, gadgets, pricier clothing, meal-kit deliveries, monthly massages and facials, fancy gym memberships, and even professional cleaning of our apartment... it all added up fast.

And yet, because we were still saving every month, we didn’t think anything was wrong. 

We weren’t going into debt. 

We had an emergency fund. 

We were investing. 

In fact, spending more felt justified since we were working hard and earning well, and many of these expenses seemed genuinely helpful at the time. 

For example, we first hired cleaners when I was on sick leave, facials helped me manage my chronic acne, and meal kits (which we actually still use) diversified our diets and minimized food waste. 

The problem is that our idea of "luxury" shifted to "normal" real fast.

Spending hundreds on small indulgences became especially routine for me. 

I was working in a high-stress job and found myself compensating through consumption, which I now realize I had been doing in school as well. 

I was deep in the "treat yourself" mentality. 

I have since learned that a higher paycheck doesn't guarantee a better life, though it helps, and that if you are compensating for the workload with "treats" all the time, maybe the higher paycheck is unnecessary if a lower-paying job offers more fulfillment. 

Yes, I know, skipping those daily fancy coffees won't cover a down payment on a house, but maybe buying "treats" all the time is masking something that needs attention. 

Money tip: Money doesn't buy happiness (it does help!), but finding happiness for yourself will save you money. 

However, none of these learnings I reflect on now stood out to us at the time since we were still spending less than we earned, continuing to save, and continuing to invest.

Then, I got laid off. 

The Layoff That Should Have Been a Wake-Up Call

Within a year, I was laid off from my high-paying job and received a 3-month severance package along with EI. 

I ended up using the full year of EI because it's hard work trying to find a job, and the pandemic had flooded my field with experienced candidates after huge amounts of layoffs.

While my unemployment caused us to pause and reflect a bit on whether all these new luxuries were worth it, we actually didn't have to change our spending habits much. 

We just saved less...

Looking back, that was a missed opportunity to reevaluate. 

But I wasn’t ready.

I ended up being laid off soon after returning from sick leave (a devastating blow), so I was dealing with a lot both physically and emotionally, as I continued to recover from both illness and the feeling of a false start to my career. 

Without a job to throw myself into, I also had to face the fact that so much of my identity had been wrapped up in being a student and a high achiever.

Busyness had kept me from confronting the fact that I had no real life outside of school and work, and I know now that’s true for a lot of people. 

In school, I’d had tunnel vision: get good grades, land a high-paying job, and stay there for the next 10+ years. 

So, while I still wasn't ready to stop compensating for unbalance in my life with spending, I started exploring hobbies (more spending, of course), and I followed a different path for finding a job and ended up working part-time at a bakery for over two years. 

I was back on my feet, learning new things, problem-solving on the fly, moving my body, making people smile, and soaking up sunshine through the big store windows. 

Although my income was much lower than even when I'd been on EI, and because my husband had gotten a couple of raises over the years, we could still technically afford our lifestyle. 

So we once again didn’t really adjust our spending.

While we had overcome setbacks, nothing was actually forcing us to come face-to-face with our new habits. 

It was a comfortable place to be, and that’s where the danger lies with lifestyle creep. 

It hides in plain sight when you can afford it. 

A Reset with a FIRE Mindset 

While I absolutely loved my job, circumstances changed, and I was no longer feeling the joy that had brought me to the role in the first place. 

So while I had the freedom to walk away afforded by my husband's income and our savings, this time we were finally forced to stop and take a real hard look at our spending before I made the choice to leave. 

With one income and no new job on the horizon for me yet, the financial cushion that once felt bottomless was suddenly... finite.

And that’s when I discovered the FIRE movement.

At first, it felt extreme, and it is if you follow every principle of it, which can be interpreted as working as hard as you can now, even at a job you hate, to retire in ten years rather than forty. 

But if you look at the principles at the heart of it, it’s about reclaiming your time, living in alignment with your values, and being intentional with every dollar so you can use money to build freedom, not just comfort.

Money tip: Financial freedom means different things to different people so take time to reflect on what really matters to you and figure out your FI (financial independance) number to get there. 

Sitting down with my husband to discuss the new concepts I was learning, we realized that even though we’d always saved, our goals had been vague. 

What were we actually saving for? 

We don't necessarily want to retire early (i.e., never work again), because ultimately we like working, but we don't want to be controlled by our jobs. 

Money tip: "Retirement is the back-up plan, not the goal" - Tim Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek) 

My goal for my own career path is to build a life I don't want to retire from anyway. 

But the freedom I had to walk away from my job is something we want to hang onto. 

Reflecting on where lifestyle creep really got us when we were both working high-paying jobs, it's a tough pill to swallow, realizing how much we could have saved and invested at that time. 

The cost of waiting is real, but ultimately, we are glad we are realizing this all now, while still very young. 

We are still making use of our TFSAs and have started using FHSAs to save for if we want to buy a property. 

But even our goal of "maybe buying a house in five years" is vague, though we are happy with the steps we have taken, should we want that for ourselves. 

Overall, we're now aiming to save more than ever, with a FIRE-inspired lens of finding more ways to earn income when possible and save aggressively now, so we can buy freedom later. 

We lost touch with what intentional spending meant to us, even with adopting a minimalist lifestyle along the way, as our "normal" spending shifted with lifestyle creep. 

We’re aligning back with the minimalist mindset of practical over luxury and using what we already own. 

We are skipping the pricey travel views with accommodations, cooking with high-quality meal kits instead of dining out (even for special occasions), and reminding ourselves that hanging out with friends doesn't have to cost money. 

And we are also making our own coffee and tea drinks, but that's such overused advice...

We also acknowledge that a lot of that early lifestyle creep has resulted in nice things that we are still using today, like my husband's gaming computer setup, my iPad, my craft supplies, etc. 

Money tip: Study your spending habits and understand what you actually use over the years to help buy with intention and make things last. 

While we've let go of luxuries like professional cleaning services and regular massages, we do have a nicer apartment now, so some costs have kind of balanced each other out rather than converting to extra savings. 

With our new FIRE mindset, we are going to continue wrangling the lifestyle creep and figure out how we can save more than ever. 

Or, for now at least, try to still save like we were, but now with one income until I get a job again. 

We are continuing to learn...

What It All Added Up To

The main issue we faced with lifestyle creep is that we were saving pretty similar amounts all along (not a bad thing to be saving), but when our income jumped up, ideally, our savings would have jumped up instead of our spending. 

Looking back, lifestyle creep didn’t just increase our spending, but it quietly distanced us from the minimalist values we had found while living together and decluttering our space during the pandemic.

But discovering the FIRE movement has helped us reconnect with that original vision of living a simple and intentional life focused on what we actually want rather than what we are expected to want in life. 

We don’t regret the spending as it taught us a lot, and we’ve built a life full of memories while still enjoying many of the things we invested in. 

Now, with clearer goals and a deeper understanding of what financial freedom actually means to us, we’re recalibrating. 

We’re no longer content to just “save enough” because we now want to save with purpose. 

We have gone from “just don’t spend more than you make” to “invest today to buy time tomorrow.”

This next chapter isn’t about deprivation. 

It’s about realigning our money with our values, our habits with our goals, and our lifestyle with the kind of freedom we want to protect. 

And while we may not follow every FIRE principle to the letter, we’re embracing its core lesson: the sooner you take control of your spending, the sooner you take control of your time.



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