Lifestyle creep is the silent absorption of every income increase into a slightly larger lifestyle. The calculator shows exactly how much of each raise landed in savings.
Income and spending before the raise.
Income and spending after the raise, plus the gap in years and your inflation assumption.
Most of the raise was absorbed by lifestyle.
High creep. The raise quietly dissolved into spending. Automate a contribution increase on the next one. Real raise of £18,500 over years. Spending lifted by £14,800, banking .
Illustrative figures only. Real raise depends on the exact inflation index used and on personal CPI, which can drift far from headline. For your specific situation, consult a qualified adviser.
Worth shows the trajectory of your savings rate across every career step. The raises that landed, the ones that quietly dissolved, the next move at each stage. Join the waitlist.
Yes. Earning more is supposed to allow you to live a little better. The problem is when one hundred per cent of the raise gets absorbed, leaving no progress on savings rate. The disciplined approach: bank fifty per cent of every raise (automatic increase to retirement contributions), allow the other fifty per cent for lifestyle. The compound effect on savings is enormous.
Savings rate is the single biggest variable in time-to-financial-independence. Going from sixty per cent creep to thirty per cent creep typically shaves three to five years off retirement age. Creep is the silent reason high earners often do not reach FIRE despite high income.
Personal inflation matters more, but headline CPI is a fine first approximation. If you spend heavily on housing in an expensive market, your real inflation has likely run hotter than CPI. Worth's Personal Inflation calculator gives you a more accurate number to use here.
Then this calculator does not work. The honest answer comes from old bank statements or a tracking app's history. As a fallback, use ninety-five per cent of then-income minus then-savings as an estimate of then-spending.