How a 27-year-old whose business brought in $1 million in 2023 avoids lifestyle creep: Sometimes ‘I think I can afford a Prada bag'

Hannah Williams may run a $1 million business, but she's had to stay focused on keeping her lifestyle in check.

The founder and host of Salary Transparent Street, a TikTok series where she asks strangers how much money they make, says she's even taken a pay cut since launching her business full time.

Williams was making $115,000 as a senior data analyst before she quit her job in 2022 to run her new social channel full time. By the end of the year, she was paying herself roughly $150,000.

Her business took off and, by 2023, she bumped that salary up to $200,000. However, after hearing some brand partners were cutting their budgets, and in an effort to hire more staff, Williams decided by mid-2023 to bring her salary back down to $125,000 per year.

It's been a challenge resisting lifestyle inflation with those salary adjustments, Williams says, even more so since she spends so much time on social media and gets served ads at every moment. "It's all the time; it's constant," she says. "It's really difficult."

But, the TikTok star says she has two main strategies for keeping lifestyle creep at bay.

Give yourself a 24-hour waiting period

Whenever Williams is tempted to buy something that's clearly a want rather than a necessity, she'll wait 24 hours before making a purchasing decision.

It's a crucial step when she's working or scrolling on Instagram and lands on an ad for something tempting, like a recent $60 sweater.

"Almost every single time I've told myself to wait the next day, I've completely forgotten about [it]," she says. "My life is not different without the sweater, but in that moment, the want for it can convince you that you need it when you don't."

If she's still thinking about an item after her 24-hour waiting period, Williams says she only buys it if she can think of three specific situations she'll use or wear it. The exercise helps her to "validate the purchase and make sure that it's something that is special and meaningful" to her rather than "a lifestyle-creep influence."

Calculate your hours worked

Then there are the larger purchases that stick around in her mind, "because sometimes, you know, I get out of my head and I think that I can afford a Prada bag."

In those situations, Williams says she breaks down the cost of a big purchase based on how many hours she'd have to work to afford it. "If it's significant, if I have to work an entire week to validate the purchase, that gives you a new lens to look at the purchase from," she says.

"When I think about how much I work and I compare it to the outcome of getting the bag, sometimes they don't equal out," she adds. "So finding a way to compare costs and give you some frame of reference to how much something actually costs relative to your budget and how much you work can give you that glimpse of reality and take you back down to earth."

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