More income, more expenses: progress or illusion?

josevas217 (80)in PussFi 🐈 • yesterday

Hello friends of the PussFi community, good day to all. Today I want to talk to you about something that many of you have surely heard of, but that we rarely analyze calmly: Parkinson's Law.

It was formulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 1955, and originally it wasn't about money, but about bureaucracy. He said that "work expands to fill the time available for its completion." That is, if you have a week to do something that you could do in two days, it will probably take you the whole week.

That's how we work, so putting pressure on ourselves isn't a bad thing.

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Over time, this idea shifted to the financial realm, and the phrase began to take on a different form: as your income increases, so do your expenses. And this is where things get interesting, because we see this every day. Let's take a very current example.

You get a better-paying job, which in theory is progress. You earn more money, have more responsibilities, perhaps a higher position. But it turns out that the new job is farther from where you used to live, or the level of the position *"warrants" living in a closer, safer area, more in line with your new status. So you decide to move. And of course, the rent is more expensive.

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Not only that. In this new area, services are more expensive, groceries are more expensive, restaurants are more pricey, and coffee doesn't cost the same as in your old neighborhood. Even parking, gym memberships, and school fees (if applicable) for your children all go up. And without realizing it, your salary increase starts to disappear.

This is very common here in Colombia. If you live in a lower socioeconomic stratum (level 2) and get a job in a higher stratum (level 4), you either sacrifice time—hours spent commuting—or you move closer to your new job, but this substantially increases your expenses. In the end, you end up paying more as your income increases.

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It's a kind of loop in the system we live in. You strive to get ahead, you succeed, but the environment that accompanies that progress automatically raises the level of spending. Then you work more to maintain a lifestyle that has also grown. And when you look back, you realize that your margin of freedom didn't change as much as you thought.

I'm not saying that improving your quality of life is wrong, not at all. It would be absurd to think that we should remain stagnant for fear of spending more. The point is that if we don't set limits, growth becomes an endless race. There will always be a more exclusive place, a newer car, a more premium plan.

And this is where I want to connect this to something I think is key: financial freedom isn't necessarily about making millions in a matter of days. If someone can do that, great.

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But for most of us, true freedom has more to do with the time we manage to keep to enjoy life. Time for family, for health, for travel, for simply not running around all day chasing bills.

If every salary increase comes with a proportional increase in expenses, then we're stuck in a cycle. To truly improve our quality of life, it's important to learn to set limits on spending and, when possible, also strategically increase income. Not to impress, but to build a financial cushion.

Because in the end, it's not just about working to pay the bills. It's about working to live better, and living better includes having time. This is a personal reflection; you may not agree, but it's worth considering whether we're making progress... or just changing levels in the same game. Goodbye, take care.