Let me upgrade you!

Lifestyle Upgrade: Making more money brings added expenses you didn’t previously consider.

When I moved to the DC metro area in 2003, I barely made enough to pay all of my bills, let alone shop a little or even go to a happy hour every now and again. I lived in a not so great area of town, couldn’t afford a car and my mom bought all of my clothes. 4 years later I own a home in a safer, nicer part of town, drive a car (with insurance!), shop more (ok I’m damn near shopaholic status) and will even admit to going to happy hours and dinner a bit more than I used to.

Touchdown
Upon moving here I was hit hard with the realities of paying rent and earning a meager salary. I couldn’t believe it, here I was with a college degree and barely making ends meet. I was dodging calls from my credit union seeking payment for a CC bill I hadn’t paid for the last 3-4 months and couldn’t even afford cable from the evil twits at Comcast.

Four years later, life has changed for me. And, while I am now a homeowner, drive a car and have cable. I also realize that certain lifestyle upgrades were made (most necessary) along the way.

Lift off
In the Being Poor is Expensive post I pointed out that your circumstances force you to make hard decisions about money. I wasn’t thinking about how the 90+ days delinquent credit card might affect me until the credit union representative caught me on the phone one afternoon and gave me a strong talk. I’ll never forget it. I remember rolling my eyes as she told me how the delinquency might affect my buying a house down the line. I was barely paying the $700 a month rent for my 750 sq ft apartment in Le Hood!

Let’s look at my recent upgrades:

Mortgage
The mortgage is 3-4 times the amount I used to pay for my first apartment. Tack on paying home insurance, property taxes, home maintenance, utilities (included in rent) and the cost of furnishing the house since we started from scratch when we moved in.

Car
I couldn’t afford a car until I got a well deserved and needed raise. Prior to that I took the metro faithfully and risked walking home late at night from that dreadful station by myself. Now I still drive the same car but that’s because I can’t truly justify a new car until I drive this one into the ground. Takes a lick and keeps on ticking. Insurance, car note, maintenance, emissions testing, license registration and renewals are all associated costs with the upgrade of buying a car.

Cable
I had a short stint with cable when I first moved here and canceled it because at the time it wasn’t worth watching. Now our cable hovers around $80 depending on whatever “special” we can snag from Comcast.

Cell Phone
In college my cell phone bill was no more than $60 a month. I had 400 minutes and made it work! Now while I recently made the switch to AT&T which resulted in a drastically lower bill (more on that later), my bills were around $300-$400 on average for both of our cell phones with Verizon. Mad.Ness! What’s changed? I’m not exactly sure, other than I’m all grown up and just seem to talk more.

Lifestyle upgrades people! Are the needed? In most cases, yes. I wouldn’t NOT buy a house because rent is cheaper. Did I NEED a car? Yes, in order to consider job offers outside of the metro rail system. But there are some that are questionable and up to the individual. Some people (like my husband) can’t live without the NBA League Pass and HBO boxing. Can I do without cable? Yes. Can he? No. So it’s different for everyone.

Make the appropriate upgrades for your lifestyle keeping in mind its function and necessity. Unfortunately, as we make more we tend to spend more.