Most people don’t get richer with raises. They just upgrade their ego.

21 Dec 2025 · 1 min

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0:54

Short YouTube monologue from Capitalism.com arguing that raises often disappear because recipients upgrade lifestyle for status (status-seeking/lifestyle inflation) rather than investing for growth. The speaker advises keeping lifestyle constant when income rises and directing excess earnings into long-term investments (education, skills, S&P 500 index funds, multidecade holdings) to build wealth and avoid the ‘rat race’.

Chapters

If every time you get a raise it disappears it's not because of inflation, it's usually because of status seeking. Wealthy people go broke when they start pursuing status instead of growth. People start cutting corners in their business when they stop pursuing service and they start trying to look good. The minute that your shopping habits are there to feed your own status the faster you will go broke. And most people when they get a raise buy a little bit of a nicer car or buy nicer clothes or buy a little bit nicer of a house in order to project wealth instead of actually build wealth. So instead when you get a raise or you make more money keep lifestyle exactly the same. Take the excess and put it into long term investments like your education, your skills s and P500 index funds or things that you were going to hold on to for decades. That's how you start to get out of the rat race trap and you start to build wealth.