In this brief YouTube dialogue, the host asks how The Money Habit challenges the common belief that earning more money solves financial problems. Amy responds with the core principle of The Money Habit: you will never outearn your spending, implying that higher income inevitably leads to higher spending and that simply making more money cannot resolve financial issues.
Many people believe making more money is the solution to financial problems. How does The Money Habit challenge that belief?
You will never, never outearn your spending.
It's just impossible.
I don't know where you are today compared to where you were in college. I do know this about you, Amy. You have more money today than you did then. Yes, thankfully. Thankfully. But your spending has also increased. You didn't own a home when you were in college. You own a home now. You didn't vacation much or at all when you were in college. You do now. That's the natural tendency. But most of us believe I'm just one new payday away from finally being financially free. But what happens when that money does come? We instantly find ways to spend it. It's a natural tendency. It's rooted in this concept called Parkinson's Law. So a quick history lesson, Parkinson's, a theorist in the 1950s, studies human behavior and discovers that as a resource expands its availability, he did his research around time mostly, the more time we have, the more time we spend. So the more resource we have, the more we consume of it. If you and I were discussing something and we're going to complete a project and we say, "We'll get done by next Friday," we'll probably get it done by next Friday. If you and I discuss the same project, same parameters, but say, "We got to get it done by tonight," we'll find a way to get it done tonight.
