How much will lifestyle creep cost you? Probably at least $1.5M.

We all started teaching on step one of the teacher pay scale. After four or five years, of being broke college students, we thought this was pretty good money. After we got our master's degree, we got a big raise and promptly spent it. Then, after we earned 54 credit hours of professional development, we got another big raise AND promptly spent it. But what would happen if we invested that money into our 401(k) instead?

Just for fun, I ran the numbers and here's what I found. If you didn't let lifestyle creep get in the way at all, and invested your entire raise, you would end up with $1,552,503 dollars in your 401(k) at the end of 28 years. Now, if you let lifestyle creep get in the way a little, and invested the difference between MA and MA+54, you would end up with a cool $676,228 in your 401(k) after 28 years! Not bad at all! Now, keep in mind, this only covers 28 years. Hopefully, you'll live to the ripe old age of 100 and this money will continue to compound! Heck, they'll probably name the next PSD school after you with that kind of bequest.

Okay, I get it, teachers aren't paid a lot and this might be harder than it sounds. However, you will likely have the opportunity to take on extra duty work, summer school, tutoring, etc. If you invest this extra money, it will have the same effect. Here's the really cool thing--that extra $1.5M can generate a cool $60k a year without ever running out! That means you could probably quit your day job as soon as you want, whether your pension has kicked in or not!