For nearly two decades, financial adviser Hannah McQueen has watched New Zealanders on six-figure salaries fall into the same trap. They earn more. They spend more.
They stay stuck. Her firm, EnableMe, crunched the numbers from clients.
The pattern was stark. Some of the highest earners McQueen worked with were also the slowest to build wealth. Their lifestyle expanded to fill every dollar of income — sometimes faster.
The consequences ripple beyond individual bank accounts. When high earners fail to get ahead, the broader economy loses.
Money that could flow into investments, property, or business capital instead evaporates into discretionary spending. A lawyer earning $250,000 who spends $250,000 isn’t building the kind of financial foundation that supports long-term economic growth. They’re just keeping the consumption cycle turning.
McQueen laid this out bluntly on the podcast Ask Me Anything, hosted by former deputy prime minister Paula Bennett. The core problem, McQueen said, is a widespread misconception. People believe earning more money will solve their money problems.
It doesn’t. “What more money gives you, usually, is permission to not worry about the money,” McQueen told Bennett.
“Not to actually use that or channel it to get ahead faster.” McQueen knows the struggle personally. She wanted out of mortgage debt. So she called the University of Auckland’s calculus department.
“Will you help me work on a formula to structure my debt to pay it off as fast as possible at the lowest possible interest rate with the maximum flexibility?” she asked. That call led to a three-month collaboration with Dr Jamie Sneddon.
They built a formula that optimized her debt structure. But even that wasn’t enough. The formula assumed she had money left over to pay the mortgage off faster.
It doesn’t work if there’s nothing left. That’s the real consequence of lifestyle creep. It doesn’t just slow wealth building.
It makes financial tools useless. You can have the best debt repayment formula in the world.
It won’t help if your spending eats every surplus. McQueen recently launched a wellbeing service called Age Brightly. The name suggests a shift in focus — not just getting clients to earn more, but to keep more, so they can actually age with financial security.
For the high earners she’s describing, the warning is simple. A bigger paycheck isn’t a plan.
Without discipline, it’s just permission to spend. And the fallout hits not just their own retirement, but the kind of capital their families and communities depend on. What to watch next is whether McQueen’s message cuts through.
The data from her own practice suggests it hasn’t yet. The same pattern repeats. Income rises.
Spending rises. Wealth stays flat.
The formula for debt payoff exists. The hard part is leaving enough money in the bank to use it.
