Why do we always want more, and why do the goalposts shift?
Why do we always want more, and why do the goalposts shift?
Introduction.
Imagine you could go back in time and talk to your 10-year-old self, and you tell them everything you have achieved and all the things you have accumulated along the way. What do you think they would say?
10-year-olds don't want for much, so, depending on how old you are now, maybe back then you wanted a new BMX, a computer, or perhaps even a home science kit! So they would be pretty impressed by your home, car and the trinkets that represent who you are today (I've got a Porsche in the future? Wow!).
But, you are no longer ten years old and a science kit doesn’t do it for you anymore. Why is this?
Lifestyle creep and the monkey on your back.
Imagine now that you are talking to your 21-year-old self. What were their hopes and dreams like? Back then, a home of your own, regardless of size, would have been amazing. Add a car to that and some money in your pocket for nights out and the odd cheap holiday, and you would have felt like you were right on top of things.
However, between then and now, many things will have changed. Perhaps you have children and a dog, so you will need a bigger car, and your holidays will end up costing you a bit more. Maybe you want your parents to move in with you so you can care for them; in that case, you may need a bigger house. Perhaps your body has changed shape over the years, so you may need to replace your clothes. These are the necessaries of life and often non-negotiable.
However, there is also the persistent monkey on your back called lifestyle creep. He's always there, whispering in your ear, "Go on, you deserve it. Treat yourself." And so you do. Why not? You worked hard, and you can't take it with you, after all.
So you do, you push your finances to the max to get a larger house than you need. You spend ages choosing just the right car that tells everyone you make intelligent decisions. You buy that sparkly ring because it rewards you for all your hard work.
But then what?
Well, the novelty starts to wear off a bit, and you get used to your new station in life. Your new technology becomes outdated, your expensive car begins to show its age, and as you move into different social circles, what you have no longer stands out. The more you've found out about things, you may even be a little embarrassed by something you were once proud of.
You may hear things like:
"Well, of course, no true enthusiast actually buys a four-cylinder Porsche."
"Anyone with a sub-45-foot boat is only playing at it."
"People only buy a Tudor watch because they can't afford a Rolex."
So, you start to think of replacements. If only your thing did this or had that, you would surely be happy and satisfied, you tell yourself. This thing you pushed the boat out for suddenly becomes humdrum or obsolete, and, of course, it was 'only your entry level' into that particular hobby.
Ask anyone who has been into cycling, cars, boats, photography or fashion. It's an endless hamster wheel of upgrades, replacements and pushing the budget for bigger and better things. The monkey on your back is always saying that if you get the next upgrade, then you will be satisfied.
But it never happens. So what's it all about?
Why wanting more is built in.
Firstly, don't worry. All of this is perfectly normal, and the urge for more is not a moral lapse. It is the predictable result of how the brain processes reward, comparison, and identity.
The core mechanism behind it all is called ‘hedonic adaptation’. A new house, car or watch produces a short-lived lift in lifestyle, which quickly becomes the new normal.
From a neurobiological perspective, this is tied to reward prediction error: dopamine spikes most when the outcome exceeds your expectation. Once familiar, the surprise signal fades, and the same item yields less pleasure. This is probably why adrenaline junkies start off thinking doing a trick on a skateboard is fantastic, only to find themselves jumping off a mountain in a wing-suit a few years later.
There is also the issue of ‘impact bias’, where people overestimate how long a purchase will feel good for.
Satisfaction is judged relative to reference points rather than absolutes. Behavioural economics calls this 'reference dependence' and helps to explain why your expectations now are so different to what they were in your early 20s. For instance, you might have been content with a small apartment in your 20s, but now, you might feel the need for a larger house because your reference point has shifted.
After an upgrade, yesterday's luxury becomes today's baseline. ‘Adaptation-level theory’ explains how repeated exposure shifts what feels standard upward, while diminishing marginal utility means each extra pound spent in a category buys less added satisfaction than the last. In simpler terms, it means that the more you spend on a particular thing, the less additional satisfaction you get from each extra pound spent.
Social forces then amplify the drift. 'Social comparison theory' shows that people compare both locally and upwards, especially in status-salient domains. Many purchases are positional goods, valued partly because others can see them. However, as peer groups change, your benchmarks ratchet up and the original goal no longer feels sufficient. This helps to explain how your new road bike impresses your friends, but seems inadequate once you join the local cycling club.
Variety seeking and ‘sensory-specific satiety’ provide an additional push. Repeated exposure dulls responses to the same stimulus, nudging the search for difference, not just better. Even when a target is hit, the ‘goal gradient’ and the ‘arrival fallacy’ ensure motivation dips and a larger target is set to restore momentum. Ask anyone who has decided to become an 'audiophile'. They probably started off just thinking their sound system from the high street needed a bit of an upgrade and have since found themselves in a listening room with their eyes closed, telling themselves they can hear the difference between cheap and expensive speaker wires.
It's also important to consider that one's identity is constantly evolving. Consumption often signals identity, so when roles or means shift, the kit updates to match the story.
Ultimately, the modern retail landscape strives to reduce friction as much as possible. Email remarketing, one-click checkouts, trade-in prompts, and easy finance make the next tier in reach by default, keeping lifestyle creep an ever-present threat.
How to stop the goalposts shifting.
Resisting lifestyle creep can be challenging, especially in a world where the next upgrade is always visible. But there are practical ways to stay on top of your impulses.
By acknowledging the difficulty of this task, you can validate your own struggles and feel empowered to take control of your financial decisions.
Some basic financial techniques you can try.
Firstly, capture any pay rises at the source by always allocating a fixed percentage of your income to saving or investing and adjusting your direct debits after each pay rise or bonus. This blocks spending from rising automatically with income and stabilises the reference point.
Some people may even choose to bundle their discretionary upgrades into a single annual window with a pre-set pot. Outside that window, they apply repair-or-replace rules only. This curbs serial upgrades.
You may find it helpful to run quarterly audits of your big-ticket items. List what still delivers satisfaction and what has faded, then adjust your future budgets accordingly.
You may wish to improve your 'comparison hygiene' by muting sources that inflate norms in your trigger hobbies, such as unfollowing people on social media and unsubscribing to email lists. “Comparison is the thief of joy” (Theodore Roosevelt).
Consider setting a lifestyle ceiling with hard caps for housing, transportation, and subscriptions, reviewed annually, rather than continuously. “The greatest wealth is to live content with little” (Plato).
Another trick is to introduce friction by having a 30-day cooling-off period for non-essential spends above a threshold, giving the reward prediction error time to fade and reducing impact bias.
This enables you to have the idea, conduct your research, choose your purchase, and then sit on it for a month before committing. To some, this could be as low as £250, for others, it could be £500 or £1,000. Just be careful with setting your baseline, as one can buy a considerable amount of 'stuff' with £1,000. “Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship” (Benjamin Franklin).
It is also worth shopping with what's known as 'satisficing' criteria. To do this, you first decide on the must-have features and a price ceiling before browsing. Once an option meets these criteria, stop the search and buy. This stops spec/budget creep and helps you fend off the inevitable product ladder we are all too familiar with (if I only spend X more, I will get Y, and so on). “Enough is as good as a feast”.
For big-ticket items, it's essential to do second-order cost accounting that includes insurance, maintenance, storage, depreciation and opportunity cost. You may have always craved that expensive car, but ask yourself: when the novelty wears off, how much will it cost you to keep it running, and how could that money be better spent?
So, before moving a major goalpost, run a pre-mortem: assume total disappointment, list reasons for doing so and either mitigate them or cancel the whole idea. “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, the other is getting it” (Oscar Wilde).
One of the oldest pieces of advice is to shift your discretionary spend towards experiences, learning, time-savers and helping others, rather than material goods. One adapts to experiences more slowly than material goods, and they provoke less status comparison on the whole, unless you choose to show off how fancy your holiday was, in which case, you are missing the point.
Therefore, it's worth considering how you can align the way you spend excess money with your true values, rather than personal status. Whether this is for charity or otherwise, knowing you have helped a cause that's close to your heart will help you sleep better at night than another gadget collecting dust in a drawer. “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone” (Henry David Thoreau).
Conclusion.
Keeping up with the Joneses is not a new phenomenon; it is as much a part of the human condition as anything else. However, we are no longer apes in a cave looking to show off our resource superiority to attract a mate (although that's perhaps debatable).
Still, we live in a world shaped by consumerism, where a large proportion of the global population gets up every day to think of new and exciting ways to make you feel inadequate and always wanting more.
The cards are heavily stacked against you, and the science even shows that your mind adapts quickly and that your frame of reference is always moving. Nobody is immune to this, but forewarned is forearmed.
The remedy is proper planning, clear ceilings and added friction so lifestyle creep loses its grip. Additionally, focusing on physical experiences and helping others will help train your mind to derive the maximum enjoyment from your spending.
What’s next?
Wherever you are in the UK, we invite you to book a free initial consultation with one of our experienced financial advisers. Whether you’re concerned about the economic outlook, managing your investments, planning for retirement, or better understanding pensions, we provide expert advice tailored to your needs. Based in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, we proudly serve clients nationwide.
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Don't forget, this article offers general financial information and should not be taken as personal advice. Remember that investments and pensions can go up and down in value, so you could get back less than you put in. Tax rules can change and will depend on your individual circumstances.