Videos play from YouTube only after you press play. Watch on YouTube
You're making 200,000 a year. On paper, that's the dream. That's the number people think that you've made it.
Transcript
Transcript generated from the video captions. It may contain small errors.
You're making 200,000 a year. On paper, that's the dream. That's the number people think that you've made it. So, why do you still feel like you're one month away from panic? If this is you, I want you to know something right now. You're not bad at money. You're not the only one. You're definitely not alone.
And so, for those who are new here, I'm Prince Chenou. I'm the found of PLC Wealth Partners. I'm a certified financial planner and charter financial consultant. And I built this firm to work for people just like you. first generation high earners, professionals, business owners who are the first in their family to hit this kind of income and who don't have a blueprint for what to do next.
Before I started my firm, I spent years at multiple different private banks sitting across the table from people who have built real wealth. And I noticed something that stuck with me. A lot of hirers never actually get taught how to manage money at this level. They get taught how to earn it. Nobody sits down with them and show them what to do once the income shows up.
So, this channel exists to fill that gap. real straightforward financial planning without the jargon or without any guilt tripping. If that's what you're looking for, stick around because this topic today is one of the most common things that I hear from clients before they ever became clients with me. A 2025 Goldman stats report found that 41% of people earning between 300 and 500,000 a year are still living paycheck to paycheck.
40% of people earning over 500,000 says the same thing. Now read that again. This isn't a 60,000 salary problem. This has happened at every income level, including the top. So, today I want to talk and break down the real reason why this happens and what you can actually do about it. The first reason is lifestyle creep.
I want to walk you through exactly how this happens because it never happens all at once. Here's the pattern. You get a raise. You get a promotion, the income goes up, and then almost immediately the spending starts to follow it. A nicer car because you feel finally feel like you earned it. A nicer neighborhood because your old one doesn't feel like it matches anymore.
more takeout during the week because you're busier and you've earned that convenience. A few more trips a year because life is short and you finally have the means to do so. None of these decisions are bad on their own. And that's the part I want you to hear and understand. This isn't a video about shaming you for enjoying your money.
The problem isn't a single purchase. The problem is the pattern. And the pattern is sneaky. There is a real psychological reason this happens and it's called the hypnotic adaptation. In plain terms, it means that you adjust what you're feel normal extremely fast. That upgrade that felt like a luxury six months ago becomes your baseline within a matter of weeks.
You stop noticing it. It just becomes what normal looks like for you now. And your brain quietly resets the bar for what counts as enough. So here's what ends up happening. Your income goes up, but the sense of enough goes up right along it almost at the same pace. And the result is you making more money than you've ever had in your life before and somehow still feel like you have the same breathing room as you had 5 years ago.
Sometimes even less. I've had conversations with clients making six figures who genuinely stressed out about cash flow. Not because they're careless, but because every raise they've ever gotten got absorbed because they never got the chance to decide what to do with it on purpose. Now, the second reason doesn't get talked about nearly enough, but once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Most of us are raised on a percentage-based budgeting system or rule, spending no more than 25% of your income on housing. Save 20% for the future. These rules are repeated so often that they treat them like they solve the problem. But the percentages have something important, and that's the actual dollar amount behind them.
Now, let's run the numbers. Say someone is making 100,000 a year, sticking to the 25% rule, is spending around 2,100 a month on housing. That's real numbers, but it's manageable for once for most budgets. Now, take someone making 500,000 a year following the 25% rule. That's over 10,000 a month going towards housing.
It doesn't stop there. Property taxes climb with the value of the home. Insurance premium climb with it, too. Maintenance costs build climb with it as well. Every single line item sells up together because all of it's tied to the size of the home that you can afford. Now, here's the part that catches people off guard.
You followed the rule. You did exactly what every financial god would have told you to do. And yet the pressure you feel every month when the mortgage payment comes is real. Because at a certain income level, the dollar amount itself becomes more of a source of stress, even when the percentage of the spreadsheet looks perfectly reasonable.
This is one of the most common bind spots I see with high earners. They're doing the math right, but the fact is nobody ever explained to them that the math being right doesn't automatically mean that the pressure goes away. Now, the third reason why is one that I think is the most misunderstood and it comes down to this.
Your income is not the same as your liquidity. When people hear 200,000 a year, they picture the whole number sitting in a bank account ready to be used. That's not how it actually works. And it's almost never how it works for anybody earning a high income. Now, start off with taxes. a meaningful chunk of that income goes and gets taken immediately go towards that especially once you're in a higher tax bracket and dealing with things like the loss of certain deductions as your income rises.
Then there's retirement contributions which is the money that's put away for your future self and that's a good thing all in all but it's money that you can't touch today. And then you have mortgage which is building up equity but once again that's not liquid. And then whatever else gets absorbed like groceries, child care, insurance premium, subscription that you forgot that you signed up for, the property tax bill that you always seem to show up at the worst time.
So by the time that you actually look at your checking account, that big number from your offer letter has already been divided up in a thousand different ways, most of which you've never consciously decided on. The money isn't gone. It exists. It's just locked up in places you can't access without a plan.
Whether that's retirement account, home equity, or poorly tracking spending that no one ever sat down and helped you mapped out. And when no one has built that map, it creates this strange disoriented feeling. You feel like you're earning well and you can see the number on your payubs, but somehow every single month it feels like the money evaporates before you can explain where it went.
See, now that's not a mystery. That's just the absence of a cash flow plan. And I want to be clear about something here because it really does matter. is not about spending less on principle. This is about tracking every latte that you buy for the rest of your life. It's about understanding in real numbers what's fixed, what's flexible, what's actually available to you at any given moment.
Without that visibility, you're making every financial decision blind, even the good ones like saving more or investing more aggressively. Visibility is what turns a high income into actual advantage instead of just being a bigger number that somehow disappears. And then there's the fourth reason. And honestly, this might be the one that's matters the most.
Even though it's the hardest one to put a number on. A lot of what we're talking about isn't about the actual math itself. It's about comparison. It's about insecurity. For most people, it's by scarcity mindset that they grew up around that never fully left. Even after the income changed dramatically. If you were the first person in your family to cross into six figures or the first person to buy a home or the first person to have any kind of investment portfolio, there's a good chance no one around you had a reference point for what enough is supposed to feel like.
Instead, the goalpost keeps on moving. You hit the number that you thought would make you feel secure. And instead of feeling secure, you notice someone else who has more. A bigger house, a nicer car, a trip that you didn't take. And the chase starts all over again. Here's what I want you to sit down with.
You can hit every single number on paper. Check every box the financial plan says you should check and still feel behind because the feeling of enough was never about the number. It was about the story that you've been carrying sometimes for decades about what money is supposed to mean and what it's supposed to prove.
No amount of income fixes that on its own. I've seen it firsthand. People earning what would be considered a fortune, still lying away feeling like they're one step that from losing it all. That feeling deserves to be acknowledged, not dismissed, because it's real and it's common, and it's not a character flaw. If any of this sounds familiar, here's what I want you to take away from this.
None of it means something is wrong with you. It means no one's ever sat you down and showed you how to build a plan for money at this level. But frankly, most financial advice out there is writing for people earning far less or people who are inheriting wealth or who were taught how to manage it from a young age.
If you're the first in your family to get here, you've often building a playbook as you go. Making more money doesn't automatically create freedom. And I want to say that again because it runs counter to almost everything that you've grown up and been told. Freedom doesn't come from the size of the number on the payub.
It comes from liquidity, from intentional cash flow, from making sure every dollar comes and has a job instead of it disappearing into whatever life throws at you on that given month. That's the entire reason why I built this firm, not to make you feel guilty about a nicer car or the vacation or the home that you worked hard for.
You've earned the right to enjoy your income. My goal is to help you build a plan where the money you've already earned actually works on your behalf instead of it just quietly passing through your hands every month and leaving you wondering where it went all along. If any of this hits home for you, here's one thing that I want you to do this week.
Go back and look at your last three payubs. Don't do it to judge yourself or anything. Just do it to see clearly because you can't build a plan around money you haven't actually looked at yet. That's where every real financial plan starts. Not with a budget app, not with a New Year's resolutions, just clarity.
If you found this helpful, subscribe and I'll keep breaking down exactly what hirers need to know that no one else is teaching them. And if you want help actually building this out for you in your own situation, head over to pcwealthpartners.com and take a look at the website and you'll find more on how I'm able to help clients along the way to reaching exactly what they want for their future.
Until next time, I pray you have a wonderful day.
This video is for general educational purposes only and is not personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different. Talk with a qualified professional about your circumstances before acting. PLC Wealth Partners is a registered investment adviser. See our disclosures.
