Earlier quoted context omitted.
A higher salary cannot result in a lifestyle you can't support. That requires two things: more money, and the decision to spend more money just because you have it. The psychological impact is quite real; I've ridden that yo-yo a couple times already.
If you buy expensive taxable objects like houses/cars you can't afford to keep them and you must get rid of them quickly, probably at less then they're worth
That almost happened when my wife, my eight-year-old daughter, and I were playing Monopoly last night. I didn't think there was anything very realistic about Monopoly, but here it is.
We were adding houses without keeping sufficient cash to cover the possibility of having to pay rent on another player's house-studded property. Although you don't lose anything by mortgaging and unmortgaging properties, when selling houses back to the bank you lose 50% of what you spent.