The Psychology of your 20s - 357. Why do we doomspend?

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

We’ve all been there - telling ourselves that ‘life is short’ as we click add to cart. Whether it’s an expensive dinner, a holiday you can’t quite afford, or another ‘little treat’, doom spending has become the defining financial habit of our generation. In this episode, we unpack why we spend when the world feels uncertain - the psychology, the emotion, and the cultural forces behind it. From dopamine and control to social media, fatalism, and escapism, we’ll explore how uncertainty reshapes our relationship with money and why buying things can feel like the only way to feel better. We explore: •        Why spending can feel emotionally soothing and self-regulating•        How financial stress, uncertainty, and global instability fuel impulsive habits•        The rise of ‘little treat culture’ and the illusion of control•        The role of social media in pairing crisis with consumption•        Signs that your coping mechanism has turned into doom spending•        How to break the cycle - from doom saving to mindful spending If you’ve ever felt the urge to spend when everything feels out of control, this episode is for you. ORDER MY BOOK Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [e-mail]    The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello everybody. I'm Gemma Spike and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s. Today we are answering a question I have been having of myself recently. Why am I spending so much money? Specifically, why have I been using money to self-soothe to feel, better about my life, to take away bad feelings about the state of the world, probably more than I ever have. We're talking about a phenomenon that has been popping up all over social media in financial columns on TikTok, this concept of doom spending. I also think it's a great time to talk about money with the holidays coming up. The urge and the desire to spend, perhaps more than we have beyond our means is very, very strong within us.

And I want to talk about this specific type of compulsion, this specific reason why you and I, people in their 20s, are spending all this money on things that maybe we don't really need. Doom spending is basically the desire or the impulse to spend money more rapidly and in larger sums in response to our anxiety and uncertainty about the future. and about the world. It is this tendency to like live in the now to spend because the future is uncertain to treat ourselves. It's the use of money to manage our emotions. And you might be thinking like what is the problem with that? Like I work hard for my money. Surely I should be and you are allowed to

spend it however I want. But there is a level where it actually gets out of control. It can begin to become a maladaptive coping mechanism and it can actually in a way feed into our pessimism about the future in a way that is a little bit unhealthy also you know it takes away from our ability to plan financially and to save and to achieve you know financial freedom financial sustainability to have long-term financial goals and although we may not be thinking about that in our early 20s or in our 20s at all, it is still an important conversation. So in this episode, we're going to talk about what doom spending actually is, why we do it, what it says about the times we're living in, and how to get control over how you spend money in a really healthy, gentle and I think sustainable way.

Without further ado, let's get into it. Let's begin with the basics. We always do this at the start every episode I feel like a broken record, but just so we have a clear definition of doom spending, what I'm talking about is not just spending because you feel like it. I'm talking about the use of spending often that's impulsive as a way to calm a sense of uncertainty or a threat. It is an emotional coping mechanism. It's not buying things that you actually need. It's not buying things that you know, you want and you feel like you should treat yourself to it is buying because the future doesn't feel like it's coming and so you want to live in the now and a way to feel better about perhaps the future not coming, which by the way it is, is to, you know, spend and to fill your

wardrobe and to get the dopamine of small purchases. To give this some historical perspective, this is actually nothing new. It might feel this way, but we are actually not the first generation to live through scary times. We probably won't be the last. And economic spending does increase in times of geopolitical uncertainty. There's also other interesting cases of how money responds to our emotions in uncertain times, some wacky examples.

One that we found was that in the 1800s, there was this Baptist preacher named William Miller and he had this huge following and he was like, guess what? Jesus is going to return in 1844. The world's going to end. The chosen few are going to ascend into heaven. And so let's live it up. You know, take out loans, build your dream house, buy nice dinners, buy the car you want. I don't know if they had cars in the 1800s.

They definitely didn't. But you know what I mean? Like they were spending all this money so lavishly because they didn't think they would have to repay their debts. And then, you know, the logic was that the apocalypse was. so near, why not have fun now? And then the apocalypse didn't happen. And this whole community essentially went bankrupt. So we have seen examples of this in the past. You know, now, obviously, it's not a religious apocalypse. It's climate change. It's inflation. It's AI. It's the 24-hour news cycle. But the psychological pattern is the same. When the world feels unstable, we turn to

consumption as a way of asserting control because spending money is one of the only things that we can do that feels like it does something or gives us something back. And that's doom spending. Why is that the case? Why does spending money kind of feel empowering? Well, when we spend money, basically our dopamine system is activated. I feel like you guys already know that. But it's not just when we get the thing, it's when we see something we like, when we anticipate a purchase, when we click checkout, when we're waiting for the parcel to arrive, when we go and collect it, every single element of this process triggers the release of dopamine. And at all those various touch points, our mood is briefly improved and our stress is briefly lowered. Over time, we learn

through association that we feel better from spending. We feel nice. And also, it's accessible to us. We get something in return. We get a good. We get an item. So psychologically, spending functions like an emotional regulation strategy, much like eating comfort food, much like scrolling social media.

In cognitive behavioral terms, if we want to go really psychological, it is what we call negative reinforcement, the behavior, the act of buying of shopping removes distress and that's pleasurable and so it's more likely to be repeated. So the thing that we really need to note is that doom spending, yes, is tied up in materialism. It's not necessarily about materialism. It's about fear. It's about comfort. It's about control.

It's about feeling safe almost. Second, the evidence does really confirm. It's not just that, you know, we're a generation that has more money. It's not just that shopping is more accessible, that delivery is more accessible, that things come faster. Political and global context is driving overspending. Studies and financial reports show that impulse spending has rapidly increased since the pandemic.

And especially during the pandemic, that is when a lot of these habits were triggered. you know, online shopping was one of the very few joys we seem to have control over. I was so broke during the pandemic, so broke. And I used to spend $100. I remember I had like a little bit of money in my bank account from my restaurant job that I was obviously I didn't have. And I would spend like $100 on something and then I would return it and then I would buy something else and then I would return it.

I think I recycled that $100 like five times. I even remember like I bought this tartan puffer jacket. I don't know why. Like there was no weather that required me to buy that. And then I returned it and then I bought like basically something exactly the same and returned that because of the dopamine. And this is where a lot of us learnt this habit. According to 2023 data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,

credit card balances in the US rose in. 17% between 2020 and 2022. That is the sharpest increase in decades. Similar things happened in a lot of other countries where credit card data is like readily available. So in the UK, in Australia, across Europe, in Canada, across all these countries, we could see this trend. Psychologists who are studying, still studying post-pandemic consumer behavior,

that kind of sounds like a tongue twister, but post-pandemic consumer behavior, note that collective trauma, economic precarity, social isolation, basically what it's all created are these shorter planning horizons. The future feels bleak, it feels uncertain. And so we tend to not think that it's going to happen. When you ask people in their 20s or in their 30s, people our age, hey, like, how far do you think in the future? For me, it's probably only six months, and that's not normal. Like, you should be able to plan and think about your life long term, but I think the state of the world means that it's really hard to. Everything is changing so far. It's like, you just can't imagine the world beyond six months. So if you can't imagine the world

in six months. Why are you going to save for a financial goal that's 10 years away? Like buying a house. Why are you going to save for a financial goal that's 50 years away or 40 years away? Like retirement. The appeal of this immediate gratification in the face of like really scary stuff often overshadows, you know, a more rational decision-making process that is reliant on us being able to imagine a future with us. in it. Another explanation, spending money is just a nice distraction. When you're thinking about when your parcel is going to arrive, when you're thinking about how this next outfit is going to change your life, you're not thinking about everything else that's going wrong. And this really aligns with like the infamous little treat narrative. Now, I'm a big fan of this. I love a little

treat. I'm a big believer in little treats. It's not inherently bad. It's not inherently bad. add to treat yourself. And I actually think it's, you know, an important part of self-care and self-comfort. But when treat culture turns into habitual high spend behavior, especially when it's triggered by fear or anxiety, that's a coping mechanism, not a reward. And add that to the fact that nowadays like companies and the global economy and, you know, big brands are taking advantage of that, is it really about us or is it being manipulated for profit? The other day I was in Sydney driving to the airport and I saw this massive billboard that was like from McDonald's and it said existing question mark, you deserve a little tree. That's, that's a marketing cost. That's a marketing

Like, that is not self-care. That is McDonald's trying to get you to buy the thing that they have designed for you to spend money to fill their pockets. And especially nowadays when we are bombarded with targeted ads, we are streamlined into buy now buttons and limited time offers and sales. I think the shift from reward to regulation can happen really subtly and is impacting a lot of us. that's impacting me for sure. You know, there really is something to be said about doom spending, the fact that so many people in their 20s are spending more money than they probably have,

and the role of technology and social media. Think about the last time you scrolled your Instagram feed. You will see news of genocide, news of political unrest, news of climate disasters. And then what happens after that? Add for a designer bag. We can get away. pair of sneakers, phone case, sweater, t-shirt, buy now, buy now, buy now.

That's emotional whiplash. You are going from panic and despair to pleasure and intrigue. And that is not accidental, it's engineered. Social media platforms, and there have been articles on this, there have been people who have come out, who were involved in making these systems, who have come out and said, we designed it this way. They are made to monetize your attention because when ads make money, they make money. And the way ads make money is if the site holds your attention long enough to trigger an emotion that will produce a sale. Fear, outrage, sadness, whatever it is, these all heightened arousal.

They keep us scrolling more and more. And once you're in that heightened emotional state, once your defenses are lowered, once the world feels terrible, you're more suggestible, you're more reward-seeking, you're more likely to act impulsively. The discomfort we feel when we flip between threat and reward, like, requires an antidote. We want a solution. We want to feel better. And then this algorithm, these social media platforms, they serve it right up to us. A 2024 study by researchers in Indonesia found that exposure to emotionally charged content significantly increased impulse buying in people in their 20s, in young adults.

essentially after being emotionally activated, people were more likely to buy stuff. And when they were asked why, oftentimes they couldn't really explain it. So this is when spending because you want something, spending because you do deserve a little treat and spending because you don't really know why you're spending and because it's a form of coping and emotional regulation, this is when the line really begins to blur. and what began as harmless distraction as actually filling a need. Like you do need clothes and you do need things in your life can quietly turn into like a routine, an addiction, a really toxic habit.

So let's talk about the signs that your doom spending might be going too far. And what you can do about it after this short break? 2%. That is the number of people who take the state. when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience

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Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So how do you know when treating yourself has tipped into something else entirely? most of us don't wake up one morning and think like, oh no, I have developed an unhealthy coping mechanism. What will I do about this? Like it really creeps in slowly. It's disguised again as fun as keeping up with trends. But here are the signs that it's gone a little bit too far. Firstly, you notice that your biggest shopping days aren't actually when you need anything,

aren't when you've just gotten paid, aren't when you're celebrating. They actually are when you're anxious, when you're overwhelmed or you're sad. Especially if you are shopping a lot at night. Big red flag. Inhibitions are lowered. Often that's when our biggest feelings come about. We're tired from the day. Shopping is the Band-Aid.

Secondly, this one's the obvious one. You're spending beyond your means. And you're seriously spending beyond your means. You know, a huge thing that has boomed in recent years is these buy-in-hour pay later, buy-in-for, delayed payment options, even using credit. credit cards to pay for small things that aren't necessities also comes under this. Now, I don't think these kinds of options are inherently bad at all. To be honest, I use Clana. I use like the PayPal for in, I don't know what it is, like the four payment things, especially because I don't get paid regularly.

It like helps me break up my budget. And I used to use it when I was working as a consultant and I got paid monthly just to kind of like make the things I was repaying for weekly and monthly as well. I think they offer flexibility, but they also allow you to go a little bit too far. Behavioral economists have highlighted that separating the payment from the consumption reduces what we call the pain of pain. This is a concept that was coined in the 90s, and the pain of paying is an important part of the buying process and is basically the psychological discomfort that makes us hesitate before a purchase. When we use later pay options, it delays or disguises the payment. So our brain feels like it can

experience all of the rewards and none or a fraction of the cost until later on. That is the danger. And again, they're not necessarily bad. They're not all bad. But what it does have the potential to slip into is chasing payments, slipping into debt, if they are used for things to pay for things that are beyond our means. Even if you want to use these platforms to pay for your shopping, you have to ensure that you actually have the money there to use it if you needed to. And that's how you prevent the cost from stacking up when, you know, you have no other way to pay for these or when the payments are due. I think something really related to this that shows doom spending has gone too far for you is if you found yourself deliberately ignoring bank statements, deliberately

ignoring notifications, feeling a sense of dread when you open your banking app. Financial avoidance is a huge red flag and a huge coping mechanism that a lot of us in our 20s have because your brain is trying to shield you from all the fear and shame and the guilt and just keep all the good stuff, keep all the purchases, keep all the dopamine. But that cycle actually makes everything get worse. You're no longer aware of how much is coming in and out of your account each week. You don't know how much you really need to live. At first, it's the easier option to just not look.

But I promise you, I have done that when I, again, when I was working as a consultant, I had terrible financial habits, which is ironic. Having financial accountability, even if you really have to stare, your shopping and you're spending straight in the face, is so much better for you long term. So if you have recognized this pattern in yourself, how do you stop? Now, I'm not going to say, like, swear off spending altogether, go cold turkey, never works, I don't think it's realistic. It's like telling yourself never to eat sugar again.

You're going to eat sugar by like Tuesday. Instead, the goal is to retrain your brain, to replace emotional spending with more sustainable forms of regulation and of control. So here are a few tips of like how to start, how to do that. First, let's flip it around. If doom spending is about spending because the future feels uncertain, doom saving is about saving because it feels uncertain. It's like a little way to create a sense of safety and a sense of the future in a very small, very tangible way.

You don't have to start with huge amounts. Actually, research always shows us small, consistent, you know, saving goals. is key, five or $10 a week, it actually increases your sense of confidence in your own ability to manage money, but also feelings of psychological well-being and feelings of self-trust. Like, hey, like, I'm proud of this. I'm taking this thing that I earned that I worked hard for, and I'm building something for my future. And the very fact that it's there has this weird reverse way of telling you that there will

be a future, which is really what we're trying to get down to at the end of the day. behavioral economist Richard Thaler, he called this approach mental accounting, reframing savings not as deprivation, but as a reward, as an act of self-care, as an act of self-trust, as an act of, yeah, future investment. Like you're saving for the life that one day you're going to really love and enjoy. And this really counters the idea that we explored earlier of temporal discounting or present bias because the future feels are so uncertain, you know, we spend more money now. But if we save more, the possibilities for the future, the trip we're saving for the dream

house, they expand. I found this incredibly interesting article published in 2011 in the Journal of Marketing Research that found across four studies. Participants who were basically asked to interact with realistic computer-generated simulations of their future selves using virtual technology were more likely to accept a larger sum of money down the line. So just to like roll that back, they got all these people, these participants, and they put them in these simulations, they let them create these simulations of like a really beautiful future and they were really realistic and then they said, oh hey, by the way,

you actually get paid for this. Would you want $50? now or do you want me to give you $100 at the end of the term or $100 in three months? And the people who had seen these really positive versions of themselves and whose futures seemed really happy and bright, they wanted to wait. In all cases, they wanted to accept the later monetary reward over the immediate one. And I just think, I love this study. It really brilliantly demonstrates that keeping that future self in mind, forcing yourself to really imagine them when making these financial decisions,

when going to buy stuff, goes a long way. Next, the next tip that we can really do for ourselves is just reallocate where your money goes. Psychological research consistently finds that spending on experiences rather than material goods, like a new top or a new pair of shoes, leads to greater and longer lasting happiness. Why? Because experiences connect to identity and experiences connect to relationships and experiences connect to a deep sense of memory and sense of self and sense of interconnectedness. Spending on experiences as well, builds stories, gives you stories, gives you memories that make you excited for future memories and they give you something that's going to last

a lot longer than plastic and a lot longer than clutter. And like, don't get me wrong. I love things. I love clothes. I love buying stuff. I have so many purchases that are just stupid that I still really, really value. But are they going to be the things I take with me? No, I literally can't.

But buying the concert ticket, doing the day trip, spending a little bit of extra money so that we can, you know, get a nice place on the girls weekend. Like those things really anchor me. anchor us in memory and in belonging and they are a great great way to form novel and exciting experiences that just makes life worth and feel worth living. Another way, I'm full of tips today. Another way to begin reallocating your spending that I do is I create and I have created a 24 hour rule.

And friends of mine have seen me use this. They can tell you it works. When I see something I want, I do not buy it right away. I'm allowed to buy it eventually. but I have to wait minimum 24 hours. I get my notes up on my phone. I write it down. I write down the item, the price, the date I initially wanted to buy it.

Then I just let it sit. This short delay activates what psychologists call system to thinking. That slower, more deliberate part of your brain that handles logic and that handles long-term reasoning, when you give the impulsive part of your brain, pause, this system to, this second system, locks in and allows you to like spend better, it's been in more alignment with your values. Most of the time, you will find that the desire fades once the emotional charge passes. And if it doesn't, then you know the purchase actually matters to you. It's more intentional. It's not reactive. Like I said, I've done this for years. I keep a want to buy list.

on my phone and in preparation for this episode, I was like, what have I got on there? I haven't actually looked all the way back for a little while. I just add things on. I cannot even remember putting some of these things on the list. One of them was like white abacrumbie jeans. I've literally listed them here. An Imogen and Willie shirt, what even is that? Like, I don't, I'm sure it's great. Imogen and Willie. I'm sure you make great shirts. Like, but I don't know what that is. This print that says love is a kiss on the forehead super cute i don't know what that print looks like i'm sure it's great but like i didn't need it there was another thing that was on there was a garnie keychain that was three hundred dollars like what i think that was when like everybody was doing

those like trinkets on the bag situation which i love i got into it but like 300 dollars like that's so much money that's so much money and like i was looking at that i was like thank god i didn't buy that. That distance, like, provided some clarity. It has saved me. I think I did like a little calculation of like five things and it was like totaling over $1,200 just because I waited, just because I had this list. There is, of course, other ways of going about this. I have a friend who, and I'm just going to give her a shout out because she said she was going to do this at the start of the year. It is, what is it, like November now and she's still doing it. She is, only allowed to buy secondhand goods for the whole year unless it's like underwear. And I cannot

tell you the amount of times that I'm not going to lie. I low-key wanted her to break the pact. I wanted her to promise to myself, I'm sorry Emma, but like she, because you know, something looks really cute on her or whatever, but she genuinely like has stuck to it. Her depot purchases are amazing. Like she's doing so well and I just like feel like that's another system where it's like you're allowed to buy. You're allowed to spend. You do so more sustainably. Another friend of mine, albeit I will say she lives with her boyfriend. They don't have much space, but they have the one in one out rule.

So she can buy stuff, but she has to get rid of something. And she has a great closet. She has a full closet. But it really allows her to be conscious of what is really reflecting me. what do I really want to spend my money on? Is there anything that like, is this really going to bring me value? I'm going to wear this enough that I should throw something out or I should donate something?

It sounds simple, but it's a subtle form of what we call a commitment device, a behavioral nudge, a behavioral rule that adds accountability and that reminds you that every purchase does have a cost beyond money. It costs you space, it costs you attention, it costs you your emotional bandwidth as well. And I think it also allows you to build a sense of identity through intentional ownership. Like your life is not a trend.

Your emotions are not trendified, right? You can't let your emotions be the thing that determines who you're going to be because you spend money to soothe them. You really develop a sense of personal style, develop a sense of a personal brand, you really develop a sense of like personal money values that is so so powerful i think what we're really talking about here is just mindful consumption slowing down having a sense of intention being deliberate about what you fill your life with so many studies say our physical possessions impact our

mindset and our psychology so don't just like fill up your space with shit you don't need and stuff that like isn't important to you because then your life's going to feel unimportant and your environment's going to feel cluttered and it's not going to feel like yours. Finally, one of the biggest tips to help you with your doom spending increase the pain of paying. One of the reasons spending has become so automatic is that you don't have to put in your credit card details. You don't have to hand over cash. The other day I bought my friend this, I just said to do the mental math, this episode will be out after her birthday. But for her birthday, I bought her like this really beautiful, I guess, like bathrobe,

like beach towel robe that she wanted for her birthday. And it literally took me less than a minute to buy it to the point where I was like, oh, is that, was, did I actually purchase that? And it was like, yeah, I did. No friction. No friction. We need to reintroduce the pain of pain, the sting that stops us for. spending. Delete your saved cards on your phone. Turn off Apple Pay. Turn off your one click checkout.

Use cash. These small bits of friction make you purchase conscious, make you money conscious before you click by. Like there's just a couple more seconds where you have to really like you have to go find your card. You have to punch in your details. That delay. Again, It gives you, it gives your brain, your rational brain, a chance to catch up and a chance to be like, hey, wait, do I actually need this? You know, is this actually useful? What impulse am I trying to suppress here? When it takes energy to buy something, you have time to reevaluate, you have time to

realign it with being intentional, with adding value to your life, with spending according to your values. And I think that just makes you a much more powerful person and it gives you a much more strong, much more strong mindset and even sense of personal identity. It goes quite deep. So to wrap up this episode, I think what doom spending really reveals is so much more than materialism and consumption. I think it's so easy for people to be like, you're just consumerist and like you're just

spending money. It's like, no, this is about a sense of control. We have, in our 20s right now, you and me, our generation, do you know, like, do you ever just sit down and realize what we have lived through, the amount of like history defying events that have occurred in our lifetime. And we have to read about it or see it or are exposed to it constantly. Of course your brain wants something certain. Even if that certainty, the only way you can get it is like a parcel at the front door. That is for some of us like the best we can do right now. And so there's no shame if that is something that you've relied on. There's no.

shame if like sometimes like going on a shop going on a spree like buying stuff makes you feel better I just want you to know about it and I just want you to think about whether that's actually what you want from what you want from your life and if you want to keep spending the way that you are if deep down you know it might be a problem you know I think this is like guys let's get really deep it's the psychology of your 20s in a nutshell this is about learning how to sit with uncertainty without letting it rule you. Recognizing when we're trying to fill psychological, mental, emotional gaps with things and just gently redirecting. So thank you. Thank you for listening if you've made it this far. I like to do this thing. You guys know at the end of my episodes were like to reward your attention

span and to reward you for listening. You get the like secret code for the episode. So today, if you made it this far, what is something currently on your buy list that you are putting off buying? Is it white jeans? Is it a $300 garning key chain? I don't know. Drop it down below. What are you currently thinking about buying? How much is it? Do you need it or not? I want to hear what's on everybody's list. Not in a way that's like to encourage people to buy them. I just like, I just want to know for curiosity. I want to thank our research assistant Libby Colbert for her. contributions to this episode. She's a hero. She is a champion and we love her. Also, make sure that you are following us on Instagram at that psychology podcast. It's December coming up.

And you know what that means? It means guest month. Yes, that's right. A whole month, just of guests, just of really cool people that I got to talk to. So if you want to know who's going to be on the show, make sure you're following us over there or that you're following us slash subscribed, wherever you are listening to this episode. Again, Again, I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you giving us a five-star review on your support for the podcast. And until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, spend consciously. And we will talk very, very soon.

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