The Doom Spenders

Part I: The 3 AM Cart It is 3:00 AM, and the only light in the room comes from the phone. For Munira, a nursing student, this blue-white glow has…

Part I: The 3 AM Cart

It is 3:00 AM, and the only light in the room comes from the phone. For Munira, a nursing student, this blue-white glow has become a familiar, anxious companion.1 She is the daughter of immigrants who arrived in Canada with the promise of a better future, a promise she has dutifully pursued.2 She “did all the things [she was] supposed to do,” securing a place in a good program and working to support herself.2

But the promise feels broken. The “doom” is a palpable, everyday presence. Her administrative job cut her hours. She took a second job in retail; those hours were cut, too. Now, she finds herself at job fairs competing with high school students for part-time, minimum-wage gig work.2 All the while, the numbers on her screen climb: $10,000 in student loans and $13,000 in credit card debt.2 She feels “lonely and hopeless”.2 This anxiety is the core trigger, a pervasive sense of dread about her finances and the future.3

Her thumb hovers over a button. The shopping cart isn’t filled with extravagant luxuries. It holds a new computer she needs for school, groceries, and perhaps the order for her daily strawberry matcha tea.2 That tea, in particular, has become a symbol. She knows, logically, that it’s a non-essential, but she defends it as a “worthwhile expense.”

“It feels like there are so few choices,” she explains. “This is something I can choose for myself”.2

She clicks “Buy.” A small, bright flash of relief. This act, this 3 AM purchase, is not about consumption. It is about control. In a life defined by chaotic economic forces and a future that feels unattainable, this small purchase is a “false sense of agency” 6, a way to “control something, anything”.4 Munira’s story is not an isolated case of poor budgeting; it is a perfect illustration of a global phenomenon. The doom came first, and the spending followed.

Part II: A Name for the Feeling: What Is “Doom Spending”?

Munira is not alone. She is part of a massive, global cohort participating in what has been called a “nihilistic spin on retail therapy”.2 This behavior, this specific brand of impulsive, anxious purchasing, finally has a name: “doom spending”.1

The term itself surfaced on social media, a fitting origin for a phenomenon it helps create.7 It truly entered the mainstream lexicon following a November 2023 survey from Intuit Credit Karma, which attached a statistical backbone to the anecdotal anxiety.7

Its lineage is clear. “Doom spending” is the direct descendant of “doomscrolling,” the act of “endlessly wallowing in bad news” on social media.9 We spent the last few years passively consuming a relentless feed of global pandemics, political instability, and economic crises.10 Now, we are actively spending money as a result.

The “doom” in doomscrolling was the information we consumed; the “doom” in doom spending is the anxiety that consumption created. The passive, digital act of scrolling created a “vicious cycle” of helplessness and anxiety.12 The brain, however, craves action to resolve distress. Doom spending “feels like taking action” 4, providing a fleeting sense of agency.6 It is the brain’s maladaptive attempt to actively resolve the tension and powerlessness created by passively doomscrolling. The e-commerce algorithm on the very same platform that delivered the bad news is often the one that offers a “Buy Now” button as the “solution.”

This is what makes it a far more “insidious” 13 trend than its more benign cousin, “retail therapy.”

The most critical distinction is the paradox at its heart. Traditional retail therapy is generally not associated with “having financial stress”.17 Doom spending, however, is explicitly defined as spending to cope with anxiety about “personal finances or the general state of the economy”.1 It is the counterintuitive act of trying to solve financial anxiety by creating more financial anxiety.

Part III: The Anatomy of the Urge: A Vicious Cycle

To understand why someone would engage in such a self-defeating behavior, one must follow the urge from its trigger to its tragic conclusion. The process is less a “decision” and more a “reaction.”

It begins with an “uncomfortable emotional state” 14—a wave of “existential anxiety” or a “perceived lack of control” 14, often sparked by a negative news story or opening a bill.18

In this moment of high stress, the brain’s calculus changes. According to Dr. Christopher Fisher, “Logical thinking is replaced by a need for quick comfort”.5 The brain’s primitive survival instincts, designed for physical threats, “struggle to distinguish between actual threats and financial anxiety”.6 The body is flooded with the same stress hormones, whether the threat is a predator or a looming student loan payment.

The individual is not seeking a product; they are seeking relief. This is a form of “maladaptive emotional self-regulation”.14 The “Buy” button offers a simple, immediate solution.

The “High”: The moment the purchase is confirmed, the brain’s chemistry shifts. The act “triggers the release of dopamine, the brain’s ‘feel-good’ chemical”.5 This provides a “quick burst of happiness” 4, an “undeniable sense of relief”.5 This powerful neurochemical reward “can mimic behaviors seen in addiction” 14, creating a “genuine addiction-like behavior” that becomes harder to resist over time.6

The Crash: This relief is, by its very nature, “short-lived”.14 The “mood lift fades fast,” as one report notes.18

The Vicious Cycle: This is where the trap snaps shut. As Dr. Fisher explains, the fleeting, temporary relief is “followed by negative emotions”.5 A wave of “guilt, remorse” 5, anxiety, and a profound “loss of control” sweeps in.14 This “chronic emotional instability” 5 is then horribly compounded by the new, concrete “financial strain, such as debt”.5

This new, higher level of anxiety—”I feel hopeless and I’m now $200 deeper in debt”—becomes the trigger for the next doom spend. As Dr. Fisher warns, “This financial burden becomes a vicious cycle—worrying about money leads to more impulsive spending, which in turn increases financial anxiety, deepening the emotional distress”.5

It is a perfect, accelerating feedback loop of “financial self-sabotage”.6 One psychologist, analyzing the phenomenon, compared it to “saying, ‘I am tired of getting punched in the face, so I am now going to punch myself in the face’”.20

Part IV: A Generational Affliction: The Global Picture

This cycle of “financial defeatism” 21 is not a niche psychological quirk; it is a statistically significant, global, and generationally-skewed trend. The data paints a stark picture of a world on edge, opening its wallet for relief.

In the United States, the November 2023 Credit Karma survey that popularized the term found that 96% of Americans were concerned about the economy.7 In response, 27% of all Americans—more than one in four—admitted to “doom spending” to cope with that stress.7 Other research suggests the behavior is even more widespread, with one survey finding that 72% of Americans have “spent money based on feelings of doom or anxiety about the future”.19

But the real story is the generational divide. This anxiety is not distributed equally.21 The 27% national average masks a profound skew toward the young:

Regardless of the precise point, the trend is clear: Millennials and Gen Z are the “epicenter” of this phenomenon, more likely to engage in it despite being, on average, “less wealthy than older generations”.21

This is not just an American story. The user query’s request for a “global” perspective is validated by data from around the world.

The feeling of doom is global, but the expression of the spending is local. In the UK, it manifests as a £10 pastry or pint.27 In Indonesia, it is funneled through the frictionless infrastructure of BNPL apps.29 In the US, it is linked to social media aesthetics like the “Old Money” trend.31 In all cases, a global anxiety is being monetized through the path of least resistance in a given country’s consumer market.

Table 1: The Doom Spending Divide: A Generational & Global Snapshot
Region
USA
USA
USA
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
Indonesia

Part V: The “What’s the Point?” Economy: A Rational Response?

This data leads to the central, most uncomfortable question: Why are young people the epicenter? Why are the generations with the least financial security the most likely to engage in financially destructive behavior?

The answer, it seems, is that the behavior may not be a simple “moral failing” or a “lack of discipline.” Instead, it can be interpreted as a logical, if self-defeating, “trauma response” to a broken economic promise.

Let’s return to Munira. Her generation is not like the one before it. Many entered the workforce “mid-pandemic amid surging student debt, decades-high inflation, and seemingly unattainable housing prices”.9 They feel the “social contract” their parents and grandparents had is fundamentally broken.32

This leads to the “What’s the point?” mentality. As financial author Giovanna González explains, the thinking is, “‘What’s the point of saving for the future?’… ‘I’m just going to spend in the now and not worry about long-term goals like retiring or purchasing a home’”.9 This is not just a feeling; it’s a documented belief. One study found that 73% of Gen Z are hesitant to set long-term goals at all.9

This worldview has a name: “financial nihilism.” It is the “state of believing in nothing,” or having “no allegiances” to the traditional financial system.32 Young people see the “disconnect” 32—they see their parents’ single-income families buying homes while they, with dual incomes and master’s degrees, compete for gig work—and they no longer “trust the system” to reward their saving.32

This nihilism is the philosophical fuel for the “YOLO (You Only Live Once) Economy”.33 It is a “live now, pay later” mentality.2 This is the culture that spawned the TikTok trend, “Money will come back, but you’ll never be twenty-something and dancing at a Harry Styles concert”.35

This is the core of the argument. Financial therapist Aseel El-Baba calls this “a classic trauma response”.2 This generation, El-Baba argues, has “a severed relationship with the future.” We are “asking them to make decisions that will benefit them down the road, and they’re saying, ‘What road? The road that’s been pulled out from under us?’”.2

When “The Canadian Dream is broken,” as Munira says, you “act out”.2

Viewed through this lens, the mainstream critique that blames “avocado toast” or “excessive lifestyle spending” 2 for generational poverty is a “deflection” by policymakers. It is an attempt to frame a “predictable outcome” of “decades of failure to address systemic strains” as a mere “problem of individual consumer habits”.2

This feeling is only exacerbated by the digital world. As financial personality Vivian Tu points out, “keeping up with the Joneses” used to mean envying your neighbor’s new car. Today, “keeping up with the Joneses now is keeping up with the Kardashians”.34 Social media provides a constant, “fingertip” view of “immense wealth” that “we start to think… is normal”.34 This widens the perceived gap between one’s own reality and a “normal” life to an unbridgeable chasm. This new, global, and impossibly high standard makes traditional goals feel even more absurd, directly fueling the “what’s the point?” mentality that leads to buying a Chanel bag instead of saving for a down payment one believes they will never afford anyway.34

The “YOLO” paradox is that the spending meant to “live life now” 36 is a “financial ticking time bomb” 37 that mortgages the future. The debt becomes a “ball-and-chain”.36 In an attempt to seize joy in the present, the spender guarantees they will have less freedom in the future, thus “worsening their own outcomes in a self-fulfilling prophecy”.38

Part VI: The Long Hangover: The Real Cost of Coping

The dopamine rush is temporary.18 The “YOLO hangover” 37 is permanent. The bill for this coping mechanism always comes due, and the cost is catastrophic.

The “short-term emotional fix” leads directly to “long-term financial issues”.3

But the financial cost is only half the story. The psychological cost is the most “insidious” part.13 This cycle of “financial self-sabotage” 6 does not, in the long run, relieve anxiety. It manufactures it. It leads directly to more stress, more guilt, and a deeper sense of hopelessness.14

This “financial anxiety” is not a trivial concern. It is a “leading cause of divorce” and is cited as a “core stressor”.41 The damage is not easily undone. Research has shown that the “emotional residue” of financial hardship can last for decades, leaving a “measurable imprint on emotional health” well into old age, “even when people’s financial circumstances improve”.40 The scar tissue remains.

The true danger of doom spending is that the financial consequences are not just linear; they are cyclical and reinforcing. The anxiety from the last splurge becomes the trigger for the next one. The “solution” (spending) directly worsens the root cause (financial anxiety), creating an accelerating spiral. This is how someone like Munira accumulates $13,000 in credit card debt from what started as “basic costs” and “a daily strawberry matcha tea”.2

Part VII: Reclaiming the Narrative: A Path Back to Control

If doom spending is an “understandable” 14 “trauma response” 2 to a system that feels “betrayed” 2, then the solution cannot be a simple, restrictive budget. Shaming the individual is not only ineffective; it misunderstands the problem.

A traditional, rigid budget like the “50/30/20 rule” can feel “unattainable” 39 in an economy of high inflation and stagnant wages, and “may not work right now”.1 The goal is not to “doom save”—which is equally joyless—but to find healthier ways to “cope with stress”.19 The goal is to find a path back to the genuine control that the doom spender was seeking all along.

Strategy 1: Create Friction to Break the Cycle

The “addiction-like” 6 nature of doom spending is enabled by “frictionless” 21 one-click payments. The antidote is to add friction back in.

Strategy 2: Redefine “Self-Care” from Consumption to Care

The urge is for “emotional self-regulation”.14 That need is valid; the method is flawed. Swap the “dopamine rush” 44 of a purchase for a different, more sustainable one: “engaging in regular physical activity,” “practicing mindfulness,” “engaging in deep breathing techniques,” or “spending time with loved ones”.19

This also includes “financial self-care”.9 Reframe saving not as a punishment, but as an act of kindness to a future self. Even saving a very small amount “will put you in a better position than saving nothing” and can “foster a sense of accomplishment” that encourages more progress.9

Strategy 3: A Counter-Narrative: Intentional Spending

The alternative to doom spending is not zero spending. Consider the story of Jenna, a 26-year-old earning $64,000.45 She is the antithesis of the doom spender, yet she lives in the same world. She, too, feels the “doom,” stating she “doesn’t trust that the social security system will be strong” by the time she retires.45

But her response is one of intention, not impulse.

Jenna has found the synthesis. Her splurges are “value-aligned” 14, not “fear-driven”.14 Her saving is her way of seizing control, her way to “feel safe”.45 She has found a way to live for now and later.

This is the antidote. The true opposite of “doom spending” is not “doom saving.” It is “intentional spending.” It restores the “sense of control” 4 that Munira was seeking with her 3 AM purchase.

The goal, in the end, is not to shame Munira for her strawberry matcha tea.2 The goal is to build a system, and for her to build habits, where that tea is a joyful, intentional choice—like Jenna’s eggs—and not a desperate, impulsive click in the dark.

Works cited

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