Are You the Only One Who's Broke? Or Is It ‘Money Dysmorphia'?

New York Times

12-04-2025

On Instagram feeds, martini glasses clink in what feels like a never-ending loop. Photo carousels from nights out show low-lit steakhouses, tartare and soufflés, Luxardo cherries. (What, in this economy, is screaming Luxardo cherries?) A roommate's random co-worker is somehow lounging on yet another cabana in yet another tropical bathing suit. (Who owns that many bathing suits?) A co-worker's random roommate is inexplicably trying out a new Bitcoin-powered bathhouse.
Just one click away is the news: flip-flopping on tariffs that could hit iPhones, T-shirts, backpacks and toothbrushes. There are wildly zigzagging red lines on market charts and somber television newscasters with panicked voices talking about retirement savings, which is angst-inducing even for people decades away from retirement.
'Phone-eats-first type of food, whatever viral sweater is going around on TikTok, the new work bag,' said Devin Walsh, 25, who lives in New York and works in marketing, listing the tempting purchases that flit across her Instagram, even, stubbornly, this past week. 'Meanwhile, everyone is referencing the Great Depression.'
It's a dizzying time to be a 20-something inundated by social media feeds flashing other people's trips and restaurant reservations, which feel more over-the-top than ever, thanks to what trend forecasters call the 'boom boom aesthetic.' It's a recent embrace, by fashion labels, influencers and ordinary spenders, of lavish old-money consumption, like Gordon Gekko-inspired suits and endless (once verboten) furs.
Many young people are plagued by pangs of economic self-doubt, telling friends or therapists that they can't keep up with the Joneses (and what the Joneses are posting on Instagram). Others are struggling to save, and then making impulse buys that leave them feeling anxious or guilty, that spending hangover from an 'oh why not' pair of shoes.
'You see a social media post and you're like, 'Maybe I'm doing something wrong,'' said Veronica Holloway, 27, a data analyst who lives in Chicago. 'Like somehow I must be being irresponsible if I'm not able to spend like this.'
The resulting unease is leading to what financial planners call 'money dysmorphia.' A sibling of the term 'body dysmorphia,' meaning people who look in the mirror and do not see what's really there, it refers to people who have a distorted view of their own financial well-being. It's a mind-bending split-screen view of reality.
'You're in a position where you don't believe you have enough money, even though the numbers say you're OK,' said Aja Evans, a financial therapist with some clients who struggle with dysmorphia. 'It's easy for people to create a narrative around what they're seeing online — they're like, 'Oh my God, everyone is going away for spring break, I'm the only one who is staying home.''
These perceptions, unhinged from reality, lead some to hold back on spending unnecessarily. It could lead others to overspend, sometimes enabled by 'buy now, pay later' technologies; the average Gen Z consumer holds roughly $3,500 in credit card debt, according to data from Experian. A 2024 study conducted by Qualtrics found that nearly a third of all Americans reported feeling money dysmorphia, including 43 percent of Gen Z.
For Ms. Holloway, this disquieting uncertainty about spending started in childhood, after both her parents lost their jobs in the 2008 financial crisis. Her family lived below the poverty line, she said. Ms. Holloway thought twice about even necessary expenses. When she bought a pair of $130 sneakers for her high school cross country team, she spent a week feeling sick to her stomach.
She has never been able to fully shake her worries, even now that she has a paycheck that more than covers her rent and meals. It does not help that her social media acts as a highlight reel of friends' expenses, from flashy dinners to acrylic nails.
What's known as the hemline theory says that when the economy becomes stronger, skirts lengths become shorter; boom times mean people want to party. A corollary that some economists and sociologists have found is that when the economy turns downward, tastes for little luxuries sometimes grow. During the 2008 financial crisis, some scholars reported seeing the 'Lipstick Effect,' which was consumers spending more on small cosmetic items, perhaps as a way to feel slightly better about the state of the world, or at least about their faces. And in the early 1980s, when the economy cratered, fashion turned gaudy and over-the-top. One popular poster from the time shows a man in a tweed jacket and English riding pants leaning against a Rolls-Royce, cocktail glass in the air.
'That display of preppy-style wealth came during the worst economic recession since the 1930s,' said Douglas Rossinow, a historian and the author of 'The Reagan Era.'
That tendency toward crisis-inflected lipstick spending has been layered on top of a financial reality that is already confusing for young people. For years, millennials were living with a warped sense of financial security because of venture capital money essentially subsidizing DoorDash deliveries and Uber rides. Social media invites people to post only their most hard-to-get dinner reservations and 'White Lotus'-reminiscent beach travel. Now the economic picture is particularly uncertain, and the Instagram aesthetic is particularly luxurious.
'There was this more subdued, minimal norm-core look of the 2010s where people were trying to occlude their power or wealth — which came out of Silicon Valley and its casual approach to the workplace — that has fallen out of favor,' said the trend forecaster Sean Monahan.
Mr. Monahan, who coined the term 'boom boom aesthetic' in December, has tracked a recent surge in posts of flashy finery: caviar bumps, broad-shouldered suits, Chateau Marmont parties, 1980s-style decadence. 'People feel like they're participating in status games very explicitly,' he said. 'The social hierarchy is in flux.'
Dessie DiMino, a tech worker, notices when friends post pictures from ski resorts and music festivals. She has had to ratchet up the voice in her head reminding herself to save as she follows headlines about economic uncertainty and the tariffs that seemed poised to hit her daily spending, including grocery items like coffee beans and chocolate.
'I don't want to just stop doing everything, but I know there are days I should really bite the bullet and stay home,' said Ms. DiMino, 27.
To Ms. Walsh, the marketing employee from New York, the draw toward prudence feels especially tricky for her generation because of the shared sense that they're living under a cloud of incessant crisis — Covid-19, climate change, political turbulence. Sometimes, she tells her mother, it's hard to muster the discipline to save when she keeps hearing that the sky is falling.
'We're more inclined to spend frivolously because of this looming main character energy of 'The world is going to end anyway,'' Ms. Walsh said. 'What are we saving for?'
In February, she splurged on hosting a Valentine's Day party in her Hell's Kitchen apartment, spending hundreds of dollars on heart-shaped sunglasses that she mounted to the wall to feel like a Sunglass Hut, a sink filled with alcohol and a new $150 heart-printed dress. 'Was it a rational use of funds?' she said. 'Maybe not.'
Financial planners, especially those who work with young people, are trying to help clients who are feeling throttled by these economic shifts. Some of these clients are buying up new blazers and vacations as a balm for their broader sense of anxiety about where the economy is headed. Others are avoiding even reasonable purchases.
'I work with somebody who started cheaping out on groceries, even though her family's financial future doesn't hang on a trip to Whole Foods,' said Matt Lundquist, a therapist in Manhattan. 'The inverse end of that is people being much more pleasure seeking — getting the Chanel bag, the 'Oh forget it, I've been wanting these shoes.''
Kara Pérez, who founded an organization that educates women on managing finances, has seen this uncertainty reshape her clients' views on class. Some are overwhelmed by the affluence they see on social media, and it makes them lose sense of whether or not they are financially comfortable. Ms. Pérez said some clients whom she would describe as firmly middle class no longer saw themselves that way.
'A lot of people are like, 'I'm not Kim Kardashian, I'm not Elon Musk, therefore I am broke,'' Ms. Pérez said.
Ms. Pérez also sees this sentiment in comments that users leave on her social media page. On TikTok, where Ms. Pérez calls herself a personal finance expert, she's forgiving of those who reply to her posts amid the chaos of the moment, effectively saying: 'There's no point in saving babe, we're not going to retire. It's OK to spend extravagantly now.'