Who’s Doom Spending?
In what’s likely to be unsurprising to any adults who’ve been forced to move back in with their parents for any length of time within the last decade, younger generations are less likely to have money and more likely to show up in stats supporting the doom spending trend.
33% of Gen Zers and 34% of millennials say that their spending has gone up over the last six months. Debt is also on the rise.
Why? That’s less clear. It might be frivolous travel and shopping. It might also be soaring rental payments — In just the last decade, rent inflation outpaced currency inflation by 40.7% in the US, and younger generations are more likely to rent.
There’s plenty evidence that people in the US – particularly younger people – are increasingly failing to save money. But there isn’t nearly as much evidence that they’re increasingly making the poor financial choices that the term “doom spending” seems to suggest.
Is Doom Spending One of the Those Made-Up Trends?
Doom spending is just a theory, and might not completely explain all the stats we’ve listed above. In fact, focusing on doom spending might just be another way to blame the consumer for a tightening economy that’s ultimately out of their control.
Take the declining savings rates, for example: According to the Credit Karma survey, 47% of Americans say the amount of saved money they have has dropped across the last six months, while 52% say they have fewer than $2,000 in savings (a metric which includes the 22% who have no savings at all).
Credit Karma’s article explaining doom spending cites these stats as if they’re an impact of doom spending. But they might just as likely be the impetus that causes Americans to start doom spending in the first place.
If this is true, it’s far from the first time we’ve seen a trending concept obscure the real culprits behind economic instability. An increased focus on employees’ failures to full return to the office led to the creation of the term “coffee badging,” although we later found out that a quarter of C-suite execs admited that they hoped employees would quit as a result of being forced to stop working remotely. Studies have found that 34% of the spikes in US inflation between 2020-2023 were reflected in corporate profits, suggesting price gouging.
Finally, there’s “quiet quitting,” the term for employees who do their jobs but complete the minimum rather than going above and beyond. The term itself has a negative connotation, but plenty of ink has been spilled discussing whether it should be considered a moral failing on an employee’s part, or a step towards work-life balance and fair compensation.
One thing’s for sure: All these trends are highlighting a business world in which employees are increasingly pushed to find ways to cope with stress. No one just starts quiet quitting, coffee badging, and doom spending out of nowhere.
