Doom Spending: Why You Buy Things When the News Is Bad
Doom Spending: Why You Buy Things When the News Is Bad By WealthChecker Team | Money Mindset | 8 min read You open your phone. Another headline about prices, another warning about the economy, another reason to feel like the ground is shifting under a plan you never really got to make. Twenty minutes later, there's a package in your cart you didn't have this morning. Not because you needed it. Because for a few seconds, choosing something — anything — felt like the opposite of helpless. There's a name for this now: doom spending. And here's the detail that should give everyone pause — in surveys of people who do it regularly, only 18% say it actually made them feel better. The uncomfortable math: More than a quarter of Americans say they spend money specifically because they're anxious about the economy — not despite it. For Gen Z, that number climbs past a third. And it isn't fixing the anxiety. It's just moving it two weeks into the future, attached...