slang
/ˈmə-nē dis-ˈmȯr-fē-ə/
A persistent insecurity about one’s finances (even when one has a solid foundation) that is most prevalent among Generation Z and millennials.
This article is part of Shop Talk, a regular feature exploring the idioms of the business world: the insider jargon, the newly coined terms, the unfortunate or overused phrases.
Flashy cars. Five-figure bags. Vacations on islands.
With the constant stream of conspicuous consumption on social media, it can be easier than ever to feel like you’re always on a budget for beer, even if you can afford some Champagne.
And that has a name: “money dysmorphia.”
This term, while not entirely new, has been bouncing around the Internet as a way to describe people’s often complicated relationship with money. It borrows from the term “body dysmorphic disorder,” a mental health condition that causes a person to obsess over a perceived physical defect.
Money dysmorphia (not a real diagnosis) refers to someone who feels irrationally insecure about finances. That mindset, financial planning experts say, can lead to financial mistakes, including overspending or risky investments.
It’s like “keeping up with everyone else,” said Courtney Alev, a consumer financial advocate at Intuit Credit Karma, a personal finance company. For those who feel their wealth isn’t up to par, it’s easy to “completely give up and spend their money on things that might make them happy in the moment, but will leave them without a reserve fund in the future.”
In a recent survey of American adults conducted by Qualtrics for Intuit Credit Karma, 29 percent said they experienced money dysmorphia.
It is affecting younger people more, the study found. Forty-three percent of Generation Z respondents, who are ages 20 to 40 or younger, and 41 percent of millennial respondents, who are ages 20 to 40, said they experienced money dysmorphia. By contrast, 25 percent of Generation X, ages 40 to 50, and just 14 percent of people ages 59 and older said yes.
Legitimate financial concerns — such as a cooling job market, student loan debt and skyrocketing housing and child care costs — may be making it difficult for some younger Americans to imagine reaching the financial milestones set by older generations. Ms. Alev said the ostentatious lifestyles they saw online often worsened feelings of inadequacy.
In a 2023 survey for Edelman Financial Engines, a financial planning firm, a third of respondents said they spent more than they could afford on things like vacations or luxury items to keep up with the “digital Joneses.” That number increased to more than half for respondents who spent more than three hours a day on social media.
The recent proliferation of financial content on the Internet and social media (some expert, some not so much) can also make it difficult for people to feel confident in their choices, said Kevin Mahoney, founder of Illumint, a financial planning company focused on millennials. .
It’s easier than ever to find people online talking about “how much they make, how fast they made X amount of dollars or ‘This is what you should have achieved by age 30,'” Mahoney said. “It doesn’t mean it applies appropriately to your life.”
