The psychological and cultural weight of money
When I was 29, I started thinking more seriously about what my financial future would look like. At 37, I now find it borderline insane that no one really taught me this stuff before. Fast forward to today, and having done brand, comms and content strategy consulting for financial brands of all kinds – from accounting software, to B2B payment terminals, to retail banks, to investing apps –, this is the sort of stuff I can’t not think about anymore. To simplify the complex in an industry that most people would rather not think about, and yet which is core to how we live.
So, the more I’ve worked on financial services, the more research I got exposed to, and the more interesting questions came up around what we might expect to happen at a cultural level around how people relate to money. So, I asked Salmon Crew member Hemal Gill to help me unpack some of the most interesting areas we could find. Here are six core areas we’re into.
1/ Cashless childhoods
Remember being a kid and learning about money by pretending to sell strawberries in a stall, and someone giving you money and you giving them some money back as their change? This is how we’d begin learning about the value of money, and to some extent how maths works.
But things have changed. Childhoods are increasingly cashless. Here’s what the evidence says:
Only 9% of payments in the UK are done in cash (vs 48% a decade before)
61% of UK children aged 10–15 now use apps to manage their pocket money
Searches for “kids debit card” rose by 227% from 2016 to 2021
Only 14% of children report learning about money management from their bank
72% of parents believe their child doesn't fully understand money's value
31% of parents discovered un-authorised digital purchases
Children see digital app payments, video game currency, in-app purchases, and cryptocurrency as essentially the same thing
Which leads to a key question: what does a cashless society mean for how children perceive the value of money? And if cashless payments correlate with less control over what you pay, there is a series of questions that emerges around how money and self-control and the physical texture of services are connected. We’re more likely to remember what we read by reading physically, and we’re more likely to value money if we feel some part of it in our hands.
As this disintermediation of money accelerates, what will our children associate with what money is and how it works? Will they learn about the value of money through conceptual thinking (two minus one equals one), instead of by doing (I give you two coins, you give me one back)? And does this influence their critical thinking skills more or less than the alternative? The blur between where your money is, and who teaches you about the basics, gets quite blurry.
2/ Forever action bias
Retiring sounds great until you realise, statistically, it’s increasingly a luxury. Here’s the evidence:
26% of Americans aged 50+ say they expect to never retire (+13pp vs 2022)
70% who don’t expect to retire say they won’t be able to afford it
19.5% of US over-65s are still working, double the rate vs 35 years ago
41% of US over-65s are still working because it feels personally fulfilling
Another 40% are still working because they need the money
31% of Gen X in the UK don't think they'll ever completely stop working
28% of all 25-54 year olds in the UK don’t think they’ll ever completely stop working
14% of UK Baby Boomers have ‘un-retired’ and returned to work, and 4% are considering it
The pessimistic view here is that the social safety net systems that were designed to help us in older age are failing, and the bi-furcation of wealth building trajectories (also known now as a K-shaped economy) creates a generation of retired have vs have-nots. But it’s equally true that some folks may choose not to retire because they actually enjoy what they do, or might see retirement as a chance to do what they enjoy without the pressure to make it profitable.
It’s also possible that the second point is a way to cope with the learned helplessness that emerges from the first. When you know you might not be able to retire, to build a narrative in your mind that perhaps you didn’t want to anyway, and it’s actually an opportunity. What feels pressing to me is that what we define as the side hustle culture might be perpetuated until we literally die. People in their 20s and 30s are into having side hustles not because they want to, but because they have to. Or they feel safer if they know they have options. Classic action bias. Doing something will always inherently feel safer to us than doing nothing. Even if it’s not true.
What are the psychological needs and drawbacks of feeling like your life will be forever defined by action? As you get older, you do need to find ways to stimulate your mind and body to manage the inevitable decay that we all go through. So staying active is brilliant for you the older you get. But will this result in a generation of retirees that stop knowing how to appreciate things because there’s always a next thing they need to do, or want to do? Post your 70s, will every exchange be a potential business deal in the making, which means the social fabric of pure friendships gets a bit more eroded? Or will the wisdom of old age help balance it out?
3/ Debt as self-promise
I remember reading Yanis Varoufakis’ excellent Talking To My Daughter About The Economy, and it dawning on me for the first time in my life that debt might not be an inherently bad thing. For example, if you’re repaying a mortgage, congratulations, you’re in debt, but it’s also good debt because owning your home is generally speaking a good thing (though attitudes might be splintering on this a bit!). The argument is simple: debt is good because it fuels growth.
In this sense, national debt is a future promise to your citizens that you expect a return. It’s also how it works for corporations. But is this how it works for individuals, especially since the rise of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services? Let’s look at some data:
38% of BNPL users say shopping feels ‘less financially real’
24% of BNPL users made late payments in 2024 (+33pp vs 2023)
This goes up to 39% among Gen Z and 35% among millennials
66% of BNPL users spent money on things they wouldn’t have bought otherwise
31% of BNPL users say they've lost track of what payments they owe
The catastrophiser in me feels this is the sub prime mortgage crisis all over again. All this consumer debt, broadly un-regulated, and no significant questions being asked, because no one wants the party to end when the party’s this good.
But there is another part of me that is fascinated by the psychological drivers behind all this. Debt as a promise to the self, where each new deferred payment is another possible building block for what future me might hold. Consumption as religion leads to this conclusion quite naturally. We consume to get closer to some sort of deity, and the deity is a better version of who we think we are, want to be, or ought to be. There are no institutionalised rules for who this version of us should be. We’re either too early, or too late. Klarna is consumer paganism.
The problem with this is that, without a clear goal post, who knows when you’ve made it to the promises you made yourself? And what happens when all those promises become un-trackable and you’re on a perpetual treadmill to buy more? For retailers and economic growth, this is good news. For people who are looking to manage their own credit risks, a bit less so.
And yet, this may lead to a future where debt becomes actually a normal part of building a better self. An important self-promise in the project of optimising who we are and can be. Will we ever treat lack of debt as the actual stigma, because to not get into debt is to not invest in yourself? Is this a potential new era of “growth at all costs” but for individuals? I like to think not, because profitability is sustainability and we’re there now on the business front. But that hasn’t stopped us before, as history tends to rhyme. And we love to promise things to ourselves.
4/ Wealth dysmorphia
About a year ago, I was interviewing a relatively famous journalist who writes a lot about personal finance, and she introduced me to the idea of money dysmorphia. Essentially the idea that we think others have more than we do, even if that’s based on perception not reality.
Let’s start by looking at some evidence, yes?
43% of Gen Z and 41% of millennials experience ‘money dysmorphia’, where you feel financially insecure despite your current situation, but only 14% of those aged 59+ feel it
37% of those with money dysmorphia have more than $10,000 in savings, and 23% have more than $30,000, which is well above the US median savings of $5,300
80%+ of those with money dysmorphia feel behind on their finances
59% say they’re financially stable while also feeling they’re not keeping pace
40% of Americans say money dysmorphia held them back from saving
38% of Americans say money dysmorphia led them to overspending
UK searches for "money dysmorphia" grew 136% from 2024 to 2025
Now, let’s pause for a minute. A lot of this stuff might be due to actual material realities, and people don’t have as much as they need. Which makes it a societal and governmental problem. But we can’t avoid the other side of the debate: how much of this is psychological reality too?
(Obvious caveat: this applies mostly the middle class or above, who to some extent might be more victims of status anxiety, rather than actual financial distress. Basic standards matter.)
This psychological reality (which seems to be indeed a distorted one) applies most obviously to what people perceive as their wealth. We are now exposed to new forms of material and other forms of wealth through social media and extremely online status signalling, which inevitably raises the question in our own minds: am I actually… not as well off as I thought? What am I missing? Should I have more? If I’m not a millionaire by age X like that podcast said, do I count?
Which leads to yet another interesting question, about whether “having more” is the exam question anyway. Speaking to a range of finance experts recently, one of the clear patterns I heard is that wealth is moving from accumulating more, to wealth becoming about having enough self-awareness about the importance of having enough, and indeed feeling enough.
So the lines between finance and self-help blur here too, and we’re now in a place where the best financial advice might start by grounding yourself with some School of Life videos first. Once you know the foundational technical skills of personal finance management, you get into the social, psychological and indeed psychotherapeutic ones. The stuff that can break you.
Will we start seeing more finance-related therapy services, where the issues you want to talk about are less about whether your dad or mum gave you what you needed, and more about whether the wealth porn you see everywhere is even real and consequential for your life.
5/ DIYstopia
One of the great lessons I took from working on the brand positioning for a retail investment bank last year is that democratisation is a double-edged sword. You have on the one hand wealth management services who promise to do everything for you, and on the other hand a lot of self-serve apps where the power is completely in your hands. But there’s a problem.
When power is completely in your hands, so are the consequences of that power being used in ineffective ways. Kierkegaard spoke about anxiety being the dizziness of freedom, and this is what he was talking about. Everything’s now in your hands, including the mistakes.
Let’s look at some data:
145 million people used stock trading apps in 2024 (+47% YoY)
Self-directed allocation grew from 14% (2018) to 23% (2023), a growth rate of 64.3%
Younger investors now hold 36% of assets in self-directed apps
Only 27% of US adults can correctly answer five out of seven financial knowledge questions
Only 14% of UK 18-24s passed a financial literacy test in 2024 (vs 67% of over-65s)
45% of self-directed investors in high-risk products do not view "losing money" as a risk
84% of retail traders lose money according to UK FCA disclosures
This is a DIYstopia. Well-funded companies have strip back the middle person and put the onus on the customer, but in reality a consequence of that is customers need more educational support to know what the hell they’re even doing in the first place. You’re seeing the wizard for the first time, but turns out he’s infinite wizards in the form of potential financial instruments you cannot begin to fully understand. When 48% of US respondents have 3+ finance-related apps downloaded, you must wonder to what extent they truly understand the cost of all that access.
One second order effect of this might be a new form of generational trauma, in the shape of financial concerns being inherited by those who tried to put financial matters into their own hands and made enough mistakes to never want to do it again. Sure, this increase in wanting to control our own financial destiny comes as a way to cope with complexity and lack of safety nets, but we need the basics in place to avoid simply spawning a new form of overwhelm.
6/ Heuristicocracy
On the other hand, there’s another bifurcation here around financial literacy where to get deeper into its complexities is another form of status. Being into finance, basically, is kinda cool now. And actually knowing how these systems work, and how to take advantage, carries not only social capital but also allows you to benefit in real capital terms. Buying and holding forever is a new form of “living happily ever after”, a financial fairy tale for the ages.
Let’s look at some evidence:
94% of Gen Z investors compare their investment goals with others
27% compare to people on social media, while 35% compare to parents and 34% to friends
75% aspiring Gen Z and millennial investors believe social media makes investing look easy
75% of respondents trust financial advice shared on TikTok
67% of Gen Z use YouTube for dividend investing education, vs 6% of Baby Boomers
In principle, this is the original promise of social media fully realised. Anyone can learn anything. But it’s one thing to learn how to paint some walls, another to learn how to bet your financial security on services you are now fully beginning to understand. To truly navigate this complexity, you need the right values in place and the right ability to make decisions not based on pure data analysis (which is an actual job that people do, and it’s probably not your job), but more based on mental shortcuts to help you cope with the financial cognitive burden.
Heuristics go up in value, because in complex systems often only they’ll do. This creates a new form of financial knowledge smugness, where not only do you understand the basics of the system where your money flows, but you also have enough mental models, heuristics and shortcuts to signal a new form of cultural capital. It’s cool to be into the right bands, watch the right films and wear the right clothes, but there’s also deep status gains to come from having the right mental shortcuts that show you’re closer to seeing The Matrix.
What next?
This research outlines in broad strokes the psychological and cultural weight of money in our lives, and what possible future directions might look like. In practical terms, it can help brand marketers in the finance space to better understand how to position themselves as a brand that has the right capabilities, but also the right character in how it relates to its customers, two measures that are indispensable to build sustained trust. And trust, in a slopworld, is everything.
If you’d like to organise an internal training session on financial futures, or run a workshop on how they can apply to your particular marketing and business problems, we should be talking.
Sources
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