Doom Spending: How to Break the Stress-Buying Loop

The news is bleak, the rent went up again, and somehow there is a package on the way. Doom spending—buying something in response to stress about the world rather than a need in your life—has a logic to it, and understanding that logic is far more useful than deciding you have no self-control.

What doom spending actually describes

Doom spending is the habit of buying to relieve distress about things you cannot fix: the economy, the climate, the news cycle, a future that looks unaffordable. It is not the same as an occasional treat, and it is not a diagnosis. It names a pattern in which purchases are asked to carry emotional work they were never designed to do.

The term came out of consumer-finance commentary rather than a laboratory. In an online survey of 1,001 US adults commissioned by Intuit Credit Karma in October 2024, 27% said they doom spend to cope with stress, rising to 37% of Gen Z and 39% of millennials, while 53% of Gen Z said bad news online drives them to stress spend^[1]. That is a commissioned poll from a company in the consumer-credit business, not peer-reviewed research, and it records self-reported behavior and motives rather than independently observed purchases.

The backdrop is easier to verify. In the American Psychological Association's 2025 Stress in America survey of 3,199 US adults, 75% named the economy as a significant source of stress—second only to the future of the nation at 76%—and 66% named money^[2]. Whatever we call the shopping, the pressure underneath it is widely shared.

Why the purchase works, for a moment

Buying is not an irrational answer to feeling powerless. It is a fast one. Sadness in particular is bound up with the sense that events are controlling you, and choosing—this one and not that one, in this color, arriving Thursday—briefly hands the steering wheel back.

That mechanism has been tested fairly directly. In one experiment, participants who made shopping choices after a sad film clip reported less residual sadness than those who only browsed the same products. A follow-up used real purchase decisions and varied only whether participants believed their own choice or a computer had settled what they received; everyone got the option they preferred, and residual sadness was lower among those who believed the choice had been theirs^[3]. These were modest laboratory studies, and mood was measured immediately, so an immediate mood benefit is plausible—how long it lasts was not tested, and none of this makes shopping a treatment.

A broader model in consumer psychology describes the same move at a larger scale. When there is a gap between how you currently see yourself and how you want to see yourself, purchases can be used to close it symbolically, to signal something to other people, or simply to escape the discomfort for a while^[4]. Escape is the relevant one here. Doom spending rarely pretends to solve the news. It changes the channel.

Why the relief runs out

The difficulty is what distress does to your priorities. In an influential set of experiments, upset participants who believed their mood could still be improved were more likely to reach for immediate gratification, such as comfort food or putting off work, than upset participants who had been told their mood was temporarily fixed^[5]. In those experiments, repairing the mood took precedence over the longer-term goal. They did not test shopping, so applying the explanation here is an inference—though the pattern will be familiar to anyone who has opened a shopping app at eleven at night.

Nor does the picture look better over a longer horizon. A meta-analysis of 753 effect sizes from 259 independent samples found materialistic values associated with lower personal well-being, most strongly for negative self-appraisals and for risky health and consumer behaviors^[6]. The average association was modest, and the authors note that stronger experimental and longitudinal work is still needed. It measures materialistic values rather than shopping to cope, so it cannot settle the narrower question. It does make an unglamorous point harder to avoid: organizing your comfort around acquiring things is not reliably associated with feeling better about yourself.

You may recognize the shape of it. The package arrives, the anticipation ends, and the feeling that sent you shopping is still sitting there—now accompanied by a number on a statement. Nothing in that sequence means you are weak. It means the tool was mismatched to the problem.

How the loop closes on itself

Money worry is not a neutral background condition. It is a stressor in its own right, and it feeds the next urge. A systematic review and meta-analysis of research on personal unsecured debt found consistent associations with mental health problems, including depression and problem drinking^[7]. The authors note that causality is hard to establish from this literature, so the direction of cause is genuinely unclear: debt may worsen mental health, poor mental health may make debt more likely, and in practice each probably feeds the other.

Financial pressure may also occupy cognitive room. One widely cited study reported that lower-income shoppers performed worse on reasoning tasks when a hypothetical money problem was made large rather than small, while higher-income shoppers were unaffected, and that Indian sugarcane farmers scored lower before harvest than after^[8]. The evidence is genuinely mixed: a later randomized study of low-income US households found no before-and-after-payday differences in cognitive function or decision quality, though participants did behave as if more present-biased about money before payday^[9]. Treat the idea as suggestive rather than settled. If it holds even partly, it describes something you may have felt: when money is frightening, thinking clearly about money gets harder—which is the worst possible moment to be shown a limited-time offer. For more on what sustained pressure does to the body, see our guide to how your body responds to chronic stress.

Your feed is part of the mechanism

Doom spending has a supply chain. The distress and the remedy usually arrive on the same screen, minutes apart, through an interface designed to keep you there.

Researchers developing a measure of doomscrolling—persistently attending to negative news in a social feed—found in a validation sample of 502 people that it clustered with online vigilance, fear of missing out, problematic social media use, anxiety, and poorer self-control^[10]. The study was cross-sectional and did not look at purchasing at all, so the link to spending is a suggestion rather than a finding. What it does describe is a recognizable state: alert, unsettled, and already holding the device that sells.

This is not a reason to blame yourself for owning a phone. It is a reason to treat the sequence—bad news, agitation, checkout—as one habit rather than three unrelated events. Our guide to a digital detox covers the attention side of this in more depth.

How to interrupt the urge without shame

The aim is not to stop buying things. It is to put a small gap between the feeling and the checkout, so a purchase becomes a decision rather than a reflex. If-then plans are worth trying here, though the evidence is about goals in general rather than spending: a meta-analysis of 94 independent tests found that specifying in advance when, where, and how you will act had a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment^[11]. Decide the response now, while you are calm; that may make it easier to follow through later.

1. Notice the cue. The urge usually announces itself—a tight chest, a particular hour, the moment you close a news app. Name it plainly: “I am about to shop because I feel awful.”
2. Delay rather than forbid. Move the item to a list or saved basket and set a fixed wait: a day for small purchases, a week for larger ones. Many people find that a ban raises the pressure while a postponement does not.
3. Ask what the purchase is for. Try finishing the sentence “I want this because I feel ___.” If the blank is anxious, lonely, powerless, or bored, an object is unlikely to be the answer.
4. Try something calming first. Three minutes of slow, conscious breathing, a walk outside, a message to a friend, or a few lines in a notebook—something that may help you settle before you decide.
5. Return to the list. After the wait, look again. Buy it if you still want it and can afford it. Deciding not to buy it is just as valid an outcome.

Write the plan as one sentence and keep it where you will see it: “If I want to buy something after reading the news, then I will add it to the list and wait until tomorrow.” Specific beats ambitious. A rule you actually follow at eleven at night is worth more than an austerity plan you abandon by Friday.

It helps to add a little friction, too. Delete payment details saved in shopping accounts, clear saved cards from your browser, switch off shopping notifications, and unsubscribe from the emails that push you to buy quickly. You are not trying to make buying impossible—you are trying to make it take long enough to think. If choosing anything at all feels exhausting rather than freeing, our piece on decision fatigue may be useful.

Comfort that does not arrive with a bill

If spending is doing emotional work, that work still needs doing. It usually helps to find another way to meet the need the habit was serving. Experiential purchases may be associated with greater satisfaction than material ones: across two surveys and two experiments, people reported more happiness from experiences than from possessions; in the first survey, both categories were purchases they had made for over $100^[12]. That advantage grew with income and disappeared at the lowest income levels, so read it as a nudge about what to prioritize when you do spend, rather than a rule about happiness.

• Name it before you fix it: A few minutes of writing can turn vague dread into a specific worry, which is far easier to act on. Our guide to journaling for stress relief includes a short practice.
• Give the money a job: A small, deliberate comfort budget may reduce the guilt around the purchases you do make, and it gives the rest of your money a boundary.
• Choose the doing over the having: A shared meal, a swim, a concert with someone you like—consider whether time with other people would meet the need better than another object.
• Limit the news, not your awareness: Staying informed does not require a continuous feed. Try a fixed window once or twice a day and notice how it affects you.

None of these are as fast as a purchase. That is worth naming rather than ignoring: the alternatives ask for more time than the thing you are trying to replace, which is exactly why they work better when decided on in advance.

When it is more than a stressful month

There is a threshold at which this stops being a habit worth adjusting and becomes something to get help with. Compulsive buying-shopping disorder is listed in ICD-11 as an example of other specified impulse control disorders, and researchers have argued that the evidence for treating it as a distinct condition is now substantial^[13].

A meta-analysis of 40 studies across 16 countries estimated a pooled prevalence of about 4.9% (95% CI 3.4% to 6.9%) in representative adult samples, with considerable variation between studies^[14]. The signs worth taking seriously are not about the amount spent but about the loss of choice: repeated attempts to stop that do not work, hiding purchases, debt that keeps growing, mounting guilt, or buying that continues despite clear harm to your finances or your relationships.

If that describes you, speak with your doctor or a mental-health professional; psychological treatment exists for this, and financial counseling can run alongside it. If money worries feel unbearable, or you have thoughts of harming yourself, contact your local emergency services or a crisis line now. You do not have to wait for things to get worse before asking for support.

A gentler relationship with the buy button

Doom spending is an understandable response to an unreasonable amount of uncertainty. It can restore a little control quickly, in a world that offers very few fast levers. Seeing it that way makes the habit workable, because it lets you ask a better question: what would give me a real sense of agency here, and could I get some of it another way?

Start with one change this week. Put a single wait rule in place, delete one shopping app from your phone, or fix a time of day when the news stops. Small friction, applied consistently, is easier to keep up than a resolution. The aim is not to spend nothing—it is to make sure that what you buy is chosen by you, and not by the worst hour of your day.

References

1. Intuit Credit Karma. “Economic Concerns Heighten as Young Americans Doom Spend to Cope With Stress.” Credit Karma, 2024. Commissioned online survey of 1,001 US adults conducted by Qualtrics, October 25–29, 2024; not peer-reviewed. https://www.creditkarma.com/about/commentary/economic-concerns-heighten-as-young-americans-doom-spend-to-cope-with-stress.
2. American Psychological Association. “Stress in America 2025: A Crisis of Connection.” APA, 2025. https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/stress-in-america/2025.
3. Rick SI, Pereira B, Burson KA. “The Benefits of Retail Therapy: Making Purchase Decisions Reduces Residual Sadness.” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2013.12.004.
4. Mandel N, Rucker DD, Levav J, Galinsky AD. “The Compensatory Consumer Behavior Model: How Self-Discrepancies Drive Consumer Behavior.” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2016.05.003.
5. Tice DM, Bratslavsky E, Baumeister RF. “Emotional Distress Regulation Takes Precedence Over Impulse Control: If You Feel Bad, Do It!” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.1.53.
6. Dittmar H, Bond R, Hurst M, Kasser T. “The Relationship Between Materialism and Personal Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037409.
7. Richardson T, Elliott P, Roberts R. “The Relationship Between Personal Unsecured Debt and Mental and Physical Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Clinical Psychology Review, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2013.08.009.
8. Mani A, Mullainathan S, Shafir E, Zhao J. “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function.” Science, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1238041.
9. Carvalho LS, Meier S, Wang SW. “Poverty and Economic Decision-Making: Evidence from Changes in Financial Resources at Payday.” American Economic Review, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20140481.
10. Sharma B, Lee SS, Johnson BK. “The Dark at the End of the Tunnel: Doomscrolling on Social Media Newsfeeds.” Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000059.
11. Gollwitzer PM, Sheeran P. “Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Effects and Processes.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1.
12. Van Boven L, Gilovich T. “To Do or to Have? That Is the Question.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.6.1193.
13. Müller A, Brand M, Claes L, et al. “Buying-Shopping Disorder—Is There Enough Evidence to Support Its Inclusion in ICD-11?” CNS Spectrums, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1092852918001323.
14. Maraz A, Griffiths MD, Demetrovics Z. “The Prevalence of Compulsive Buying: A Meta-Analysis.” Addiction, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13223.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is doom spending?

Doom spending is buying to relieve distress about things you cannot fix, such as the economy or the news cycle, rather than to meet a need. It is a described pattern, not a diagnosis.

Why does shopping make me feel better when I am stressed?

Choosing may briefly restore a sense of personal control, and experiments suggest that making purchase decisions can reduce residual sadness. The effect appears small, its duration was not tested, and it does not address what caused the distress.

How do I stop stress spending?

Make room for a pause before buying. Decide an if-then rule in advance, set a fixed wait, remove saved payment details and shopping notifications, and try something calming before you decide.

When is stress spending a sign of something more serious?

When choice is lost rather than when the amount is large: repeated failed attempts to stop, hidden purchases, growing debt, or buying that continues despite clear harm. Compulsive buying-shopping disorder is listed in ICD-11 as an example of other specified impulse control disorders, and a doctor or mental-health professional can help.