We all have to make lots of regular decisions about money – spending $3.75 on a Starbucks latte, paying $200 for the checkup to our car, deciding if you put 3% or 5% of your salary into your 401K….spending $43 unexpectedly on happy hour last night. But when I scroll through Instagram, or Twitter, or FB, I realized we don’t chat about that stuff so much. What we DO see are amazing photos from fabulous trips – I’m so guilty of that.
Perhaps that’s part of the saying many of us were raised with – you don’t talk about money or religion at the dinner table. Who knows? But it does feel in the all-pervasive social media, what we DO see is lots of photos of life highlights, amazing Halloween photos with the kids, great vacation pics, wedding moments, but not usually the lowlights about breakups or hard days.
Well, it turns out positive-only glow from social media may be affecting our ability to make good financial decisions. We see amazing vacations and weddings and nights out – and want to spend on those things TOO! Why not? We don’t really see posts like “I now contribute 4% to my 401k, and should have $100K more when I retire at 65!” That is sexy stuff though!
I read an interesting survey from Charles Schwab that shows the impact of social media on our $$ decisions. We absolutely pay attention to how our friends are spending, and 60% of us are wondering how friends afford what they’re seeing online.
And then of course, we sometimes make our spending decisions based on what we’re seeing on social media – 34% of the time, it drives how we spend, and not surprisingly, it’s even more for Gen Z and Millennials. and 35% of the time, we’re spending on stuff we can’t really afford.
The reality is that 59% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, with no savings or retirement, and 44% of us carry a credit card balance we struggle to pay monthly – keeping the most expensive debt in our money house. So many of us do need to be making better money decisions, saving and investing in our future more.
Let’s keep this in mind as we all surf on social media. We have to make the right financial decisions for our lives, and not be swayed by what we see others posting online. And maybe a few of us do start posting when we have a savings or investment milestone!! $