The meme was just a black square with white letters that read:
“Me: ‘I’ve had a hard day. I think I deserve a little treat.’
“Also me: ‘I’ve had a great day. I think I deserve a little treat.’”
It certainly resonated with me, and I imagine it did the same for the many consumers out there who find themselves partaking in an activity known as “doom spending.”
First introduced as a term by Credit Karma three years ago, doom spending is pretty easy to define: the sense that you might as well buy stuff because you’re going to stay relatively broke your entire life.
Doom spending has often been identified with Gen Z shoppers, whose prospects for buying their own home or even a car have never been bleaker. According to the Penny Hoader’s 2026 Financial Anxiety Barometer Report, however, Americans spend the equivalent of 96 days a year worried about money.
Eventually, perhaps, many people give up worrying and just pull out their credit cards anyway.
Where CX and doom spending intersect
This has an obvious connection to customer experience (CX) initiatives like loyalty programs, which have increasingly offered “micro rewards” that entice members to use their points more often.
If doom spending continues to rise, however, I think CX leaders need to consider the broader implications for their brand.
Great CX has always been predicated on removing customer friction and making it easier for people to get what they want.
Yet online “buy buttons,” auto-renewals and other conveniences could become linked to doom spending, creating a negative connotation with the overall experience a brand delivers.
There is already a ton of public education content out there aimed at helping consumers overcome the temptation to doom spend.
CX innovations that make indulging faster and easier will inevitably be blamed for exacerbating, rather than helping, the problem.
How CX leaders can address doom spending
The solution is not to abandon those innovations but ensure experiences are positioned and marketed appropriately.
Instead of taglines suggesting “You deserve it” or championing compulsive behavior, a luxury or aspirational experience should be described based on the value it provides and the idea that it’s worth saving up for.
Experiences should also be designed to ensure that all pricing is clearly understood, including any formerly hidden fees or additional charges that could follow a purchase made by a stressed-out doom spender.
Online account profiles should make it easy to track purchase histories and, better yet, offer notifications and alerts when consumers approach a pre-defined spending threshold.
We’ve typically defined buyer’s remorse as the moment a customer discovers they purchased a defective or disappointing product or service. Doom spending suggests the remorse can simply come from engaging with an experience at all.
By all means continue striving to surprise and delight, or to boost satisfaction.
Even the greatest experiences, though, will fall a little flat if, once the bills arrive, customers look back and feel a brand met them at a moment of weakness.