What Doom Spending Actually Is — And Why It Makes Sense When You're Scared (2026)

The tax refund hits your account. A few thousand dollars. More money in one place than you've had in months.

And your first instinct isn't to save it.

You know the economy is shaky. You know prices keep climbing. You know this money should probably go toward debt or an emergency fund or something responsible. And somewhere underneath that, you also know that none of those choices feel quite real right now. The future feels too uncertain to plan for. So you start spending.

A 2025 Harris Poll survey found that 62% of Gen Z adults expecting a tax refund planned to spend most or all of it to cope with economic uncertainty. Among millennials, 52% said the same. In the same study, 58% of Gen Z and 69% of millennials reported actively fearing a recession.

These numbers aren't describing a generation that's reckless. They're describing something more specific — and more psychologically interesting — than that.

What makes doom spending different

"Doom spending" has become shorthand for a real and distinct behavioral pattern: spending not as celebration, not as genuine desire for a thing, but as a response to economic anxiety. It's different from ordinary impulse buying in one important way — it's often conscious.

People who doom spend their tax refund don't usually do it because they forgot about their goals. They do it knowing exactly what they're doing. The Harris Poll data reflects this: respondents said they were spending "to cope with economic uncertainty." That's not a lapse in judgment. That's a deliberate choice made under a very specific set of beliefs about the future.

The belief goes something like: things are going to get worse. Prices are going up. A recession might be coming. My money might be worth less later than it is now. So spending it on something I actually want today might be the best version of having it at all.

That logic isn't irrational. It's a rational response to a specific perception of the future.

The psychology underneath

Behavioral economists have a term for what's happening: temporal discounting under threat. We already know that people discount future rewards relative to present ones — $100 today feels more valuable than $110 next month, even when the math says otherwise. But temporal discounting accelerates when the future feels unstable or threatening. When uncertainty is high, the future gets discounted more steeply, and spending now becomes relatively more attractive.

This is what separates doom spending from other spending patterns. It's not that people forgot to care about the future. It's that the future, in their perception, has become less legible — and therefore less worth sacrificing for.

There's even a name for the broader psychological state behind it: financial nihilism. The belief that traditional financial milestones — homeownership, retirement security, debt payoff — are so far out of reach that working toward them feels futile. When a 2025 Credit Karma study found that 47% of Gen Z say they "can't rationalize saving money" due to fears about the world and economy, they weren't describing laziness. They were describing a loss of faith in the predictability of the future that makes deferred gratification feel like a losing game.

Why tax refunds are a specific pressure point

A tax refund is the largest single lump sum many people see in a given year. In 2025, the average was $3,271. That's real money, arriving as a single deposit, with more degrees of freedom than a regular paycheck.

But timing matters. The same Harris Poll data shows that 41% of Americans delayed filing their taxes in 2025, with financial burnout cited as a key reason — 15% of Gen Z and 13% of millennials said they put it off because they were burned out from financial stress. So the sequence looks like this: economic anxiety builds for months. Tax filing happens during peak stress. A significant windfall lands in the account of someone who has been running on economic dread.

The pull toward spending something tangible, immediate, and controllable is extremely strong at that moment. Windfalls also get mentally categorized differently from regular income — found money tends to carry looser psychological rules than earned money. Add economic anxiety to that looser framing, and the case for spending now rather than saving feels almost automatic.

The part that makes it hard to address

The complicated thing about doom spending is that the usual interventions don't fit.

When someone spends impulsively without realizing it, interrupting the loop with awareness helps. When someone doom spends, they already have the awareness. They're telling you they're doing it, and why. The problem isn't a lack of information. It's a specific relationship to the future that makes information feel beside the point.

"You should put that refund in savings" doesn't land when the person has already concluded that savings won't protect them from what they're actually afraid of. The fear isn't abstract. It's: a recession might come, my job might not be stable, prices will keep rising, the rules I thought I was playing by don't apply anymore. Against that backdrop, advice about building a three-month emergency fund sounds like advice from a different era.

What actually shifts that isn't more information. It's the feeling of agency — a sense that some version of the future is legible and worth working toward, even a small and modest version.

One thing worth trying

Before a big doom spend decision, try naming the specific fear driving it. Not "the economy is scary" — that's real but too large to do anything with. More specific: "I'm worried my job won't be stable" or "I'm afraid prices will keep outpacing what I earn" or "I don't believe I'll ever be able to own a home."

Specific fears are more tractable than diffuse dread. And when you can articulate what you're actually afraid of, you're in a slightly better position to ask whether the purchase addresses that fear — or just creates the sensation of addressing it for 48 hours.

Tracking your emotional state before spending decisions is where Impause's Daily Check-In is useful: it makes the emotion driving a choice visible rather than invisible. Not to stop the spending, necessarily. Just to bring it into view so it's a decision you're making rather than a reaction you're having.

No shame in the data

Sixty-two percent of Gen Z planning to doom spend their tax refund makes sense when you understand what's running underneath it: real economic pressure, real uncertainty about a future that keeps behaving unpredictably, and a psychological pattern that activates reliably in exactly this kind of moment.

The numbers from this study aren't a generational indictment. They're a very clear picture of what happens when the conditions for financial nihilism are in place. Understanding that pattern is more useful than judging it. And seeing it clearly — rather than just feeling it — is usually where something actually starts to shift.

Frequently asked questions

What is doom spending?

Doom spending is making purchases as a response to anxiety about the future — recession fears, economic uncertainty, rising costs — rather than out of genuine desire for the thing. Unlike ordinary impulse buying, it's often fully conscious: people know they're doing it and do it anyway, because the future feels too uncertain to save toward. A 2025 Harris Poll survey found 62% of Gen Z and 52% of millennials planned to doom spend their tax refunds.

Why does economic anxiety make people spend more?

When the future feels threatening or unstable, the brain discounts future rewards more steeply than usual — a well-documented pattern called temporal discounting under threat. If you believe things are going to get worse, and that saving won't protect you from what you're most afraid of, spending something you have now on something you actually want starts to seem rational. That's the core logic of doom spending.

Is doom spending a Gen Z problem?

The data concentrates it in younger generations, but that reflects economic circumstances more than character. Gen Z faces higher personal debt, lower homeownership rates, and more job market instability than previous generations at the same age. When traditional financial milestones feel genuinely out of reach, the psychological calculus around spending changes. The doom spending is a symptom of that, not the underlying cause.

How do I stop doom spending?

The approaches that work engage with the anxiety underneath rather than just the spending behavior. Naming specific fears (job instability, price increases, housing unaffordability) rather than holding a general sense of dread gives you something more tractable. Tracking your emotional state before spending decisions helps you see the pattern rather than just feel it. And recognizing that some version of the future is still worth planning for — even a scaled-back version — can start to shift what feels rational in the moment.