How TikTok Is Wiring Gen Z’s Money Brain
Endless videos about the economy and consumerism are giving 20-somethings a case of ‘money dysmorphia’
Endless videos about the economy and consumerism are giving 20-somethings a case of ‘money dysmorphia’
Americans under 30 get much of their news on TikTok. They hear about money there, too, and that’s shaping the way they save, spend and view their financial prospects, young adults and economists say.
Caitlyn Sprinkle, 27 years old, describes her TikTok feed as a mix of economic gloom and consumerism gone wild. There are Dave Ramsey TikToks that warn of the evils of debt , followed by influencers showing off their shopping hauls of skin-care products and handbags.
Sprinkle, a financial analyst at an asset-management firm in Nashville, Tenn., uses a budgeting app and has been cooking at home lately to save money—and to be able to afford the things she feels she has to buy, like Lululemon leggings. “Between TikTok and having your friends around you, you’re pressured to buy the things because you want to fit in,” she says. “That’s always been the case, but with TikTok it’s more prominent.”
Rallying stocks, rising wages and a tight labor market suggest the economy is stronger than it has been in years. The youngest, lowest-earning professionals don’t feel that way—partly because a large share are carrying consumer debt, and partly because of what they’re seeing on TikTok.
Even as the platform faces a potential ban in the U.S. , it remains a massive cultural force that shapes young adults’ decisions and views. More than half of all U.S. adults ages 18 to 34 use it, according to Pew Research Center, while about a third of those 29 and under say they regularly get news on TikTok , up from less than 10% in 2020.
So, what happens when your main source of news tells you that no one in your generation will be able to buy a house , food prices are spinning out of control and credit-card debt is unavoidable—but also that $2,500 Louis Vuitton bags and $70 moisturisers are, as many videos say, “a must”?
Interviews with finance experts and more than a dozen young adults suggest that the result is confusion, with a side of gloom. Under-30s are taking on debt as they embrace an old idea: If the outlook is bad, why not enjoy life now?
TikTok is creating a disconnect between how well off young adults actually are and how they think they’re doing, according to economists and 20-somethings themselves. That disconnect has given rise to a term financial advisers use to describe young adults’ distorted view of their financial well-being: “money dysmorphia.”
Evelyn Hidalgo, 29, makes her living as a full-time content creator after being laid off from a social-strategist job about a year ago. While she posts about being a mum on a budget, her TikTok feed often shows her trendy items she wishes she had, or a life that seems impossibly far from her own, such as owning a large, beautiful home.
“It doesn’t feel like the norm is your normal,” says Hidalgo, who lives in Nashville with her husband and 20-month-old son. As she looks at the economy on TikTok and other social media, her feed feels “split in half,” between those living an enviable life and those who are struggling.
Gen Z’s mixed economic feelings could have an effect on the outcome of the elections this fall, but the greater impact could be on their long-term financial health, economists say. Feeling financially uncertain can lead to poor choices, such as credit-card debt that eats into retirement funds and necessities such as food and housing, says Jacob Channel, senior economist at LendingTree, an online lending marketplace.
Over the past two years, members of Gen Z—those born between 1997 and 2012—effectively doubled their non mortgage debt, taking on roughly an additional $11,000 on average, according to LendingTree.
Still, younger American adults—those born in the 1990s—saw their median wealth more than quadruple to more than $40,000 between 2019 and 2022, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That has outpaced the growth rates for previous generations at a similar age, says Lowell Ricketts, a data scientist there.
While many markers of adulthood such as homeownership feel out of reach, young adults are reaping the benefits from the current economic climate, says Monique Morrissey , senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit economic-research and policy organisation.
“Gen Z and younger millennials are experiencing tailwinds and may not realise that they’re benefiting from a tight labor market that has led to an unusually rapid increase in real wages for younger and lower-wage workers,” she says.
Adding to the confusion is the economy itself. After a string of data showed strength in the labor market, growth is beginning to slow. U.S. employers added a seasonally adjusted 175,000 jobs in April, less than March and below the 240,000 economists anticipated, and unemployment rose to 3.9%, according to the Labor Department.
Many TikTok users say their feeds have become a loop of get-ready-with-me posts, ads, influencer partnerships and videos that encourage them to buy stuff from TikTok’s virtual shop . Some 91% of Gen Zers say they have purchased something they saw on social media, according to a survey from Citizens Pay, a buy-now-pay-later service from Citizens.
BreAunna Rodriguez, a 23-year-old mom of two in Houston, likes to buy TikTok-popular baby clothes and other small things for herself, including eyelash extensions, coconut-oil mouthwash and a pumice stone that influencers said reduces stretch marks.
“It’s hard not to buy things if they say it’s good for me,” she says.
TikTok has influenced bigger decisions, too, she says. Her For You page is filled with young entrepreneurs who snub the idea of a 9-to-5 job. This inspired her to quit her job as an assistant property manager in late 2022 and take a remote, commission-based job for an internet-and-cable company.
“You see a 19-year-old trader on TikTok who only has to work two hours a day, and I was like, ‘How do I do that?’”
Rodriguez says she makes more money now, contributes to a 401(k), pays off her credit card bills each month and puts her annual tax refund into a savings account to help with expenses throughout the year. Her biggest monthly expense is the $2,000 she pays for daycare for her two kids.
The constant videos of consumption—whether it’s a Stanley cup , a Jellycat plush or makeup —are hard to resist. TikTok last year created its own e-commerce engine , TikTok Shop, to compete with online retailers.
About six months ago, Sprinkle bought a Stanley tumbler. “I held out as long as I could,” she says, adding that she had bought several other water bottles that were trending on TikTok.
“There’s an internal pressure among my age range to constantly have these experiences and share them,” says Evan Naar, a 28-year-old lawyer in New York who posts TikToks about Broadway shows he’s seen and a Taylor Swift concert he attended.
Naar, who has several thousand dollars in student debt, says at some point he wants to save more money and buy a house. “A lot of my paycheck goes toward living expenses, travel and Broadway shows,” he says.
Encountering post after post about the downsides of the economy contributes to “doomerism”—an overwhelming feeling of despair. This has made some young adults thrifty.
“I’m not going to spend my last dollar to keep up with the Joneses,” says Tanayah Thomas, a 23-year-old clothing designer and licensed financial adviser in Staten Island, N.Y. “We have to prepare for what’s to come.”
She’s currently living with her mom to save money.
Tommy Chanthavong, a 27-year-old in Houston who manages social-media accounts for small, local businesses, also moved back home. He says it’s hard to parse the information shown on TikTok: One minute he sees videos saying the U.S. is on the brink of a recession and the next he sees that inflation is easing.
In The Wall Street Journal’s latest quarterly survey of business and academic economists , respondents lowered the chances of a recession within the next year to 29% from 39% in January—the lowest probability since April 2022.
Sprinkle, who shares an apartment with a roommate, says she’d love to own a house one day, but it feels like a distant dream.
“You have to have a level of happiness, and being able to do the things you want and buy the things you want is part of it,” she says. “Do I save all of my money for the future? No. I try to live more in the moment.”
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Gold is outshining stocks, bonds and crypto. Here’s what’s driving the surge—and how to get in.
Give gold bugs their due. The yellow metal has been a light in the investing darkness. At a recent $3,406 per troy ounce, it’s up 30% this year, to the envy of stock, bond, and Bitcoin holders. Cash-flow purists will call this a flash in the pan, but they should look again. Over the past 20 years, SPDR Gold Shares , an exchange-traded fund, has surged 630%—85 points more than SPDR S&P 500 , which tracks shares of the biggest U.S. companies.
That isn’t supposed to happen. If businesses couldn’t be expected to outperform an unthinking metal over decades, shareholders would demand that they cease operations and hoard bullion instead. So, what’s going on? If this were gasoline or Nike shoes or Nvidia chips, we would look to supply versus demand. With immutable gold, nearly every ounce that has ever been found is still around somewhere, so price action is mostly about demand. That has been ravenous and broad since 2022.
That year, the U.S. and dozens of allies placed sweeping sanctions on Russia, including its largest banks, and China went on a bullion spree. Its buying has since cooled, but other central banks have stepped in. Perhaps this is unsurprising, in light of a decades-long diversification by finance ministers away from the U.S. dollar, which is down to 57% of foreign reserves from over 70% in 2000. But the recent uptick in gold stockpiling looks to JPMorgan Chase , the world’s largest bullion dealer, like a debasement trade. Investors are nervous about President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his browbeating of the Federal Reserve Chairman over interest rates, and blowout U.S. deficits.
It isn’t just bankers. Demand among individuals for gold bars and coins has been surging, with some dealers experiencing sporadic shortages. Gold ETFs were bucking the trend, but flows there have turned solidly positive since last summer, including recently in China. All told, there is now an estimated $4 trillion worth of gold held by central banks, and $5 trillion by private investors. Calculated against $260 trillion for all financial assets, including stocks, bonds, cash, and alternatives, that works out to a global gold portfolio allocation of 3.5%, a record.
What’s next? BofA Securities says that central banks have room for much more gold buying, and that China’s insurance companies are likely to dabble, too. RBC Capital Markets analyst Chris Louney says ETFs could drive demand growth from here, especially if angst reigns. “Gold is that asset of last resort…the part of the investing universe that investors really look for when they have a lot of questions elsewhere,” he says.
Russ Koesterich, a portfolio manager for BlackRock , a major player in ETFs including the iShares Gold Trust , says that gold has proven itself as a store of value, and deserves a 2% to 4% weighting for most investors. “I think it’s a tough call to say, ‘Would you chase it here?’ ” he says. “There have been some pullbacks. Those might represent a good opportunity, particularly for people who don’t have any exposure.”
Daniel Major, who covers materials stocks for UBS , points out that gold miners mostly haven’t wrapped themselves in glory in recent years with their dealmaking and asset management. As a result, a major index for the group is trading 30% below pre-Covid levels relative to earnings. UBS increased its 2026 gold price target by 23%, to $3,500 per troy ounce, before gold’s latest lurch higher. Many miners are producing at a cost of $1,200 to $2,000. Major has bumped up earnings estimates across his coverage. “I think we’re gonna see further upward revisions to consensus earnings,” he says. “This is what’s attractive about the gold space right now.”
Major’s favorite gold stocks are Barrick Gold , Newmont , and Endeavour Mining . More on those in a moment. We also have thoughts on how not to buy gold—and what not to expect it to do: Don’t count on it to keep beating stocks long term, or to provide precise short-term protection from inflation spikes and stock swoons. But first, a little history, chemistry, and rules of the yellow brick road.
The first gold coins of reliable weight and purity featured a lion and bull stamped on the face, and were minted at the order of King Croesus of Lydia, in modern-day Turkey, around 550 B.C. But by then, gold had been used as a show of riches for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians called gold the flesh of the gods, and laid the boy King Tutankhamen to rest in a gold coffin weighing 243 pounds. The Old Testament says that under King Solomon, gold in Jerusalem was as common as stone. Allow for literary license; silicon, an element in most stones, is 28.2% of the Earth’s crust, whereas gold is 0.0000004%.
Marco Polo described palace walls in China covered with gold. Mansa Musa I of Mali in West Africa, on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, is said to have splashed so much gold around Cairo on the way that he crashed the local price by 20%, and it took 12 years to recover. To Montezuma, the Aztec king whose gold lured Cortés from Spain, the metal was called, as it still is by some in Central Mexico, teocuitlatl —literally, god excrement. Golden eras, gold medals, the Golden Rule, and golden calf—so deep is the historical association between gold and wealth, excellence, and vice that it seems to have a mystical hold on humanity. In fact, it’s more a matter of chemical inevitability.
Trade and savings are easier with money. Pick one for the job from the 118 known elements. Years ago on National Public Radio, Columbia University chemist Sanat Kumar used a process of elimination. Best to avoid elements that are cumbersome gases or liquids at room temperature. Stay away from the highly reactive columns I and II on the periodic table—we can’t have lithium ducats bursting into flame. Money should be rare, unlike zinc, which pennies are made from, but not too rare, unlike iridium, used for aircraft spark plugs. It shouldn’t be poisonous like arsenic or radioactive like radium—that rules out more elements than you might think. Of the handful that are left, eliminate any that weren’t discovered until recent centuries, or whose melting points were too high for early furnaces.
That leaves silver and gold. Silver tarnishes, but rarer, noble gold holds its luster. It is malleable enough to pound into sheets so thin that light will shine through. And, despite the best efforts of Isaac Newton and other would-be alchemists, it cannot be artificially created—profitably, anyhow. Technically, there is something called nuclear transmutation. If you can free a proton from mercury’s nucleus or insert one into platinum’s, you’ll end up with a nucleus with 79 protons, and that’s gold. Scientists did just that more than 80 years ago using mercury and a particle accelerator. But what little gold they produced was radioactive. If you think you can do better, you’ll likely need a nuclear reactor to prove it, but a large gold mine is one-fifth the cost, and we have to believe the permitting is easier.
We passed over copper due to commonness, but it has become too valuable to use for pennies. The 95% copper content of a pre-1982 penny is worth about three cents today. The equivalent amount of silver goes for $3.10, and gold, more than $320. But the three trade in different units. A pound of copper is up 17% this year, at $4.72. Silver and gold are typically quoted per troy ounce, a measure of hazy origin and clear tediousness, which is 9.7% heavier than a regular ounce. A troy ounce of silver is $32.70, up 13% this year.
Confused? This won’t help: The purity of investment gold, called its fineness, is measured in either parts per thousand or on a 24-point karat scale. A karat is different from a carat, the gemstone weight, but our friends in the U.K.—who adopted troy ounces in the 15th century—often spell both words with a “c.” Gold bricks like the ones central banks swap are called Good Delivery bars, and weigh 400 troy ounces, give or take, worth more than $1.3 million. If you buy a few, lift with your legs; each weighs a little over 27 regular pounds (as opposed to troy pounds, which, it pains us to note, are 12 troy ounces, not 16).
There are many options for smaller players, like Canadian Maple Leaf coins, which are 24-karat gold; South African Krugerrands, at 22 karats, and alloyed with copper for durability; and Gold American Eagles, 22 karats, with some silver and copper. Proof coins cost extra for their high polish, artistry, and limited runs, and may or may not become collectibles. Humbler-looking bullion coins are bought for their metal value. Prefer the latter if you aren’t a coin hobbyist. Avoid infomercials and stick with high-volume dealers. Even so, markups of 2% to 4% are common. Costco Wholesale , which sells gold in single troy ounce Swiss bars, charges 2%, but often runs out, and limits purchases to two bars per member a day. Factor in the cost of storage and insurance, too.
ETFs are more economical. For example, iShares Gold Trust costs 0.25%, not counting commissions. For long-term holders, as opposed to traders, there is a smaller fund called iShares Gold Trust Micro , which costs 0.09%.
Resist fleeing stocks for gold. The surprisingly long outperformance of gold is mostly a function of its recent run-up. From 1975 through last year, gold turned $1 invested into about $16, versus $348 for U.S. stocks. That starting point has a legal basis. President Franklin Roosevelt largely outlawed private gold ownership in 1933; President Richard Nixon delinked the dollar from gold in 1971; and President Gerald Ford made private ownership legal again at the end of 1974.
Gold has been a so-so inflation hedge over the past half-century, and at times a disappointing one. In 2022, when U.S. inflation peaked at a 40-year high of over 9%, the gold price went nowhere. The problem is that high inflation can prompt a sharp increase in interest rates. “If people can clip a 5% coupon on a T-bill, often they’d prefer to do that than have either a lump of metal or an ETF that doesn’t produce cash flow,” says BlackRock’s Koesterich.
Likewise, while gold has generally offset stock declines this year, it hasn’t always done so in the heat of the moment. Recall tariff “liberation day” early this month, which sent U.S. stocks down close to 11% in three days and pulled gold down nearly 5%. “This isn’t an uncommon scenario,” says RBC’s Louney. “When investors were losing elsewhere in their portfolio, gold was sold as well to cover those losses.”
Our top tip on how gold behaves is this: It doesn’t. People do the behaving, and they are appallingly unreliable. Use bonds as a stock market hedge. If they don’t work, fall back to patience. For inflation protection, think of assets that are a better match than gold for the goods and services that you buy every week. A diversified commodities fund has precious metals but also industrial ones, along with energy and grains. Treasury inflation-protected securities are explicitly linked to the consumer price index, which measures inflation for a theoretical individual whose buying patterns differ from your own, but are close enough.
Own a house. Stick with a workaday, reliable car. Yes, cars deteriorate. But so does nearly everything on a long enough timeline. Rely mostly on stocks, which represent businesses, which wouldn’t endure if they couldn’t turn raw inputs like commodities into something more profitable. There’s even a miner, Newmont, in the S&P 500.
Speaking of which, UBS’ Major recently upgraded both Canada’s Barrick and Denver-based Newmont from Neutral to Buy. “Both very much fall into that category of having a challenging recent track record,” he says. Newmont has lost 20% over the past three years while gold has gained 76%, which Major blames on difficult acquisitions and earnings shortfalls. Barrick, down 8%, has been in a dispute with Mali since 2023, when its government instituted a new mining code that gives it a greater share of profits. In recent days, authorities have shut the company’s offices in the capital city of Bamako over alleged nonpayment of taxes.
These are the sort of headaches that Krugerrands in a safe don’t produce. But Major calls expectations “adequately reset,” free cash flow attractive, and guidance achievable. Newmont, at 13 times next year’s earnings consensus, is selling assets, and Barrick, at 10 times, has healthy production growth.
Major also likes London-based, Toronto-listed Endeavour Mining , up 40% over the past three years and trading at nine times earnings, although he says it has “higher jurisdictional risk.” It is focused on West Africa, especially Burkina Faso, which had a coup d’état in 2022. You’d think the stock would be doing worse amid such political upheaval. Then again, Burkina Faso since 1966 has had eight coups, five coup attempts, and one street ousting of a president who tried to change the constitution to remain in power. That works out to an uprising every four years, on average.
Montezuma’s scatological name for gold might have been prescient, considering the sometimes-odious consequences for small countries that find it.
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