Personal Finance Has Become Another Thing to Buy
More than advice, many brands are selling you a lifestyle.
Everything is shopping. Walk down the street, browse social media, tune into your favorite TV show — everyone, everywhere wants you to buy stuff. Shop our sale. Buy this fancy pillow for your cat. Support small businesses, sponsored by American Express. Ironically, even efforts to get you to stop shopping have also become shopping.
Personal finance exists at a tricky intersection between financial services and self-improvement. And it’s a lucrative consumer product. There’s a lot of money in teaching people how to be better at money. The problem is — perhaps because of that tricky intersection — the industry often reinforces many of the problems it claims are within your control.
Before we go any further, I need to admit that I’ve been part of this problem. I started writing about money around 2014. A few years prior, in the middle of a recession, I moved to Los Angeles to be a writer. Like many creatives who move to this city, I was financially struggling. Blogging was a way to process my money anxiety, share what I learned about financial management, and connect with others in the same boat. Four years later, I published a personal finance book that’s still on sale in bookstores and online. As such, the views…
