Why is personal finance advice so mean?
You've been trained to accept this. You don't have to.
I used to come home from middle school and turn on The Maury Povich Show (or, let’s be honest, Jerry Springer.)
There, under bright lights and a stadium-style audience, you would find out-of-control teenagers, wayward parents, and warring siblings. The host (mind you, whose enormous salary depended on their misfortune) paced the stage, feigning disbelief and moral outrage.
Can you believe people like this? Tune in tomorrow for more!
Fast forward to today, while I’m no longer procrastinating homework on the couch, I see new versions of this same format play out all over the personal finance space.
Here are a few real quotes from popular personal finance voices:
“Are you done f’ing around and don’t want to die on the Walmart floor?”
“Stop doing poor people things!”
Why is it acceptable to get your financial advice with a bunch of insults and eye rolls?
My car mechanic doesn’t talk to me that way.
My doctor doesn’t either.
My lawn guy isn’t performatively banging his head into a microphone when I tell him my grass is under-watered.
It reminds me a lot of how the weight loss and fitness industry operates – another space where people searching for help are routinely shamed into behavioral adjustments.
“If it mattered to you, you’d find a way.”
“It’s not supposed to feel good.”
“If they can do it, why can’t you?”
To be clear: many people have real financial problems that need to be solved. But does shame actually help? Not much. Social psychology research shows that when people feel shame, they tend to isolate and withdraw—not change.
I wrote more about that here:
And I can already hear some of you: Some people need tough love. Someone has to tell them the truth.
That’s fair.
Money is hard to talk about. But you don’t have to be mean to yourself in order to be honest with yourself. Who among us hasn’t made regrettable decisions? Who hasn’t struggled with habits they wish they didn’t have? 🙋♂️
The “self-made” story popular in personal finance circles suggests that discipline and hard work are the only things separating you from success. This, by the way, is the same claim we often make about people who’ve lost a significant amount of weight, too.
Psychologists call this survivorship bias.
Survivorship bias works like this: because Facebook is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, every startup could do it too… right? Obviously not. Facebook is called a unicorn for a reason.
We look at the 0.01% who “made it” and assume we can copy and paste the same formula and it will work for us too, all the while ignoring why the other 99.9% didn’t.
This doesn’t mean people are doomed to stay stuck. But it does mean we should be skeptical of simplistic, judgment-heavy explanations for complex lives.
So why is personal finance advice so mean?
One obvious answer: marketing. A reliable way to grow on YouTube is to highlight someone’s extreme decision (“Dude Goes Into Debt to Mine Crypto”) and pair it with a shocked or angry face. It’s good for the algorithm.
When people feel humiliated or like failures, they lose confidence in their ability to help themselves. They start craving authority – someone successful, maybe even someone willing to punish them a little.
Some people believe that being bad with money means you deserve to be yelled at. Or maybe judgment is just entertaining. Maybe it feels comforting to think, Well, I’d never do that.
But I hope we don’t give up on people who are struggling or accept shame as the price of learning and growth.
In my twenties, my financial life was more chaotic than most of my friends’.
I felt ashamed long before any national figure could yell at me on YouTube. I thought you were just supposed to be good with money, like fish just knowing how to swim.
But I didn’t know. I had to learn. And I’m grateful I found a community that preserved my dignity instead of profiting off my shame.
No one needs content that feeds the harsh voice already living in their head. Encouraging ourselves and others to forgive past mistakes, build better habits, and celebrate small wins is far more effective long-term.
I’d love to hear from you in the comments:
How have you started to overcome shame and build more confidence with your money?
Until next time,
Dan
So true!! I just did a low-buy January where I had some specific things I pre-decided were ok - like eating out 1x/week with my hubby, a shirt I've been patiently waiting for on a brand's BST, etc. And some things that weren't - coffee out alone (ok if it was with someone else), lunches out, and so forth. It was a way to wake up to the mindless spending I'd been doing. It was semi-hard at the beginning. I mean, starting strong always feels good, right? And then got harder in the middle. But I was seeing results. I was enjoying opening up YNAB to track where we were vs gingerly opening to see what happened.
Wins were being able to roll with the punches on some unexpected house costs (sewer issues...ew) and to stay under budget on our food expenses. It was really empowering! Not perfect, but really effective. I also renamed my budget groups to Taylor Swift lyrics to change things up a bit. And set some smaller goals.
Definitely attest that shaming myself hasn't helped to this point but cheering myself on and being kind has really worked nicely 🫶
Loved this take on the performative meanness in finance content. The Maury Povich comparison nails it btw, same exploitative energy just diferent packaging. I tried following one of those 'harsh truth' channels last year and it made me avoid checking my accounts entirely, which obivously defeats the purpose. The survivorship bias framing especially clicked for me since what works at scale 0.01% gets sold as universal wisdom.