How Social Media Encourages Consumption
When it comes to making decisions about saving money for the future, many of us are ‘grasping at straws’. Why is that?
Figuring out how much to save for the future is no easy task — and the fact that many of us will now live to be 100 makes it even harder. There are so many contingencies to consider: unforeseen medical expenses, childcare expenses and changes to your income. When you add in stock market risk and economic shifts, it really is a complex scenario.
Given this complexity, rather than doing the hard work and research, people tend to engage in ‘social learning’. They might just ask their friends what they are doing, listen to experts on the radio or read personal-finance magazines and follow the norms that they come across. The hope, of course, is that these people have thought hard about it and made wise decisions, and that we can just go for a ‘free ride’ on that information. This doesn’t just happen with personal finance
