Save Money (And Avoid FOMO) By Closing The Facebook Tab

Surely, Facebook doesn’t really cost you money. Perhaps it can suck away your time, but not your money, right? Factor in a bit of Fear of Missing Out, and maybe it can.

Photo by Health Gauge.

As finance blog Studenomics points out, the fear of missing out can lead us to do some pretty fiscally irresponsible things. We want to buy things or go out more often than we should because we see our friends and family living this seemingly great lives. The more dissatisfied we feel with our own life, the more we spend to make ourselves feel better. At the centre of all this misery is a healthy dose of Facebook:

I found a study on Facebook over at BBC. Some of the results are interesting:

Results showed that the more people used Facebook, the worse they felt afterwards.

The team also found that the more the participants used the site, the more their life satisfaction levels declined.

While Facebook is obviously not the sole cause of your financial and emotional woes (and closing Facebook won’t solve them either), it’s clear that Facebook can cause some emotional stress. That stress can lead to bad purchasing decisions, so the next time your jet setter friends are driving you to lust after high priced items, just hit Ctrl-W.

How-to Not Let FOMO Completely Destroy Your Finances [Studenomics via Rockstar Finance]