The Brutal Truth About Why We All Suck at Money
Smarter than ever, broker than ever
⚡You can find this article in video form here.⚡
We live in the age of infinite information. You can Google how to budget, invest, or pay off debt in about 0.2 seconds. You can binge podcasts, watch YouTube finance gurus, download apps that track every cent you spend.
And yet? Most people are still terrible with money. We overspend. We rack up debt. We ignore savings. We buy stupid crap we don’t need. Then we panic when the bills hit.
It’s not because we’re dumb. (We’re not dumb, ok?)
It’s because money is designed to mess with our brains. If you’ve ever wondered why making good financial decisions feels like climbing Mount Everest in flip-flops, here’s the brutal truth: the system is stacked against us, our psychology is outdated, and society practically begs us to screw up.
Our Brains Are Stone Age, Our Money World Is Space Age
Humans evolved to survive in small tribes, not global economies. Our brains are wired for instant gratification, short-term thinking, and tangible rewards.
About 50,000 years ago, give or take, eating the berries now instead of saving them for later was smart — because later might never come.
Today, that same wiring means we blow $50 on takeout instead of investing it in our retirement.
We’re built for survival, not compound interest. The money world wants long-term discipline. Our brains want dopamine hits. And guess who usually wins?
Debt Is a Trap, Not a Tool
We’re told debt is normal. Student loans, car loans, credit cards, mortgages — everybody’s doing it, right? But here’s the catch: debt is designed to feel easy while slowly suffocating you.
- Swipe now, worry later.
- “Only” $400 a month for that shiny new car.
- Buy now, pay later (until interest rates eat you alive).
It’s marketed as freedom — but it’s really a leash. And the deeper you go, the harder it is to climb out. Debt isn’t just a financial problem. It’s a psychological prison.
Society Actively Wants You to Overspend
If you’ve ever felt like you can’t stop buying things, it’s not just you being weak. It’s billions of dollars in marketing research working against you.
Ads don’t sell products — they sell identity. You’re not buying sneakers; you’re buying status. You’re not buying coffee; you’re buying “treat yourself” self-care. Every brand has figured out how to hack your emotions, your insecurities, your fear of missing out.
Add social media to the mix, and you’re comparing yourself 24/7 to people faking luxury lifestyles. No wonder you feel broke. You’re not competing with your neighbors anymore — you’re competing with curated illusions.
Inflation and Stagnant Wages Make It Impossible
Even if you are disciplined, the math is still stacked against you.
Housing prices have skyrocketed. Healthcare costs have exploded. Education is absurdly expensive. And wages flatlined for decades.
So yes, you should budget. Yes, you should save. But don’t beat yourself up for struggling. The reality is: the game has changed. You’re not just bad at money — money is bad at being fair.
The Illusion of “Smart Money Moves”
Everywhere you turn, someone is promising a hack: invest in crypto, buy real estate, flip NFTs, trade stocks. But most of these “opportunities” are either risky, scammy, or rigged for insiders.
Even supposedly safe moves — like saving in a bank account — don’t beat inflation. So people feel paralyzed. Do you risk losing everything, or watch your money slowly rot? Either way, you lose.
No wonder so many people just give up and keep swiping their credit cards. At least debt feels like action, even if it’s self-destruction.
We Confuse Money With Happiness
Here’s the cruelest joke of all: money doesn’t buy happiness, but it buys the illusion of it long enough to trap you.
That new phone? Feels amazing for about two weeks. The upgraded car? Shiny until the payments start crushing you. The luxury vacation? Magical — until you come home to credit card bills.
We chase happiness through spending because we don’t know how else to get it. And the economy counts on it. If we all stopped buying stuff we don’t need, the system would collapse.
Nobody Actually Teaches Us How Money Works
Think back to school. You learned the Pythagorean theorem, the parts of a cell, maybe how to recite Shakespeare. Useful, sure. But did anyone teach you how credit works? How to file taxes? How to build wealth?
Nope. We’re tossed into adulthood financially illiterate, then blamed for making bad choices. The education gap ensures most people stay clueless, which just happens to benefit banks, corporations, and lenders. Convenient, isn’t it?
Culture Glorifies the Wrong Things
Society doesn’t celebrate financial responsibility. It celebrates spending: influencers unboxing luxury goods, celebrities flashing designer everything, etc.
Nobody goes viral for paying off their mortgage early or living below their means. Frugality isn’t sexy, and restraint doesn’t sell.
So we glorify financial recklessness while shaming people who quietly save. No wonder we all suck at money — the culture makes prudence look boring.
We’re Addicted to Now
At the core, our money problems come down to this: we’d rather feel good now than secure later.
It’s not stupidity. It’s human nature. But when paired with a system that profits off our impatience, it becomes a recipe for disaster.
We’re like kids eating marshmallows, failing the famous psychology test of delayed gratification. Except instead of marshmallows, it’s cars, gadgets, and $15 cocktails.
And unlike kids, when we fail, we don’t just get scolded. We get interest payments that haunt us for decades.
It’s Not Just You — It’s All of Us
So why do we all suck at money? Because the system is designed that way. Our brains aren’t built for it, society manipulates us into overspending, wages don’t keep up, and nobody teaches us how the hell to navigate it.
This doesn’t mean you’re doomed. It means you have to wake up. Making good financial decisions isn’t about being perfect. It’s about recognizing the traps and resisting just enough to survive them.
But let’s be brutally honest: you’re never going to be flawless. You’ll overspend sometimes. You’ll fall for marketing tricks. You’ll make dumb money moves. We all do.
The point is to suck at money less. To see through the lies, play the game smarter, and stop blaming yourself for a system that profits when you fail.
Because here’s the real brutal truth: if you don’t take control of your money, someone else will. And they won’t be half as kind to you as you are to yourself.
The Future If We Don’t Wake Up
But let’s zoom out from the personal to the collective — because the consequences don’t stop at your bank account. If we keep bumbling along, financially illiterate and addicted to instant gratification, here’s what’s waiting:
- A society of permanent debtors. People won’t just be broke; they’ll be born into chains, living their whole lives in repayment mode.
- A retirement crisis. Whole generations unable to stop working, not because they want to stay active, but because they can’t afford to quit. Imagine 80-year-olds competing for delivery driver jobs.
- An elite that owns everything. Homes, land, healthcare, even water — increasingly controlled by the few, rented back to the many at whatever price they feel like charging.
- An endless hamster wheel. More work, more debt, more despair, all disguised as opportunity.
If that sounds dramatic, look around. Pieces of this future are already here. Credit scores dictate your worth, billionaires shape economies, and millions live one missed paycheck away from collapse.
The real danger isn’t just that you suck at money. It’s that we all do — and if nothing changes, the system will keep feeding on that weakness until there’s nothing left to take.
So yes, get smarter about your own finances. But also demand more. Demand systems that don’t treat financial ruin as the default. Demand an economy where survival doesn’t require superhuman discipline.
Because if we don’t? The brutal truth won’t just be that we suck at money. It’ll be that money finally sucked the life out of us.
