Sep 27, 2026 · 43 min · 9 segments
Raising financially confident teens requires us to look past simple budgeting and understand the psychology they face every single day. We are kicking off an actionable three-part series with my…
So based
on the third party research, one thing shows 88% of US teenagers own a phone, which really, I feel like plays a part in the switch from people using cash so much to using like digital pay, Apple Pay, credit cards.
Yeah, Maddie, when I was a kid, I had to pay in cash.
It's all I had.
I certainly didn't have my parents' credit cards.
They had a credit card, but it wasn't something they would hand to a kid.
I have a lot of cash just sitting in my room that never gets used because it just feels like there's no point.
Yeah, you don't even know what to do with it.
We have to take it from you and put it in the bank.
When we need cash, we'll get it from the kids and then put it in their bank account.
Yeah.
There is this one theory called accoupling.
I don't really know how to pronounce the people who like came up with it.
Drazen Prelek and George
Lowenstein.
And it's basically saying how when you pay with cash, the consuming of like what you're buying in the loss of giving away something like cash, it tied together versus like when you pay digitally, it would be considered weaker because when you tap a phone or something, it's not like you're losing something.
While you're just getting the gain of it instead of the loss as well.
So it shows that when you first buy something, you only feel the dopamine of it.
When you tap on something, you don't feel the loss of it yet.
So once the dopamine wears off and the other part of your brain actually realizes that you lost something, that's like why you feel the guilt afterward.
Oh, so we feel more guilt when we pay cash.
is your point
when you first buy something you get the with cash you get the guilt and the dopamine at the same time and that's why when you're paying with cash you're more hesitant to buy something and you technically spend less money there's another thing i looked at before i like put this all together and did the episode by episode but it was basically saying when people pay with just cash they'll only spend like an average around twelve dollars versus when someone pays with a credit card the average is around twenty two dollars
wow
okay basically it just shows like the difference between that when you do pay with cash you're less inclined to spend that money because you're losing it right in front of your face versus like a tap of a phone is normal to you i guess you don't feel like the loss of it so when that dopamine wears off you're not excited about that item anymore you you're left with guilt and that's it and that goes into like the brain chemistry behind it too oh
So based
on the third party research, one thing shows 88% of US teenagers own a phone, which really, I feel like plays a part in the switch from people using cash so much to using like digital pay, Apple Pay, credit cards.
Yeah, Maddie, when I was a kid, I had to pay in cash.
It's all I had.
I certainly didn't have my parents' credit cards.
They had a credit card, but it wasn't something they would hand to a kid.
I have a lot of cash just sitting in my room that never gets used because it just feels like there's no point.
Yeah, you don't even know what to do with it.
We have to take it from you and put it in the bank.
When we need cash, we'll get it from the kids and then put it in their bank account.
Yeah.
There is this one theory called accoupling.
I don't really know how to pronounce the people who like came up with it.
Drazen Prelek and George
Lowenstein.
And it's basically saying how when you pay with cash, the consuming of like what you're buying in the loss of giving away something like cash, it tied together versus like when you pay digitally, it would be considered weaker because when you tap a phone or something, it's not like you're losing something.
While you're just getting the gain of it instead of the loss as well.
So it shows that when you first buy something, you only feel the dopamine of it.
When you tap on something, you don't feel the loss of it yet.
So once the dopamine wears off and the other part of your brain actually realizes that you lost something, that's like why you feel the guilt afterward.
Oh, so we feel more guilt when we pay cash.
is your point
when you first buy something you get the with cash you get the guilt and the dopamine at the same time and that's why when you're paying with cash you're more hesitant to buy something and you technically spend less money there's another thing i looked at before i like put this all together and did the episode by episode but it was basically saying when people pay with just cash they'll only spend like an average around twelve dollars versus when someone pays with a credit card the average is around twenty two dollars
wow
okay basically it just shows like the difference between that when you do pay with cash you're less inclined to spend that money because you're losing it right in front of your face versus like a tap of a phone is normal to you i guess you don't feel like the loss of it so when that dopamine wears off you're not excited about that item anymore you you're left with guilt and that's it and that goes into like the brain chemistry behind it too oh
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