Small luxuries never sounded so appealing. It was at the end of a long workday: my throat was burning from dehydration, and my work clothes were starting to feel suffocating, but I still had to make it to the grocery store. With the precision of a military sergeant, I weaved through the aisles and checked off my grocery list as quickly as possible. Depleted and exhausted, I impulsively picked up a flower bouquet as a small treat to reward myself for getting through the day.
When life feels overwhelming, people often turn to little treats like flowers, snacks, or cheap rings to cope. This is even more relevant during a bad economy, when everything is more expensive, and people can’t afford bigger purchases like homes, cars, or flights they want and need. In an environment where life’s biggest purchases feel increasingly out of reach, small luxuries become the way people reward themselves, reclaim joy, and cope with financial stress. But why do we do this, and do little treats actually help or hurt us?
When a Bad Economy Makes Big Purchases Harder
The stock market has been volatile; we’ve dealt with tariffs, and we’ve had to ride the wave of White House instability on immigration, federal workforce cuts, government spending, and a brand-new war.
The economy is suffering, and Americans are feeling it. A staggering 72% rated the economy as fair or poor, according to a January Pew Research Center survey. This negative view has held steady for the last six years. At the top of American consumers’ concerns are health care and housing, along with the cost of food and consumer goods.
These respondents’ opinions are grounded in the difficult reality of trying to afford day-to-day life. A McKinsey & Company report at the end of 2025 found that 29% of the over 4,000 survey participants had dipped into their savings to cover expenses, up from 26% in the previous quarter. Nearly half of Americans have difficulty affording groceries, housing, transportation, healthcare, and utilities, according to a POLITICO Poll from November 2025. That poll also found that, over the last two years, 27% have skipped a medical check-up because of rising costs.
Wondering if you’ll have to rent for the rest of your life or if you could afford a health catastrophe is a bleak reality. It’s become more unattainable to own anything, not just financially but mentally. When people make big financial decisions like purchasing a home, retiring, or investing, they want some degree of buffer. People want to know that, if something happens – whether it’s a job loss, a death in the family, or a totaled car – they will be able to recover financially. The reality is that, with all this volatility, there’s no guarantee they’ll have that buffer. Thus, people turn to smaller, tangible luxuries.
What Are These Small Luxuries?
Little treats are small indulgences we allow ourselves as rewards, motivation, or even to feel better. They don’t always cost money – a little luxury could include spending time out in the sun or reading a book from the library – but it often does.
Speaking to The Good Trade, Jordan Leverette, a therapist, described it perfectly: “A treat can provide punctuation to our days, so it can be a comma on a stressful day, or a period at the end of grief, or even an exclamation mark on celebration.”
Some examples include:
- That $7 matcha latte (I write this with a $7 matcha sitting next to my laptop)
- Affordable jewelry
- Purchasing a workout class pass
- Buying yourself flowers (cue Miley Cyrus)
- Purchasing a new book
- Getting extra snacks while you grocery shop
- Picking up a baked good you wouldn’t normally get
- Lighting a scented candle
- Makeup (I recently bought new eyeliner from Soshe, just because)
Your indulgences might look different than mine, but the concept is the same: a little treat makes our days feel a little better, even if only briefly.
More People Are Justifying the Purchase of Small Treats
More and more people are justifying the purchase of small treats. Forty-four percent of people who completed a 2025 NCSolutions survey said they enjoy a little treat a few times a week. One in five Gen Zs, who have borne the greatest cost of the rising unaffordability crisis, reportedly buy a treat every day. Nearly half of them (53%) said they buy these small luxuries because bigger purchases, like vacations or homes, feel unattainable.
Nearly half of Gen Z survey respondents said they buy small luxuries because bigger purchases, like vacations or homes, feel unattainable.
As a Zillennial (I’m on the cusp of Millennial and Gen Z), I can certainly empathize: all we see are things we can’t afford. It’s challenging to think about that, so it’s nice when we can afford even small things. This is partly why the secondhand market has been booming.
According to Capital One Shopping Research, secondhand purchases account for roughly one-third of all apparel purchases in the United States. It also found that Americans who thrift shop save an average of $1,452 each year. The information is clear: buying secondhand is an economic choice.
I wrote an article two weeks ago about eBay’s purchase of Depop, a massively successful secondhand fashion marketplace popular with Gen Z. It’s about an 11-minute read – check it out!
When have we previously seen people justifying small purchases? During the Great Depression (1929-1939), cosmetic sales increased by 25%. The cinema was also an affordable outlet for people at the time, and an estimated 60-80 million people attended movies each week. Even during the Great Depression, people rarely stopped spending entirely. Instead, they traded large purchases for cheap luxuries that offered comfort, dignity, and escape. These examples show that a little treat isn’t a uniquely Gen Z thing; it’s part of human nature, which we’ll explore next.
Why Do We Turn to Small Rewards During a Bad Economy?
As I mentioned in the previous section, rewarding yourself with a little treat isn’t specific to one generation or decade: it’s human nature. Three main concepts can help us understand the reasoning behind our tendency to do this.
The Lipstick Effect: Desire Displacement
In 2001, after the terrorist attacks in New York City, Leonard Lauder, then-chairman of Estée Lauder, noticed that sales of his brand’s lipsticks increased. In fact, lipstick sales rose 11% in the last quarter of 2001, reminiscent of the increase in cosmetic sales during the Great Depression. Thus, the lipstick effect emerged, asserting that as income declines during economic uncertainty, people purchase more cosmetic products or other less costly luxury goods.
It is not a proven economic theory, and some theorists speculated that the sales in 2001 instead rose because of an increasing interest in celebrity-designed cosmetic brands. Speaking to The New York Times in 2008, Lou Crandall, who was (and still is) the chief economist at Wrightson ICAP, an independent research firm, shared the following: “It doesn’t surprise me that lipstick sales go up, but if I had to choose my top economic indicators to take to a desert island with me, I’m not sure it would make my top 20.”
Despite it not being as good an economic indicator as, say, interest rates or the stock market, it is absolutely relevant in behavioral economics, which is the study of how psychological variables influence the financial decisions of people and institutions. A study that examined purchase behavior during the Great Recession (2007-2009) found that cosmetics expenditures increased among women ages 18-40. These purchases weren’t to attract a mate or find a job, as some theories had posited; instead, using comprehensive data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditures Survey, the authors found strong evidence that the substitution of spending from clothes to cosmetics represented a desire for ladies to treat themselves during an economic downturn.
What this research tells me is that the desire to treat oneself never goes away. Instead, it shifts: because of the economy, you can’t obtain something you once used to reward yourself. The little treat thus serves as a displacement for that desire. It’s painful to yearn for something you can’t afford, and it feels good to substitute it with something else, even if it’s smaller or not exactly what you wanted. Plus, getting this small thing enables instant gratification, a powerful force in behavior modification.
Instant Gratification: Addressing the Frustration of Waiting
If you’ve ever impulsively bought something, as I did with flowers at the start of this post, then you’ve engaged in instant gratification. It was originally an evolutionary adaptation for survival: for millennia, we lived in uncertain times where we didn’t know where our next meal would come from or if we would survive the day. If we saw a fish in the river, for example, we caught it without too much thought of the future, because planning for the future wasn’t always practical.
In the modern age, instant gratification isn’t key to survival anymore, and it can hinder achievement toward longer-term goals, such as budgeting. Besides, much of our lives, especially in the West, is shaped by our desire for immediate rewards. When we consider the purchase of little treats in a bad economy, though, it makes sense that even the most rational person could give in. If you want to buy a car or a home, these things are so unaffordable that you might end up waiting months or years to save up. It can be incredibly frustrating, which is partly what makes instant gratification so enticing: you could get something now and thus satisfy that “itch.”
Instant gratification is also alluring because it hijacks a neurotransmitter in our brains associated with rewards: dopamine, which I’ve written about many times before.
Small Luxuries and Synaptic Activation
Industries that utilize instant gratification take advantage of the same psychological patterns seen in more traditional behavioral addictions like gambling and substance abuse. (I should note: instant gratification is nowhere near as addictive as, say, alcohol or nicotine.) These activities release dopamine and activate synapses in the reward circuits of our brains, including the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex. This dopamine reinforces a behavior, making us more likely to repeat it.
Dopamine isn’t all bad, though: for example, our brains release dopamine when we exchange gifts with loved ones and consume chocolate. Leverette explained why dopamine can even lead to a lingering mood boost: “We actually get a high from the dopamine itself. But it’s often a precursor for serotonin and oxytocin… serotonin will bring emotional steadiness… and oxytocin creates a sense of warmth and connection.”
Understanding this fascinating part of our brain chemistry clarifies how impulsive purchases feel rewarding, why little treats provide an immediate mood boost, and why we repeat this behavior, especially when stressed. The powerful role of dopamine in the purchase of small luxuries, combined with an acknowledgement of our current economic downturn, explains why brands are increasingly marketing their products to us as little treats.
Brands Are Capitalizing on the “Small Luxuries” Mentality
A recent article from Business of Fashion actually inspired this whole post. The article, published on March 12, shares that Ulta is joining TikTok Shop, making it the first US specialty beauty retailer to do so. While the article goes into detail about how the brand is positioning itself as a collaborator rather than a competitor of retailers, what stood out to me is how easy it is to buy things on TikTok Shop, and how the items Ulta sells perfectly align with what people (mostly women) want to buy as a little treat for themselves.
It’s a modern-day version of the lipstick effect, except now, instead of having to go into a store, people can buy from the comfort of their couches.
Luxury brands like Prada, Burberry, and Ralph Lauren are hopping on the “little treats” bandwagon as well, hosting pop-up cafes where patrons can enjoy coffee and desserts in a luxury setting. An admittedly genius strategy, this concept promotes brand proximity without the heavy monetary commitment that usually requires.
Things to Be Aware Of With Small Luxuries
Small luxuries feel harmless because they’re, well, small. A matcha latte here, a new candle there, that doesn’t sound too bad. But they can really add up if you’re not careful.
This isn’t to say that rewards are bad; dopamine is a vital part of being human, and activating our brain’s reward system is what makes us feel alive. As with anything, though, too much of a good thing can become a bad thing. Striking a middle ground on the little treats is important: they should be fulfilling, not another source of financial stress.
The best advice when considering a little treat is this: “Worry about the big stuff. Don’t stress about little stuff and check in about the medium stuff.” That’s according to Jeff Kreisler, Head of Behavioral Science at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. I was fortunate enough to speak to him in May 2025, and I can confirm – he is a dispenser of great advice.
The Lingering Ubiquity of the Little Treat
When I bought that bouquet at the grocery store, I wasn’t thinking about behavioral economics or dopamine pathways. I was tired, slightly sweaty, and my throat was dry. The flowers became a source of beauty and happiness in an otherwise difficult day.
Small treats won’t solve all your problems, nor will they replace long-term planning. They do make the immediate moment feel more fun and manageable. When things are tough financially and the economy is struggling, that moment of reprieve is often worth more than the cost of the item.
Small rewards aren’t going anywhere. As much as the headlines like to call it a “Gen Z trend” that the brands want to hop on, it’s a core part of human nature to seek joy and pleasure.
I find it comforting to think of my great-grandmother buying herself lipstick during the Great Depression and my mom buying herself perfume during the Great Recession. My purchase of the flowers connected us across generations, through times of turmoil, and reminded me that joy doesn’t have to wait for an economic upturn.
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