Consumer debt and satisfaction in life.

Life's major purchases, such as buying a home or going to college, often involve taking on considerable What are the downstream emotional consequences? Does carrying influence consumers' general sense of satisfaction in life? Seven studies examine the relationship between consumers' holdings and life satisfaction, showing that the effect depends on the type of Though mortgages tend to comprise consumers' largest debts, and though credit card balances tend to have the highest interest rates, we found among a diverse sample of American adults (N = 5,808) that the type of most strongly associated with lower levels of life satisfaction is student loans. We further found that the extent to which consumers mentally label a given type as debt drives the emotional consequences of those holdings, and compared to the other types, student loans are perceived more as debt. Together the findings suggest that carrying can spill over to undermine people's overall subjective well-being, especially when their is perceived as such. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).