Sharan Hegde unpacks why despite earning more, this generation still feels financially behind
By most indicators, India’s urban middle class should feel more secure today. Incomes have risen, opportunities have multiplied, and access to financial products has never been easier. Yet, beneath this surface-level prosperity is a rising undercurrent of fatigue. It is a sense of not quite catching up, despite doing everything right. This is what I would call the “The Burnout Economy”.
For our parents, the path to stability was clear: study well, get a job, save diligently, buy a home, raise a family. It wasn’t easy, but it was predictable. For this generation, the destination hasn’t changed, but the map has. Ambition is higher, timelines are shorter, and benchmarks are no longer local. A 28-year-old in Mumbai isn’t comparing himself to a cousin in Delhi. He’s comparing himself to a peer in Singapore, someone he follows on YouTube, or a founder he read about on LinkedIn. Sociologists call this “reference group inflation,” the tendency for comparison groups to expand as exposure increases. In India, this expansion has been explosive. Global aspirations without global incomes create tension. You feel behind even when you’re ahead.
Lifestyle inflation
Post-pandemic urban consumption tells a very clear story. RBI data shows a sharp rise in personal loans, up 23 per cent, and credit card outstanding, up 28 per cent.
At the same time, electronics and lifestyle-related spending is growing faster than salaries. Together, these trends reveal an economy where aspirations are rising faster than incomes, and where borrowing is quietly becoming a default way of keeping up.
A big part of this shift is the rise of BNPL, which is a ‘buy now, pay later’ scheme. On paper, it sounds harmless. It gives people flexibility, lets them break payments into smaller chunks. But the flip side is easy to miss. BNPL makes spending feel lighter than it actually is. The repayment dates pile up, the psychology of “it’s only Rs 300 this month” adds up across five different apps, and before you know it, you’re budgeting around EMIs rather than income.
It’s not inherently bad, it’s just a tool. And like any tool, it works only if you keep track of what you’re building, not just what you’re buying. UPI has rewired the psychology of spending. Earlier, you had to go to an ATM, swipe a card, or enter a PIN. That small pause often made us rethink our purchases.
Today, credit cards, BNPL, and the ‘Buy Now’ button on Amazon or any e-commerce site have reduced the gap between desire and consumption to almost zero.
Economists call this ‘frictionless finance’. It boosts convenience but also blinds us to cumulative spending. Even financially aware young professionals admit they are often unaware of their actual monthly outflow. And that’s because the act of spending is now designed to feel weightless.
The ambition trap
There is also a deeper psychological shift at play. Our generation values self-actualisation more than security. We want meaningful work, fulfilling hobbies, curated experiences, and financial independence, all at once, and often before 30. But upward mobility today is non-linear. Salaries rise slowly, rent rises quickly. EMIs last decades, job cycles shift every two to three years. The mismatch between aspiration and structural reality creates a persistent sense of inadequacy.
A big part of feeling “enough’” is learning to recognise when you’re already in the right place, doing the right things. But this awareness doesn’t arrive on its own. It usually comes from a few honest conversations with yourself.
The cost of constantly being ‘on the verge’
Burnout today isn’t just about feeling physically tired. It’s this constant economic hyper-awareness, the sense that you have to optimise everything all the time. So, what’s the way out? A healthier path for everyone may need a reset of the expectations we’ve inherited.
Shrinking the comparison universe: Earlier, you compared yourself with the three people living next door. Today, you compare yourself with 3,000 you don’t know: creators, founders, consultants, travellers, all curating their best 15 seconds for your feed.
It’s unfair and exhausting. Reclaiming sanity may simply mean returning to smaller, more local frames of reference: your job, your city, your life stage. The internet cannot be your peer group.
Reintroducing friction into spending: We talk a lot about ‘mindful spending,’ but the truth is technology has removed every barrier that once gave us a moment to think. Bringing back friction is not punishment, it’s a pause button. A separate account just for indulgences, or even deleting saved cards from apps can bring back a tiny moment of hesitation.
Redefining the timelines we’ve been taught: There’s a quiet panic that builds in your late 20s and early 30s, the feeling that you’re ‘late’ because the world told you everything important must happen before 30: career, savings, marriage, house, stability.
But that script was written for a different generation in a different economy. The timelines we chase are often cultural hand-me-downs that don’t match the world we actually live in. Letting go of those timelines is not failure. It’s a relief.
The burnout economy isn’t a failure. It’s a signal that India’s middle class is in the middle of a transition no generation before has gone through. Of course, it feels overwhelming. But inside that chaos is possibility. No generation has had this much access, choice, and freedom, and no generation should feel this stretched, this tired, or this alone while navigating it.
The writer is the author of Rise to the 1%: The Smart Indian’s Playbook for Wealth and Early Retirement (Ebury Press, Penguin Random House).
For our parents, the path to stability was clear: study well, get a job, save diligently, buy a home, raise a family. It wasn’t easy, but it was predictable. For this generation, the destination hasn’t changed, but the map has. Ambition is higher, timelines are shorter, and benchmarks are no longer local. A 28-year-old in Mumbai isn’t comparing himself to a cousin in Delhi. He’s comparing himself to a peer in Singapore, someone he follows on YouTube, or a founder he read about on LinkedIn. Sociologists call this “reference group inflation,” the tendency for comparison groups to expand as exposure increases. In India, this expansion has been explosive. Global aspirations without global incomes create tension. You feel behind even when you’re ahead.
Lifestyle inflation
Post-pandemic urban consumption tells a very clear story. RBI data shows a sharp rise in personal loans, up 23 per cent, and credit card outstanding, up 28 per cent.
At the same time, electronics and lifestyle-related spending is growing faster than salaries. Together, these trends reveal an economy where aspirations are rising faster than incomes, and where borrowing is quietly becoming a default way of keeping up.
A big part of this shift is the rise of BNPL, which is a ‘buy now, pay later’ scheme. On paper, it sounds harmless. It gives people flexibility, lets them break payments into smaller chunks. But the flip side is easy to miss. BNPL makes spending feel lighter than it actually is. The repayment dates pile up, the psychology of “it’s only Rs 300 this month” adds up across five different apps, and before you know it, you’re budgeting around EMIs rather than income.
It’s not inherently bad, it’s just a tool. And like any tool, it works only if you keep track of what you’re building, not just what you’re buying. UPI has rewired the psychology of spending. Earlier, you had to go to an ATM, swipe a card, or enter a PIN. That small pause often made us rethink our purchases.
Today, credit cards, BNPL, and the ‘Buy Now’ button on Amazon or any e-commerce site have reduced the gap between desire and consumption to almost zero.
Economists call this ‘frictionless finance’. It boosts convenience but also blinds us to cumulative spending. Even financially aware young professionals admit they are often unaware of their actual monthly outflow. And that’s because the act of spending is now designed to feel weightless.
The ambition trap
There is also a deeper psychological shift at play. Our generation values self-actualisation more than security. We want meaningful work, fulfilling hobbies, curated experiences, and financial independence, all at once, and often before 30. But upward mobility today is non-linear. Salaries rise slowly, rent rises quickly. EMIs last decades, job cycles shift every two to three years. The mismatch between aspiration and structural reality creates a persistent sense of inadequacy.
A big part of feeling “enough’” is learning to recognise when you’re already in the right place, doing the right things. But this awareness doesn’t arrive on its own. It usually comes from a few honest conversations with yourself.
The cost of constantly being ‘on the verge’
Burnout today isn’t just about feeling physically tired. It’s this constant economic hyper-awareness, the sense that you have to optimise everything all the time. So, what’s the way out? A healthier path for everyone may need a reset of the expectations we’ve inherited.
Shrinking the comparison universe: Earlier, you compared yourself with the three people living next door. Today, you compare yourself with 3,000 you don’t know: creators, founders, consultants, travellers, all curating their best 15 seconds for your feed.
It’s unfair and exhausting. Reclaiming sanity may simply mean returning to smaller, more local frames of reference: your job, your city, your life stage. The internet cannot be your peer group.
Reintroducing friction into spending: We talk a lot about ‘mindful spending,’ but the truth is technology has removed every barrier that once gave us a moment to think. Bringing back friction is not punishment, it’s a pause button. A separate account just for indulgences, or even deleting saved cards from apps can bring back a tiny moment of hesitation.
Redefining the timelines we’ve been taught: There’s a quiet panic that builds in your late 20s and early 30s, the feeling that you’re ‘late’ because the world told you everything important must happen before 30: career, savings, marriage, house, stability.
But that script was written for a different generation in a different economy. The timelines we chase are often cultural hand-me-downs that don’t match the world we actually live in. Letting go of those timelines is not failure. It’s a relief.
The burnout economy isn’t a failure. It’s a signal that India’s middle class is in the middle of a transition no generation before has gone through. Of course, it feels overwhelming. But inside that chaos is possibility. No generation has had this much access, choice, and freedom, and no generation should feel this stretched, this tired, or this alone while navigating it.
The writer is the author of Rise to the 1%: The Smart Indian’s Playbook for Wealth and Early Retirement (Ebury Press, Penguin Random House).