72% of Americans would slow financial progress to enjoy life now, SoFi survey finds

“Maxxing” is very in right now. Americans, especially the Gen Z cohort, have hopped onto a number of viral trends that promote optimizing virtually any given area of your life like “PTO-maxxing” when you try to get the most of your vacation time or “fibermaxxing” when you want more regularity in your diet.

Naturally, the idea of “moneymaxxing,” or optimizing your financial strategy to make, save or invest more money has also cropped up in TikTok videos and news articles.

While some folks are laser-focused on optimizing their money situation, 72% of Americans are willing to make slower progress on their financial goals in order to show up for their families, take vacations and prioritize meaningful memories, finds a new survey of more than 4,000 U.S. adults from digital financial services company SoFi. The survey was fielded in July and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.53 percentage points.

Broadly, Americans are chasing various financial goals like trying to buy a home, save for retirement or support their families. But they’re also just trying to enjoy their lives, even if it means taking longer to reach those goals — they’re lifemaxxing, if you will.

“You can have anything you want. You just can’t have everything you want,” says Brian Walsh, certified financial planner and head of advice and planning at SoFi. “That’s really what this idea boils down to: sitting and taking a step back and saying, ‘Okay, here’s what’s important to me. Let me prioritize it from top to bottom, and let me focus my resources on those top items,’ and then allocating their budget to their priorities.”

As long as individuals are still allocating enough toward their longer-term financial goals like saving for retirement, Walsh says lifemaxxing can be “a really, really positive way to really maximize someone’s finances.”

It can, however, be a slippery slope. Overspending on your life now could get you in a precarious financial situation and make it difficult to maximize your happiness later in life, he warns.

Though fun and meaningful life experiences like traveling, attending concerts or even going to the movies have gotten more expensive in recent years, Americans broadly continue to spend on them. And for the most part, individuals seem to be lifemaxxing responsibly. Just 1 in 3 U.S. adults has taken on a debt balance to either host or participate in a social, family or milestone event, SoFi finds.

But for those who do put those experiences on credit cards or other financing options, that debt can have long-term ramifications, Walsh says.

If you carry a credit card balance, interest can accrue and may compound, making the balance harder to pay off, he says. Plus, money you’re putting toward a growing balance is cash that you could be stashing away for the future, he adds.

In a perfect world, you’d always be able to save ahead for an event or trip that’s going to be important to you. Even when that’s not the reality it doesn’t mean you have to forgo it, Walsh says — you just have to plan.

Say you get invited to a wedding and are considering putting flights, a gift and an outfit on a credit card.

“It really is about putting a plan together to say, ‘OK, my goal is to pay off this credit card debt that I took on in six months. Here’s the discretionary spending I’m reducing and the sacrifices I’m making for the next six months,’ for example, in order to make that a reality,” Walsh says.

When you outline that plan, ask yourself if some future sacrifice is worth it. Six months of eating at home or skipping another vacation to attend the wedding may be a challenge. But it beats going ahead and racking up the debt without a plan to repay it — a move which can get you into challenging circumstances, Walsh says.

“As long as you have a plan to respond, I think that’s much more realistic than just telling people, ‘oh, you have to save ahead for every single thing that you’re going to do.’ People aren’t robots,” he says.

Traditionally, financial success has been measured in assets, with owning a home, hitting a certain number in your retirement account or earning a six-figure salary all serving as markers that you had “made it.”

But Americans say just the ability to enjoy life is an important milestone of financial success. Some 59% of folks say enjoying life is how they define financial progress compared with 27% who say owning a home represents success, per SoFi.

For younger Americans, that could be due in part to the barriers to achieving some of those traditional milestones. Broader economic conditions like elevated home prices, student debt burdens and wages that have barely kept up with inflation have made those milestones more difficult to reach.

Most, or 62%, of Gen Zers and millennials still want to retire comfortably, but only 46% are confident they will, SoFi’s survey finds. Similarly, 63% want to be debt-free but only 55% are confident they will be, and 67% want to own a home compared with 62% who are confident they will.

On the other hand, “The definition of financial independence and financial freedom is really evolving in the real world,” Walsh says.

“In all reality, there’s different stages of financial independence, and I actually think that’s really good that people are embracing the earlier stages of financial independence,” he adds. “If you just make your marker and your goal something that’s gonna be decades down the road, it’s really, really hard to stay motivated.”