If you’ve scrolled TikTok recently, you’ve seen it: Creators listing the five things they believe are always worth the money, from luxury skin care to upgraded airline seats to designer handbags. Some of the recommendations are genuinely useful. Others are one influencer’s justification for a splurge dressed up as advice.
Here’s what’s surprising: Certified financial planners have actually weighed in on this one, and they don’t dismiss it outright. They just have a very different, far less flashy list of their own.
What the Trend Actually Looks Like
The format is simple. Creators share purchases they’d make again without hesitation, framing them as universal truths rather than personal preferences. The videos have racked up hundreds of thousands of views this summer, and the recommendations range from air fryers and pilates memberships to premium tech and travel upgrades.
The problem financial planners have isn’t with the format. It’s that “worth the money” gets used to justify almost anything, when what’s actually worth it depends heavily on your income, your goals and what you already own. What’s genuinely smart for one person can be a waste for someone else, no matter the price tag.
So what does this mean for you? Rather than copying a stranger’s list, it helps to understand the actual filter financial professionals use, then apply it to your own spending.
The Category Planners Keep Coming Back To
Ask a handful of financial planners what’s actually worth the money, and one category comes up repeatedly: high-quality versions of anything between you and the ground. That means shoes, mattresses, tires and office chairs.
“The cost per use is pennies, and the alternative eventually shows up as a medical bill,” Noah Schwab, a certified financial planner based in Spokane, Washington, explained. The logic holds up: a bad mattress or worn-out tires don’t just cost you comfort; they compound into back pain, poor sleep, or an accident down the road.
That same logic extends to preventive spending more broadly. “Preventive spending is almost always worth the money,” notes certified financial planner Jordan Gilberti, pointing to medical and dental checkups and routine home or car maintenance as purchases that quietly protect you from far larger bills later.
The Purchase That Pays You Back: Your Own Time
Not every smart purchase is about preventing a future cost. Some of the best ones buy back something you can’t get more of—your time.
Planners point to services like housecleaning, grocery delivery or outsourcing administrative tasks as purchases that free you up for higher-value work or the people in your life. “Buying back your own time is one of the few purchases that quietly pays you back,” said Vishal Kumar, a San Francisco-based wealth adviser.
If you’re building a business or managing a demanding career, this reframe matters. An hour spent on a task anyone could do for you is an hour not spent on the thing only you can do, whether that’s landing a client, developing a skill or simply resting enough to perform well tomorrow.
What Planners Warn Against: Spending to Signal, Not to Solve
The flip side of the trend is just as instructive. Planners consistently flag the same failure pattern: purchases made to signal success rather than to solve a real problem.
“One of the biggest financial mistakes I see isn’t a specific product; it’s lifestyle inflation driven by comparison,” Brett Hina, a private wealth adviser in New Jersey, said. Buying things primarily to look successful, he notes, often makes it harder to actually become financially independent.
That pattern shows up in specific, common ways: a storage unit that quietly becomes a long-term holding space, subscriptions you forgot you were paying for or a luxury purchase bought mainly to impress people you may not even like that much. None of these show up as a single bad decision. They show up as a slow drag on the money you could otherwise be putting toward something that actually compounds, like a full employer 401(k) match, which planners still call one of the highest-return moves available to most workers.
How to Apply This Filter to Your Own Spending
Before your next “worth it” purchase, run it through three questions instead of trusting a stranger’s video. Does it prevent a larger cost down the road, the way quality shoes or preventive care does? Does it buy back meaningful time you’d otherwise lose to a task someone else could do? Or is it mostly there to make you look a certain way to people who won’t remember it in a month?
The first two categories are where planners consistently say your money works hardest. The third isn’t automatically wrong. Everyone deserves purchases that are simply enjoyable. But it’s worth naming honestly rather than dressing it up as a financial strategy.
The real lesson from this trend isn’t a list of five products. It’s a framework you can reuse indefinitely: spend on what protects you or gives you back time, and be honest with yourself about the rest.
Featured image from Maxbelchenko/Shutterstock
