How do I stop comparing my financial situation to other people?

You're comparing your complete financial picture — including the debt, the anxiety and the trade-offs — to other people's highlight reel, which is a comparison you cannot win because it isn't between comparable things. **What's actually hidden in the posts you're seeing:** - Parental help with deposits, which is extremely common and almost never mentioned. - Debt funding the visible lifestyle. Holidays and cars are frequently financed. - Dual incomes, inherited property, or no dependants. - The trade-offs they made that you'd decline — extreme hours, a job they hate, living somewhere they don't want to be. - Straightforward misrepresentation. Rented cars, borrowed venues, and staged photos are a whole content genre. **Structural reasons the comparison is distorted:** 1. **You see the events, not the years.** A house purchase gets posted once; the four years of saving beforehand don't. Your daily grind is being compared to other people's milestones, compressed together in a feed. 2. **Selection bias.** People post achievements, not setbacks. The person who lost money, got rejected, or is quietly struggling posts nothing — and there are far more of them than your feed suggests. 3. **Algorithms amplify aspiration.** What you see is optimised for engagement, and envy engages. **What actually helps:** - **Change the inputs.** Mute or unfollow accounts that reliably make you feel worse. This isn't avoidance — it's recognising that a feed is a choice, and you're allowed to curate it. - **Compare to your own past.** Where were you financially two years ago? That's the only comparison with real information in it, and it's usually encouraging. - **Define what you actually want**, specifically. Much financial anxiety comes from chasing a vague standard set by other people. Write down what you want your money to buy — security, freedom, time, a specific goal. Progress against your own targets is measurable; progress against a feed isn't. - **Track your net worth quarterly.** A real number is a better anchor than a feeling, and watching it move is genuinely motivating. - **Talk to a few people honestly about money.** The relief of discovering that friends who look settled are also uncertain is substantial, and it's one of the fastest correctives available. And note the phrase in your question: you earn well and feel behind. That gap is the whole problem, and it doesn't close by earning more — people at every income level report the same feeling. It closes by changing the reference point.