One of the important things I find to try and understand is what it means to not be in the financial situation I'm in right now. It means being stressed all the time, and therefore the stress would affect my capacity to make long term decisions. Also, lowering my current heightened stress would become a higher priority. Therefore I would assume that (due to a combination of lowered decision making and a need to reduce stress) the spending of money to consume would actually be a very reasonable decision to make- it reduces friction on decision making and also temporarily reduces stress.