What did the 2023 study find about manifesting money?

Dixon, Hornsey and Hartley surveyed 1,023 people in 2023 and found that people who scored higher on manifestation belief were more likely to have been bankrupt and more likely to hold volatile investments, with no relationship between the belief and actual income or education. The finding is correlational — it doesn't show that believing caused the bankruptcy, only that the two travelled together.

Is manifesting money linked to bankruptcy?

In the Dixon, Hornsey and Hartley (2023) survey, yes — people with stronger manifestation beliefs reported higher rates of bankruptcy than people with weaker ones, alongside more volatile investing such as cryptocurrency. This is a correlation from survey data, not proof that the belief itself causes financial risk-taking, and the study cannot rule out other explanations.

What's the difference between manifesting money and setting a financial goal?

Mostly specificity and what's believed to make it happen. "I'm manifesting money" is usually left vague and attributed to the wanting itself. "£400 a month more, from the Thursday client, by March" is a target with a number, a source and a date, and nothing about it depends on anything beyond the actions that follow.

What is an implementation intention, and how does it help with money?

An implementation intention is an "if-then" plan — deciding in advance what you'll do when a specific situation arises, rather than deciding in the moment. Gollwitzer and Sheeran's 2006 meta-analysis of 94 studies found a medium-to-large effect (d = 0.65) on whether people actually followed through on a goal. Applied to money: "if the card balance is higher than last month, then I move the difference to savings that same day."

What is mental contrasting?

A technique from Gabriele Oettingen's research: writing the want next to an honest, specific account of what's actually in the way, rather than picturing the want alone. Kappes and Oettingen found in 2011 that imagining an idealised future on its own left people with less energy to pursue it — contrasting it with the real obstacle is what restores the effort.

Does Faye give financial advice?

No. Faye is not a financial planning tool and this page isn't either — there are no investment suggestions, debt strategies or side-hustle recommendations here or in the app. What it does is help keep a specific, self-described want in view; anything about how to manage money is a conversation for someone qualified to have it.

How specific should a money goal be?

Specific enough to be checked: an amount, a source or reason, and a date. "More money" can't be true or false. "£400 a month more, from the Thursday client, by March" can — and knowing that by the third week of March, rather than a year later, is the entire advantage of writing it that way.

Guide

Manifesting money — what actually happens when you try it

Manifesting money — writing, picturing or repeating a sum — does not cause it to arrive. Any real financial change traces back to specificity and follow-through, not to the wanting itself. The uncomfortable finding is that people who believe otherwise report more bankruptcy and riskier investing, while earning no more than everyone else.

Does manifesting money work?

No. Writing a figure, picturing it, or saying it a set number of times does not cause money to move toward you. What changes is not the world’s response to the writing — it’s what the person who wrote it does next, and only if what they wrote was specific enough to act on. For the general version of this question, across methods rather than just money, see is manifesting real.

That’s not an easy thing to hear from a category that mostly promises the opposite, so here is the finding that explains why it matters more than a shrug. Dixon, Hornsey and Hartley surveyed 1,023 people in 2023 and found that people who scored higher on a manifestation-belief scale were more likely to have been bankrupt and more likely to hold volatile investments such as cryptocurrency — while showing no relationship between manifestation belief and actual income or education.

That finding is correlational. It shows two things travelling together across three linked studies, not that the belief caused the bankruptcy — someone already in financial difficulty might be drawn to a belief system that promises a turnaround, and the study can’t rule that out. It’s also not a claim that people who manifest money are foolish. Most of them are doing the same ordinary thing everyone does with a want they can’t yet see a path to: treating it as something on its way rather than something to build.

That’s the actual cost worth knowing about. Once “the money is coming” feels true, ordinary caution starts to look like doubt instead of diligence. A get-rich-quick scheme reads less like a red flag and more like the universe agreeing with you. Nobody sits down and decides to take on more risk. The risk arrives quietly, dressed as confidence.

Specificity: what “more money” is missing

“I want more money” isn’t a goal. It has no number, no date, and nothing to check it against — which means there’s no month where you can honestly say it happened, and no way to notice if the thing you’re doing isn’t working. “£400 a month more, from the Thursday client, by March” behaves completely differently, in a diary and in a head, because it can be true or false.

The table below is the same want, four different situations, written the vague way and then the specific way.

Situation	The vague version	The specific version
A raise	“I want to earn more.”	“£3,200 more a year, raised at the September review, tied to the three things I’ve taken on since March.”
Side income	“I want some extra income.”	“£400 a month more, from the Thursday client, by March.”
A debt	“I want to be debt-free.”	“The £1,140 card balance gone by June — £200 above the minimum, paid on the 3rd of every month.”
A month that adds up	“I want financial peace.”	“At least £150 left after rent and the card, every month, without moving it there the week before.”

None of these are predictions. They’re descriptions of a target specific enough to fail against, which is the whole point — a vague want can absorb any outcome and still feel like it was “on its way.” A specific one can’t. By March, the Thursday client either paid £400 more or didn’t, and you know which by the third week of the month rather than finding out you’ve drifted for a year.

This is the same instinct behind scripting a scene in present tense, or repeating a written sentence the way the 369 method asks — the specificity is doing the work, not the repetition or the tense.

The part nobody manages is keeping the actual number and the actual date in view once an ordinary week takes over — which is what Faye’s Money Quietly series is built to do. Get Faye on iPhone

If the plan doesn’t survive an ordinary Tuesday

A number and a date are a target. They aren’t yet a plan for the week the target gets tested — the week the invoice is late, or the card statement is higher than expected, or the awkward conversation about the raise keeps getting put off. This is where Peter Gollwitzer’s research on implementation intentions is more useful than almost anything else on this page. A 2006 meta-analysis by Gollwitzer and Sheeran, covering 94 independent tests, found a medium-to-large effect (d = 0.65) of “if-then” plans on whether a goal actually got acted on, compared with people who set the same goal without one.

The structure is fixed: if situation X happens, then I do Y — written down, specific to the moment, decided in advance rather than in the moment itself, when it’s easiest to postpone. Applied to money, that looks ordinary rather than dramatic:

“If the card statement arrives and the balance is higher than last month, then I move the difference to savings that same day, before I open anything else.”
“If it’s the first of the month, then I check the number left after rent and the card before I check anything else on my phone.”
“If a week goes by without asking about the review, then I put fifteen minutes on the calendar for Friday to send the email.”

None of these require willpower in the moment they matter, which is the entire reason the effect holds up — the decision already happened, earlier, when it was easy.

The obstacle next to the number

A target and a plan still miss something if the obstacle is never named. Heather Barry Kappes and Gabriele Oettingen found in 2011 that people who fantasised freely about an idealised future came away with measurably less energy to pursue it — fewer job applications sent, less effort put in, as though the imagining had already delivered some of the relief the outcome was supposed to bring. Their fix, mental contrasting, is putting the want next to an honest account of what’s actually in the way, rather than picturing the want on its own. It’s the same correction covered on this site’s vision board guide, and it applies just as directly to money.

For each row in the table above, that means one more sentence, written next, naming the real obstacle rather than a vague one:

“£400 a month more, from the Thursday client, by March — and the reason it hasn’t happened yet is that I haven’t actually asked, because I’m assuming the answer is no before I’ve said anything.”

The want doesn’t change. It just stops being the whole page.

What this page won’t tell you

This is not financial advice, and nothing above is either. There are no investment suggestions here, no debt-repayment strategy, no list of side hustles to try. That’s deliberate — the honest, useful thing this page can do is about how a financial want gets described and acted on, not about which financial decisions to make. For anything past that — what to invest in, how to structure a repayment plan, whether a given side income is worth the hours — that’s a conversation with someone qualified to have it, not a manifestation guide.

This week

Three things, none of them requiring a spreadsheet or an advisor:

Name the number and the deadline. Not “more” — an amount and a date, the way the table above does it. If you can’t yet name a number honestly, that’s useful information too: it usually means the want isn’t as specific as it felt.

Write the obstacle, one sentence. What’s actually stopping the number from being true right now — not the market, not the economy, the thing that’s yours to move.

Identify the single next step. Not the whole plan. One action, this week, that the obstacle sentence points to directly — the email, the fifteen minutes, the fixed date on the card.

Keeping the number in view

The three steps above are easy to do once and hard to keep doing, because the week gets busy and the specific number quietly turns back into “more, eventually.” That’s the ordinary failure mode, not a lack of belief or effort — a plan you have to remember to reread is a plan you’ll stop rereading.

That’s the part Faye was built to sit inside. You describe what you’re working toward once, in a long quiet onboarding — including, if that’s what’s on your mind, the money side of it. Each night Faye writes one short, present-tense scene from what you said and narrates it, about four minutes, waiting when you wake up. It makes no claim about how the world works and promises no outcome — it’s closer to the mental rehearsal already covered on this site than to anything mystical, and it exists mainly to keep the specific thing in front of you without you having to remember to go looking for it yourself.

Faye: Manifest Future Self — the number and the date, kept in view, written back to you as a scene and narrated each morning. iPhone, iOS 17+. Free to start, no account and no email.

Questions people ask

Does manifesting money work?: No. Writing, picturing or repeating a sum does not cause money to arrive. Any real change traces back to specificity and follow-through — a target with a number and a date, an if-then plan for the week it gets tested, and an honest obstacle named next to it. A 2023 study of manifestation believers found no relationship between the belief and actual income.
What did the 2023 study find about manifesting money?: Dixon, Hornsey and Hartley surveyed 1,023 people in 2023 and found that people who scored higher on manifestation belief were more likely to have been bankrupt and more likely to hold volatile investments, with no relationship between the belief and actual income or education. The finding is correlational — it doesn’t show that believing caused the bankruptcy, only that the two travelled together.
Is manifesting money linked to bankruptcy?: In the Dixon, Hornsey and Hartley (2023) survey, yes — people with stronger manifestation beliefs reported higher rates of bankruptcy than people with weaker ones, alongside more volatile investing such as cryptocurrency. This is a correlation from survey data, not proof that the belief itself causes financial risk-taking, and the study cannot rule out other explanations.
What’s the difference between manifesting money and setting a financial goal?: Mostly specificity and what’s believed to make it happen. “I’m manifesting money” is usually left vague and attributed to the wanting itself. “£400 a month more, from the Thursday client, by March” is a target with a number, a source and a date, and nothing about it depends on anything beyond the actions that follow.
What is an implementation intention, and how does it help with money?: An implementation intention is an “if-then” plan — deciding in advance what you’ll do when a specific situation arises, rather than deciding in the moment. Gollwitzer and Sheeran’s 2006 meta-analysis of 94 studies found a medium-to-large effect (d = 0.65) on whether people actually followed through on a goal. Applied to money: “if the card balance is higher than last month, then I move the difference to savings that same day.”
What is mental contrasting?: A technique from Gabriele Oettingen’s research: writing the want next to an honest, specific account of what’s actually in the way, rather than picturing the want alone. Kappes and Oettingen found in 2011 that imagining an idealised future on its own left people with less energy to pursue it — contrasting it with the real obstacle is what restores the effort.
Does Faye give financial advice?: No. Faye is not a financial planning tool and this page isn’t either — there are no investment suggestions, debt strategies or side-hustle recommendations here or in the app. What it does is help keep a specific, self-described want in view; anything about how to manage money is a conversation for someone qualified to have it.
How specific should a money goal be?: Specific enough to be checked: an amount, a source or reason, and a date. “More money” can’t be true or false. “£400 a month more, from the Thursday client, by March” can — and knowing that by the third week of March, rather than a year later, is the entire advantage of writing it that way.

Sources

Every claim on this page names where it comes from. Where there is no evidence for something, the page says so rather than leaving it out.

Dixon, Hornsey & Hartley (2023), “The Secret” to Success? The Psychology of Belief in Manifestation, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin — survey of 1,023 people; manifestation belief tracked with confidence and subjective success but not income or education, and with higher rates of bankruptcy and volatile investment.
University of Queensland, “Manifesting your way to bankruptcy” (2023) — plain-language summary of the same study, including the researchers’ account of why belief in fast success can obscure the risk in get-rich-quick schemes.
Kappes & Oettingen (2011), “Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology — the basis for the mental contrasting section; cited consistently across this site’s guides.
Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006), meta-analysis of implementation intentions — 94 studies, medium-to-large effect (d = 0.65) of if-then planning on goal attainment; source for the implementation-intentions section.