Due to the retreat of the welfare state, everyday asset managers feel forced into the social practices of asset accumulation despite being critical of them due to their immanent contradictions (Langley and Leaver, 2012; Huber et al, 2020). Being able to transfigure the subject position they are called upon to adopt to their own needs enables individuals to give meaning to asset accumulation and overcomes the contradiction between the inherent uncertainty of financial investments and having to have sufficient income to diversify investments and accumulate assets to provide financial security. Whilst the previous chapter has shown how this has resulted in financialized subjects, albeit differently than expected, and has intensified capital–labour wealth inequalities, this chapter moves on to exploring the impact of asset norms on everyday practices within consumption, work and relationships, and its empowering or disciplining characteristics.

Going back to the understanding of governmental reasoning outlined in the conceptual framework in Chapter 2, where power is not only repressive but productive of subjectivities based on interests and desires, Foucault (1980, p 39) understands the regulatory mechanism as operating through the transformation of norms into everyday practices and discourses where ‘power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives’. Put differently, constructed norms would not be seen as oppressive but as desirable, even if there were concerns with regards to their benefits. Strikingly, this can be seen in interviewees’ statements where asset norms are not only adapted but determine one's own success as a person. Despite being critical of financial institutions, being an effective everyday asset manager, who accumulates assets to provide financial security in the future, has become a way of being – ‘a means for the acquisition of the self ‘ (Martin, 2002, p 3) – even going as far as connecting self-confidence to it: “If I’d had no savings and had an overdraft, I would feel like I was failing a little bit as a person, so it's a little bit self-confidence linked to that” (Saskia).