This study examines how exposure to advertising relates to financial anxiety, and how both connect to the self-stigma that young consumers attach to their own money problems. The work is motivated by a specific tension in the lives of young, income-earning Indians. They are the most heavily advertised-to group in the country, they have easy access to short-term credit through Buy Now Pay Later and equated monthly instalment facilities, and they operate in a culture where admitting to money trouble carries social embarrassment. A structured questionnaire was administered to fifty respondents aged eighteen and above, and four composite constructs were built from Likert-scale items: advertising influence, financial anxiety, self-stigma expressed through the concealment of money problems, and self-esteem. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, independent samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, and two multiple regression models were used to test the relationships. Advertising influence emerged as a moderate and highly significant correlate of financial anxiety (r = 0.48, p < 0.001) and as the only significant predictor of anxiety in a multivariate model. Financial anxiety in turn predicted self-stigma independently of the other variables, while advertising influence lost its direct effect on self-stigma once anxiety was controlled, pointing to a theoretically suggested indirect pattern rather than a tested mediation. Respondents who admitted concealing a purchase scored significantly higher on the attitude-based self-stigma scale, which supports the measure. Self-esteem was statistically unrelated to the three focal constructs but varied with discretionary spending capacity, with the lowest spending group standing apart from the rest. Gender differences were not statistically confirmed. Because the study rests on a small pilot sample (N = 50) and a cross-sectional design, all associations are interpreted as preliminary and non-causal. The findings are read against the social comparison and compensatory consumption literatures and carry practical implications for financial well-being and responsible advertising.