Today, Explained - What if we stopped shopping?

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Fed up with consumerism, Mia Westrap went a whole year without buying unnecessary stuff. She went viral, and so did her goal. Now, the Buy Nothing movement is fighting back against mindless consumption by doing...nothing. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Matt Billy, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members A crush of shoppers on Oxford Street in London. Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No Buy 2025 is a TikTok trend that invites you to imagine what if you just stopped shopping. People are doing it for all kinds of reasons. Debt. It's official. My debt will be 100% gone, including my car loan by August of next year. Protest. These prices are ridiculous. I'm not okay with them.

I'm sure you're not okay with them. So what we need to do is stop buying anything to get their attention. I feel like the only way to like actually make a change in this country is to continue with the no buy 2025 boycott. Community even. I love no buy TikTok because instead of just being poor and not being able to buy things, I'm just a no buy girly. Coming up on Today Explained, what happens when so many of us decide we have enough? Listen, we all love a good hustle. We all love a rise and grind mentality.

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unprecedented access to the messy, exhilarating journey of turning science fiction into reality. This is the Moonshot Podcast. Out now, wherever you listen. You are listening to Today Explained. So my TikTok story is quite funny. I had no idea how to use the app. I didn't have it over lockdown or anything. My friends and family were saying, get TikTok. And I was like, it's going to just damage my brain.

Like I don't want to download TikTok. I eventually did because I was seeing quite a few funny videos on social media. Brother, I'm fast as fuck, boy. Come get us up. Hi. Hi. Good morning. And I made a video thinking that just my friends would be able to see it. Oh no. You are like that person who thinks your

Venmo is private. Exactly, exactly. So I made a TikTok video with absolutely no makeup and hair done. I was in my work uniform. So 2024 is going to be the year that I get my shit together in terms of my finances. I have been... Please just support me for the next year because I'm not going to buy anything because I'm poor. I go to sleep, I wake up, the video has over a million views. I've already got about 6,000 followers. Thank you for being so supportive. And I was like, oh, OK, I didn't quite understand how this website works, but I guess I'm going

to roll with it now. Maybe it will keep me motivated. I'm here to hold myself accountable and if I help somebody else along the way, then that's just a bonus. Bye! Mia Westrap, 27, English, social worker, sometimes goes to extremes. I think I'm quite a type A person, as in like I either do something to its utmost extreme or I just don't bother at all. And that's always been such a character flaw of mine, because I will give up a hobby as soon as I start it because I'm no good at playing like the guitar for example. So I kind of set myself a year because

I wanted to A, see whether I could actually meet a New Year's resolution for myself and B, I think if I had just set myself a month, that wouldn't have been a long enough time for me to undo any of the problematic behaviors I had around spending. Let's talk about those behaviors and what your financial circumstances were that animated this whole thing. What was going on with your money? So I, to really, really rewind, I grew up, my mum was a single mum of free children. She worked really hard, but we just kind of had like the basic necessities. There was no big

holidays or anything like that growing up. So there wasn't really any money to budget and following that I didn't learn how to budget money, my financial literacy was at an absolute zero percent. I couldn't afford to do anything. Unfortunately in 2017, my best friend passed away from cancer and he had kind of celebration of life up in London because he was a journalist and I couldn't afford to get there. I could only choose between going to like the funeral or that party essentially. So that's when I began to realise, okay, I really do not understand where my money's going. It's like it disappears into thin air. And then over the years,

no matter how much my income improved, what I ended up with at the end of the month stayed exactly the same. And so, yeah, I essentially, it just got to a breaking point at the end of 2023 where I didn't have enough money to hold up a long distance relationship. I was anxious because I rent and that's becoming more and a security blanket because it was just this overwhelming stress that I was experiencing. So as many of us do, you took to TikTok and you told TikTok, I am not going to buy anything

for a full year. Let me ask you what you did spend money on and what you skipped. So when I was planning my no buy year, I thought it would be best to color code my spending. Type A. Yeah, exactly, type A. So I made a green, yellow, and red list. Green was the things I could spend my money on without questions. So that was bills, rent, groceries.

I didn't put any limit on the groceries that I was going to buy because I knew that it was going to be a year of me cooking my own food. So I might as well try and purchase things that I like and not try and skimp too much there. purchase things that I like and not try and skimp too much there. Yellow was the category of items where I was allowed to spend money but only if there was a caveat attached to it or specific circumstances. So if my laptop charger broke or something that I use every day in the kitchen, for example broke, then I would replace that. It was more replacements

than anything. And then red was the long, long, long list of things that I was not going to let myself buy for an entire year. So that was meals out, carbonated drinks, which I was very much addicted to at the time. So the first absolutely abhorrent financial decision I made in 2023 was spending over £1,000 on Cherry Pepsi Max and that's a very, very conservative estimate. No new clothes, no books, just things that I had enough of and could make do without buying more for a year. Did you cheat at all?

I did a couple of times, but I was very honest with everybody about it. Did you go on TikTok and spill? I did. I did. So that was another good thing about TikTok was that it allowed me to kind of talk through my thinking if I was tempted to buy something on the yellow list or on the red list. When my other friend came round, we all went out for dinner. I've spent about £60 over the past three days that I probably didn't need to, like we probably could have found

things to do for free. There was a couple of times over the summer where my weights had fluctuated and I hadn't really accounted for that because none of my summer clothes fit me anymore, so I bought like a pair of trousers with a stretchy waist and one oversized t-shirt that would go with everything else I wore. And other than that, there wasn't any big breaking of the rules. It was more so like little breaking of the rules, but they were mindful purchases and they've informed the way that I still think about consuming things now. We are on Zoom and I am noting that your hair is quite cute, you have nice bangs, your eyebrows

are on fleek as we said five years ago. What about beauty, haircare, makeup, what'd you do? I am still getting through the same tinted moisturizer that I bought about two and a half years ago. So that's gross. You say I've got cute bangs. We're both kidding ourselves. I obviously cut them myself.

But you cut them well. And then for eyebrows, again, I went without for a year, but then that was the first thing that I treated myself to this year was getting my eyebrows waxed because I was just taking to them with a razor and I ended up looking like two completely different people depending on which side of my face you were looking at. Okay, so you got through the end of your year and you worked really hard. How much money did you end up saving? I actually ended up saving just under £9,000 which I think in like US day that's maybe

$11,500 or something. Okay. That's a lot of money. It's about a thousand, close to a thousand dollars a month. Yes. Yeah. Which really, really surprised me. A lot of that was, well, maybe a little less than half of that was TikTok paying its creators, which is always lovely. But yeah, at least 500 pounds a month of that was just me saving my salary. What was the hardest thing? What was the thing that you

wanted to buy and couldn't stop thinking about buying, but for that year you just weren't allowed to. Clothes, that was my, they're my, yeah. They're my downfall. I just love charity shopping and yeah, going to vintage stores. And then the other thing that I missed was being lazy, basically, because you are having to go out grocery shopping and doing a full grocery shop. You can't just rely on like food deliveries. You need to kind of organize how you're going to get places without an Uber.

So that's what I found difficult at times was the letting go of the ease that I lived my life by beforehand. All right. So at the start of your year, you were just a girl standing in front of a TikTok, asking it, no, asking your friends to support you in your endeavor. You, like all of us, did not have millions of friends, but you woke up after posting this and you found that a million people or so had seen it. That is the definition of virality for my money. Why do you think this went so viral?

I think it does speak to people. So many people were supportive in saying in the comments saying like, these are my problem areas as well. So I think it did speak to people in that they weren't necessarily going to do a no buy year because that's crazy. But they were going to stick around for any tips and maybe they were just curious to see if somebody could do it for an entire year. And you did. Mia, congratulations. Thank you. That was Mia Westrap.

Coming up, why it seems like everyone is starting to agree that we buy too much crap. Support for Today Explained comes from Delete Me. As humans, we tend to forget things over time. It's just one of the things that makes us who we are. Unfortunately, the internet doesn't work that way, and your sensitive information can live online for a long, long time. Kind of gross when you think about it. who we are, unfortunately, the internet doesn't work that way and your sensitive information can live online for a long, long time.

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash explained to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash explained. Quinn's dot com slash explained. Support for today explained comes from found. What is found found as a business banking platform? And they say that they make staying on top of invoices and payments incredibly easy. Found says they can automate activities such as expense tracking, and you can even set aside money for different business goals and control spending with different virtual cards.

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of the FDIC. You can join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with found. Hi. Hi. Good morning. Today Explained, I'm Noelle King. Aja Barber loves clothing. She also loves knowing how things were made. About two decades ago, Aja startedber loves clothing. She also loves knowing how things were made. About two decades ago, Aja started wondering about her clothes. I'm someone who has a sewing machine, who knits, who does both of those things badly. So I understand that there is a level of skill that goes into making things.

So I started to not be able to understand how H&M could sell a dress for $5 that looked far better than anything I could create with my two hands, especially when I know what fabric costs, what a machine costs, you know? And a lot of this never really added up for me personally. The answer, of course, is the people making those clothes are often overseas and frequently paid very little. Eventually Aja quit buying fast fashion, she quit buying from Amazon, and she wrote a book called Consumed, The Need for Collective Change. It was published in 2021, and we called Aja this week to see how it feels to be vindicated.

So you've been banging the drum for a decade. Ten years ago, nine years ago, were you embraced online? Like what was your reaction to what you were saying? No. So I've been talking about fast fashion for a decade and it was literally like telling a bad joke and people throwing tomatoes at you. And I've been in really you know, really like liberal and lefty spaces, but I began to see

that there was some raging hypocrisy surrounding fast fashion because people would be all about the feminism and they would be all about, you know, human rights. And then I'd be like, yeah, we need to stop shopping at Forever 21 because they are, you know, not paying their garment workers. And people would be like, boo. Like, how dare you make me think about this system I really enjoy engaging with.

We've probably been asking ourselves this since time immemorial. But where do you think the need to consume so much comes from? I think the need to consume so much is really built into the fabric of our society. Now, the most important step of all, velvety smooth Maybelline mascara. To order your Betty Crocker 100-piece decorating kit for $10 plus shipping and handling. But if you call now, within the next 20 minutes, because we can't do this all day, we'll give you a second set absolutely free. We are raised as consumers from the amount of advertising that you see from the messaging that we get from political leaders. This is something that I talk about in Consumed.

After 9-11, George W. Bush told people to get out there and shop. To meet the challenges of the 21st century, we must also work together to achieve important goals for the American people here at home. This work begins with keeping our economy growing. And I encourage you all to go shopping more. You know, there were a few things that he could have said. Mourn, pray, be peaceful, gather in community.

No, you gotta shop to save the economy. And then the same note, Rishi Sunak in the UK did the same thing during the COVID-19 lockdowns when asked about, you know, if people have savings due to not being out in the streets and spending money, what should they do with it? And he basically was encouraging people to put their money into the economy. And I pushed back very hard against that online and was like,

Rishi Sunak is married to a billionaire. He could put his money in the economy, you keep your money in your pocket. I want to ask you to wrestle with something for me. We do have consumer economies. It is true that when people buy less, our economy suffers. People lose jobs, the markets might go down, which matters to people who have their retirement in the market. So there's lots of things about our economy that do make it necessary for us to consume.

As you grapple with that and also still want to like, you know, have like friends and be able to be someone who like lives in the quote unquote real world. How do you, like what's that tension like for you? Our economy cannot be structured in a way where we have to buy cheap garbage in order for us to survive in a way that thrives. I think that's the crux of the problem is that our economy has to be structured differently

because buying all of this stuff isn't making us happier. It's not making our planet better. It's not providing really good jobs for people. So for me, I just look at the whole system and go, if this system requires me over consuming garbage to run, perhaps it's a bad system and we shouldn't be propping it up. Hmm. There's something that's been happening and I am sure that you've seen it and are aware of it and I am desperate to know what you think. So we're at this point in American

history where people who have very different politics are converging on a shared view. President Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Besson made big news recently because he was defending tariffs, which of course will make Chinese and Canadian and Mexican imports more expensive for Americans. And he said, access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream. That sounds to me like something that you would agree with wholeheartedly. It's not from the Green Party, it's not from the Socialist Party, it's from the Republican Party.

Well, here's the thing. I think where we feverishly disagree is on this notion of the American dream. One person's American dream tends to be another person's American nightmare. What sort of dream is there for a country that is built on the exploitation of the indigenous people that live there and the exploitation of imported people through chattel slavery? When we look at the modern fashion industry,

when we look at the Industrial Revolution, we need to recognize what is behind all of that is slavery and colonialism and exploitation of labor and goods and resources. And so I just don't know if I would ever agree with the Republican Party on this notion of the existence of such a dream. But I do agree that access to cheap goods isn't something that we should really, honestly, prize above all. The problem I see is we have eroding social safety nets in our society. And so because of that lack of actual systems that work for people, people are leaning

into consumerism. I see this all the time in my generation, right? Can't buy a house, don't have healthcare, but you know what you can get? You can get a cheap summer dress, and that'll be the bandaid that you'll put over the scrape on your arm that's annoying you that you're not going to go to a doctor to check out because you don't have health insurance. I remember telling someone when I was living in the US that you shouldn't get mad at immigrants that you think are taking your job. That's not who's taking your job. The corporations that are shipping jobs overseas that used to be union US jobs and exploiting other people with that system.

That's who you should be mad at. So yeah, I do think that there's some space for people to maybe see eye to eye on this one. But ultimately, we have to want better for everyone else. And that will want better for ourselves. All right. So many of us live in the US. It is a consumer economy.

It's a capitalist society. The question then, I guess, is how can we be more responsible? Know by 2025 is one option. What else do you see as useful? If you are a person like me who has a closet full of clothes and you like your clothes, they're good clothes, wear your clothes, learn how to repair your clothes. If you have a cabinet full of beauty products, maybe it's time to actually just start using what's in your cabinet before you buy more. And there's another part to this. When it is time to buy again, because

you know that you have more than enough, it's time to actually start researching the corporations that you spend your money with and asking some hard questions like, does this corporation actually pay the people who make the products fair wages? And if you can't really figure out what's going on behind the literal seams of a company, then maybe it means that you don't spend your money there. It's time for us to open our eyes and stop engaging in a system that just requires us to shut up and buy.

It's time for us to do more than be consumers. Aja Barber, her book is called Consumed, The Need for Collective Change. And you can get it at the Public Library. Victoria Chamberlain produced today's show, Jolie Meyer's edited, Matthew Billy and Andrea Christen's daughter engineered, and Laura Bullard checked the facts. Today Explained is produced by Peter Balanon-Rosen, we miss you bud, Avishai Artzi, Gabrielle Burbae, Miles Bryan, Carla Javier, Travis Larchuck, Amanda Llewellyn, Hadi Mawagdi, and Devin Schwartz. Patrick Boyd mixes, masters, makes decisions.

Amina El-Sadi is our managing editor, Miranda Kennedy is our executive producer. We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder. It is March 14th, and do you know what that means? Sean Ramosfirm turns 50 today. Happy birthday to this man, and here's to the next 50. Today Explained is distributed by WNYC, and the show is a part of Vox. If you wish, you can support our journalism by joining our membership program today,

or whenever the markets rebound. Go to Vox.com slash members to sign up. And do remember, we make a show on the weekends now too. You can check out Explain It To Me, which will be in our feed on Sunday morning. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. This is Advertiser Content brought to you by the all-new Nissan Murano. Okay, that email is done. Next on my to-do list, pick up dress for Friday's fundraiser.

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