WSJ Your Money Briefing - How Young Women Are Recession-Proofing Their Lives

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

According to Google, searches in the U.S. for “press on nails” and “blonde to brunette hair” are up more than 10% since February. Wall Street Journal reporter Ann-Marie Alcántara sits down with host Ariana Aspuru to talk about why women are scaling back and what it could mean for the economy.  Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here's your money briefing for Wednesday, April 23rd. I'm Mariana Aspuru for The Wall Street Journal. Everyone has their little luxuries, the small splurges that just make you feel better, like a sweet treat or a fresh haircut. But in a time of economic uncertainty, some of America's biggest spenders are now streamlining their spending. Not eating out as much anymore or even when you're grocery shopping cutting back on little treats like a pint of ice cream and things like that. Just anything where they can cut back in a way that feels okay. You know, it's not a big sacrifice, but definitely helps

their wallet. My colleague Anne-Marie Alcantara wrote about where else young women are cutting costs. We'll be back after the break. Hey, wouldn't it be great if life came with remote control? You know, you could hit pause when you needed to, or hit rewind, like that time you knocked down that wasps nest. Well, life doesn't always give you time to change the outcome, but pre-diabetes does. With early diagnosis and a few healthy changes, you can stop pre-diabetes before it leads to type the outcome. But pre-diabetes does. With early diagnosis and a few healthy changes, you can stop pre-diabetes before it leads to type 2 diabetes. To learn your risk, take

the one-minute test today at DoIHavePreDiabetes.org, brought to you by the Ad Council and its pre-diabetes awareness partners. Young women are starting to recession-proof their lives. Wall Street Journal reporter Anne Marie Alcantara joins me. Anne Marie, I've seen the term recession indicator thrown around a lot lately. What does the term mean and what are some examples of them? Sheriff online or chronically online might mean a little something different to you. People have been throwing it around to say they're cutting down on manicures or eating out, just things that people feel like they're cutting down on because they're

worried that there's a recession on its way. The economy has been at the forefront of news for the past few weeks. How is this making consumers feel? In short, not great. Consumer sentiment last month dropped to its lowest point since 2022, and while that was bad, it plunged even further this month. And so consumers are just very not happy with what's going on and seem to be really nervous about the future. You spoke to some young women about how they're saving money and calling it recession indicators.

What are some things that they're like completely cutting out? One big theme across almost every single person I spoke to included not eating out as much anymore. Or even when you're grocery shopping, cutting back on little treats, like a pint of ice cream and things like that. Just anything where they can cut back in a way that feels okay. You know, it's not a big sacrifice, but definitely helps their wallet. Mansion manicures.

I spoke to one woman who thought about going back to being a brunette after being a blonde, because it's really expensive to get highlights. Some are cutting out, you know, those subscriptions like Amazon Prime, Netflix, that come around and just sneak up on your bill and all of a sudden you're like, it's been charged, nothing more to do there. So they're taking that back and making sure they don't pay for those services anymore. Another woman mentioned she's not doing sober Ubers anymore. So anytime she can take the subway, it's all sorts of these quote unquote,

like little luxuries that we have in our lives that people are cutting back on. In what ways are people getting really creative? So one woman I spoke to is getting into DIY fashion. She's dyeing her sweatpants, you know, that sort of fade. She's also learning how to sew from TikTok tutorials. She recently cut off some sleeves of her collared shirts and turned them into bibs to wear under her sweaters.

And then another woman I spoke to mentioned she is using chat GPT for like many therapy sessions. And she knows it's not the ideal situation, right? And probably not something that her own therapist would maybe recommend, but she knows it's just expensive to do therapy on the regular and right, and probably not something that her own therapist would maybe recommend, but she knows it's just expensive to do therapy on the regular and just uses it to rationalize her feelings. Since we're talking so much about recession indicators, I, like I said before, I've seen

this everywhere. Anne-Marie, I've been thinking a lot about mine, and I think I've come to the conclusion that it's probably switching out my iced coffee run To a homemade one, which is like I can't do the homemade ice vanilla latte and that's okay Did this story have you thinking about yours? Oh, absolutely Anytime I write any story dealing with the economy. I started thinking about what can I do in my life? And I think for me a big one is the trinket economy for sure. Little charms and accessories for your purse and things like that that I'm like, you know what, I actually don't need to have another little trinket for my desk or my purse.

There's $15 I could easily save. Another one is definitely eating out less. I think it just gets so easy to be like, I'm tired and I'm just too stressed to do something and then There goes $30 per meal in your story. It's really interesting how you mentioned that women are some of America's biggest spenders Could we see this impact other aspects of the economy? I spoke to Serkana, which is a consumer analytics research firm, and they told me that female shoppers accounted for 60% of general merchandise sales. That includes things like apparel, footwear, home decor, and that spending is already being

cut back. When women are cutting back on those things, that means potentially like downturn in hiring, right? If you're thinking about like shopping, do you really need that many retail workers? It's all very connected. Looking ahead, there's a big cloud of uncertainty about what the state of our economy will look like. If someone's listening to this and they're considering a change in their spending habits, like the ones we talked about or maybe they're part of the drink it economy as well. How can they figure out what they realistically can afford to cut? Like what questions should people be asking themselves?

I think it starts very basic, you know, what do you actually need? You know, we want to go to the Maslow hierarchy of needs pyramid, yeah. To survive. Like, but you know, like manicures for women are a big one that just kept coming up. Do you need that every few weeks? Or maybe you change it and do press on nails or you do it less often, right? It's taking a look at your finances and what your actual needs and what, of course, makes you feel good

and trying to figure out, okay, maybe if I cut out eating out as much, maybe I can still keep up the nail habit. Things like that, like figuring out what you can cut that still maintains the way you like living and hopefully saving money as well. You're basically trying to own your wallet again. You're just taking a better look at your finances and budgeting and figuring out, okay, this is what my life actually looks like, this is what I actually need, this is how much I'm spending on groceries every month, and moving from there and figuring it out.

— That's WSJ Reporter Anne-Marie Alcantara. And that's it for your money briefing. This episode was produced by me with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm Arianna Aspuru for The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening.