WSJ Your Money Briefing - Some Americans Are Vowing to Buy Less or Even Nothing This Year

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Exhausted by higher prices, mounting debt, and the recent holiday season, some people are pledging to buy nothing – or as little new stuff as possible. Wall Street Journal reporter Ann-Marie Alcántara joins host Ariana Aspuru to discuss how the “no buy 2025” social media trend can help rein in spending.  Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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To save money, some people are ditching their shopping carts and pledging to buy less or even nothing this year. So many people feel compelled to buy or keep up with certain trends and things they need to have in their cars or lives and trying to do a no buy or even considering a buy less year. People start to realize I have everything I need for the most part and can focus on saving or just buying stuff when I need it, like truly need it. Wall Street Journal reporter, Anne-Marie Alcantara, joins me to discuss how people are cutting their spending by embracing the no buy 2025 trend. That's after the break. Join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword, it's a way of life.

You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. Here's to learn more. This year, some people are replacing their big shopping hauls with nothing and committing to a social media trend to save money. Wall Street Journal reporter Anne-Marie Alcantara joins me.

Anne-Marie, walk me through what No Buy 2025 looks like. So basically the concept is in the name. People are pledging to either buy nothing or buy less of things that seem unnecessary, whether it's takeout, a water bottle, or even cosmetics and skincare and other things like that. We've seen these buy nothing pledges and groups pop up online a few times in recent years. Why are people bringing back this trend now? It seems to come down to three reasons this year. Inflation, of course, has been top of mind for so many consumers. Just the ebb and flow of prices going up and down, feeling like they actually never go

down. And then, of course, a lot of people have accumulated debt for various reasons, medical, personal, and then the holiday season. It felt like this year for some people they overspent on gifts for friends and family and are realizing now the wrapping paper is in the trash and the toys are cluttering their homes that maybe they overdid it a bit. Their credit card statements finally gonna be due in a little bit like it's just time to reckon with it. Precisely.

And has this trend worked for people? Yes, so once a woman I spoke to, Rachel Holesworth, her and her husband are trying to pare down their debt on one credit card. And so far by doing no buy, they've been able to pay down $2,000 of their debt so far. And so it's going really great for them. They feel really good and they feel really empowered to feel like they're not spending on frivolous things. As with any budget, there are rules,

so I feel like we should lay down some of those rules. What are some examples that are automatic no-buys if you're doing this trend? The big ones are like mindless shopping, scrolling social media, someone's telling you there's the latest viral product that you need to have. Do you actually need to have it? That seems to be a big one on people's minds.

Another is takeout, ordering from the food delivery services and it's doing it too often. That seems to be another one that people seem to be stopping. Also for women in particular, it seems like no more manicures or hair treatments or things that we do to upkeep appearances that can just take the back burner for now. And what are some exceptions to the no buy rules?

Some people will set out budgets for themselves, so they'll put $50 in like a discretionary fund and that can go towards anything. That can go towards a water bottle or something if they want it to, as well as necessities, like if you need food or, you know. Food, water, automatic yeses. If you're tempted to buy something

but are trying to hold up this no buy promise, what kinds of questions should you ask yourself to know if you should actually click checkout online? So one woman I spoke to, for example, takes a screenshot of the item that she wants to in theory get. She puts it in a folder on her computer and then comes back to it at the end of the month. And usually she says she has completely forgotten that those are the things she wanted. And occasionally she does have something that she still wants in there and she'll buy it for herself. You embrace that sort of mindset of let it sit

in the cart, let it sit in a notes app, let it sit wherever it needs to sit and really consider a few days from now, like, do I actually want that or was that mindless scrolling, mindless shopping or a temptation to keep up with a trend that you actually don't really need to do. And giving yourself a grace period of like, you know what, I'm going to put this in my cart, five days later, I'll see if I still want it. Did I actually want it in the first place? Exactly. Are there any other money saving lessons or hacks we can learn from this trend, even if you can't totally commit to a no buy 2025?

Sort of remembering to not keep up with the Joneses, as they say. That seems to be a resonating theme that kept coming up in these calls is, especially with social media, so many people feel compelled to buy or keep up with certain trends and things they need to have in their cars or lives and trying to do a no buy or even considering a buy less year,

people start to realize I have everything I need for the most part and can focus on saving or just buying stuff when I need it, like truly need it. That's a mindset that a lot of us can learn from even if you're not on social media, there's always a temptation to buy something in bulk from a retailer or, oh, this is on sale, let me just get it anyways, I'll probably need it someday and this can limit that mindset a bit. Have you tried this no buy trend? I feel like naturally with all my stories as I report them out, I become too close to

them a bit sometimes. I did sort of start embracing it myself as well. I got a coupon for this sale. Do I need to use the coupon? I don't need to. Just because I'm getting money off doesn't mean I need to buy something. And it's been helpful. I've been unsubscribing from tons of promotional emails as well.

And it's good. It feels nice not to look at your credit card statement and be like, oh, I didn't really save much this month. I have like a cart of stuff that I told myself I'm going to give myself two days and see if I really want it. But I think I do actually want it because I need a pair of jeans. I just need jeans to be a person. That's my grace period, two days. Yeah, that's good. I mean, you've thought about it overnight, maybe two nights overnight. Yeah. Well, I wish you the best of luck.

Thank you. That's WSJ Reporter Anne-Marie Alcantara. And that's it for your Money Briefing. Tomorrow, we'll have our weekly markets wrap up. What's news in markets? And then we'll be back on Monday. This episode was produced by Jess Jupiter. I'm your host, Arianna Aspuru, Jessica Fenton and Michael Laval wrote our theme music.

Our supervising producer is Melanie Roy. Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer. Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are our deputy editors. And Falana Patterson is The Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. Thanks for listening.