Shop less and save more with a 'no-buy challenge'
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Hey everybody, it's Marielle. When was the last time you bought something? Like a piece of clothing or jewelry or electronics or makeup or a kitchen gadget or home decor? Was it a month ago? A week ago? An hour ago? After all, buying things is so easy now. We can drop $100 on a deluxe egg cooker while we're waiting for the subway, or buy sunglasses on flash sale while we're in line for coffee. Even grab an adorable hot pink cake stand while we're in a Zoom meeting. Because we definitely will start making cakes if we have a cake stand, right? Of course, a lot of this stuff we're buying isn't stuff we need.
Let's go through my purse. I have, let's count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
Six lip balms. This is Alicia Berman in a conversation with journalist Stacey Vanek-Smith back in 2024. At the time they talked, Alicia was 35, working in fashion and beauty in New York. Trying new products and new looks was relevant to her job, but mostly she just loved shopping. And she ended up with a lot of stuff she didn't need.
I have two hand creams, two perfumes. Oh, I have a lip liner. I have sunscreen. I have face spray. Basically, oh, cuticle cream. I'm like the Mary Poppins of beauty products.
All of these products are things Alicia bought almost a year before she talked to Stacey.
What is the no-buy challenge and why is it gaining popularity?
Because she started doing a no-buy challenge. As in, she made a decision to join the no-buy challenge. No Buy has been a movement on social media with millions of people giving it a try, most for 30 days. But Alicia, she felt like she needed something more drastic.
One of my goals for 2024 is to do a No Buy year.
This is Alicia's first TikTok post. She started making the videos just to hold herself accountable.
No new clothes, no new accessories, no new beauty.
So right now, a lot of people are reexamining how they consume. Because they want to get a handle on their finances, because they want less clutter in their houses, because they're worried about how all of the buying we're doing is affecting the planet. We asked journalist Stacey Vanek-Smith to look into the Viral No Buy Challenge, how it's going, and what some of the best advice is for people who want to start their own challenge or just to consume more mindfully.
I've been covering business and economics for more than 15 years. And one thing that has always blown my mind is how much shopping is the lifeblood of our economy. Nearly 75% of the U.S. economy, biggest economy in the world, is consumer spending, a.k.a. people buying stuff. It is not an exaggeration to say that you buying that coastal grandma cardigan on your lunch break is a main pillar of the whole world's economy. Consumerism is a vast and powerful machine, and opting out of it is not easy. For Alicia Berman, the push to try came from this one moment when she ducked into a store in Brooklyn to buy gloves.
I left the store with a $600 winter coat that I just didn't need and couldn't afford. And, yeah, like, I was so overdrafted that I did a balance transfer into my account to pay for it. Like, it was a mess. So that was kind of my, like... breaking point.
Alicia started to think about how much she was buying and she started to feel like it was too much.
I got probably between 10 and 30 things a week. It was like, you know, there would be one big ticket item a week and then maybe like lip glosses or a pair of socks, you know, but I had to get something pretty much every single day or like I... It was an addict.
Alicia was also in a lot of debt. Her bank account was empty, her closets were bursting, and she had been reading about what overconsumption was doing to the planet.
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