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
Chapter 1: What is No Buy 2025 and why is it trending?
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?
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What's up, y'all? It's Kenny Beecham. We are currently watching the best playoff basketball since I can't even remember when. This is what we've been waiting for all season long. And on my show, Small Ball, I'll be breaking down the series matchups, major performances, in-game coaching decisions, and game strategy and so much more for the most exciting time of the NBA calendar.
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Chapter 2: How did Mia Westrap's TikTok video go viral?
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 um
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 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 three 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. I didn't 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 um So that's when I began to realise, OK, I really do not understand where my money is 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 more precarious by the day in the UK. And I just felt like I needed more of 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 kind of color code my spending. Type A. Yeah, exactly. Type A. So I made a green, yellow and red list. Green was the things that I could spend my money on without question. So that was bills, rent, groceries.
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Chapter 3: What financial habits led Mia to start a no-buy year?
All right. So at the start of your year, you were just a girl standing in front of a TikTok asking, 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 and 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.
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Chapter 4: What were the rules for Mia's no-buy year?
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Thank you for watching. They say it's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration that's to blame for rough days after drinking. They say their pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre-alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly, and you'll feel your best tomorrow. Just ask Claire White.
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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 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.
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Chapter 5: What did Mia miss the most during her no-buy year?
Chapter 6: How much money did Mia save by not shopping?
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 got to shop to save the economy. And on 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. It 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 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 economically. 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.
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 Besant 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...
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Chapter 7: What challenges did Mia face during her no-buy year?
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, 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 gonna go to a doctor to check out because you don't have health insurance. I remember telling someone when I was living in the U.S.
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 U.S. 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 a people to maybe see eye to eye on this one.
But ultimately, we have to want better for everyone else. And in that, we'll want better for ourselves.
All right. So many of us live in the U.S. It is a consumer economy. It's a capitalist society. The question then, I guess, is how can we be more responsible? No Buy 2025 is one option. What else do you see as useful?
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Chapter 8: What insights did Mia gain from her no-buy experience?
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 Myers edited, Matthew Billy and Andrea Kristen's daughter engineered, and Laura Bullard checked the facts. Today Explained is produced by Peter Balanon-Rosen, we miss you, bud.
Avishai Artsy, Gabrielle Berbet, Miles Bryan, Carla Javier, Travis Larchuk, Amanda Llewellyn, Hadi Malagdi, 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.
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