Understanding the Logic Behind ‘Girl Math’ and ‘Boy Math’
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Here's your money briefing for Monday, October 16th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. If you pay cash for something, do you consider it to be free? If something costs less than $5, do you round it down to zero and just call it a day? Some people do. And on social media, it's known as girl math.
They're trying to think about what is worth the investment or how can they stomach the amount of money that they're about to spend in a less painful way. For some people, it is a joke. And then for other people, it is really just justifying using money that they may or may not have.
We'll talk to Wall Street Journal reporter Javi Lieber after the break.
Listen at schwab.com slash washingtonwise.
Here's a list of things that I firmly believe because of girl math. Anything under $5 is free. Anything I buy with a gift card is free. If I buy something but then I return it, I've made money. Going to an event or a concert is free because I purchased the ticket so long ago it doesn't even count.
That's a clip from a TikTok creator summing up some examples of what can be considered girl math. It may sound like some fuzzy math, but it's actually a social media trend. Wall Street Journal reporter Javi Lieber joins me. So Javi, how does girl math work?
What is the viral 'girl math' trend and how did it start on social media?
So girl math is basically slightly twisted logic, where you sort of justify your spending habits. So you can call it a cheeky way to consider a purchase. For example, if you see a sweater, it was originally $100. And then You bought it on sale. The money that you saved from the sale difference, you get to spend or you actually maybe even earned money. And now you are therefore richer. I spoke to another source who said that anytime she goes into a store and she doesn't buy something, she walks out richer because she didn't spend the money. And then she has that money to spend the next day.
So money didn't actually grow in her pocket. It just didn't leave her pocket.
Correct. And the money is actually growing in her mind, which I guess is comforting to her.
So who's doing this kind of math?
I'll say that the girl math hashtag started out on TikTok. The name was coined by a radio show in New Zealand. They called it girl math just in response to all the trends that are happening on TikTok right now, like girl dinner and girl walks and so on. And they created this playful segment where they would allow callers to phone in and talk about their purchases. And then they would do math and back solve how they could either justify their purchases or maybe even how they're making money. And this has snowballed into this viral moment where people are talking about their discretionary spending. And it's worth noting that even though it's called girl math, this goes across all genders. I spoke to a source, Josh, out in Alaska, and he was telling me about how
he bought a exercise bike because he had torn his ACL and the bike was $400 and he wasn't sure about the price tag. But then he did girl math and he said, if I ride the bike 400 times, it actually costs me a dollar to ride the bike. And now that he's ridden the bike 4,000 times, he's riding it for a dime. So really everyone of all genders, ages, and so on, everyone plays these little shopping riddles in their heads.
This isn't just a couple of people we're talking about. The hashtag girl math that you mentioned on TikTok has more than 844 million views. Is this line of thinking serious or is there sort of a wink wink tongue in cheek feeling here?
Anyone participating in the girl math trend is self-aware.
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