What if we stopped shopping?

Summary

Today, Explained: What If We Stopped Shopping?

Episode Release Date: March 14, 2025
Hosts: Sean Rameswaram & Noel King
Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network

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1. Introduction to "No Buy 2025"

The episode delves into the burgeoning "No Buy 2025" movement, a TikTok trend encouraging individuals to cease all non-essential shopping for the year 2025. This initiative, as highlighted by host Noel King, is a protest against rampant consumerism driven by factors such as mounting personal debts and exorbitant prices.

Noel King [00:01]:
"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."

This movement has resonated with many, prompting participants to not only reduce their financial burdens but also to make a stand against unsustainable consumer practices.

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2. Mia Westrap's Journey: Embracing Minimalism

One of the prominent voices in this movement is Mia Westrap, a 27-year-old English social worker who took her "No Buy" pledge to the extreme. Mia shares her personal struggles with financial literacy and the catalyst that led her to commit to a year-long boycott of non-essential purchases.

Mia Westrap [02:19]:
"2024 is going to be the year that I get my shit in terms of my finances. I have been, please just support me for the next year because I'm not going to buy anything because I'm poor."

Mia's initiative gained unexpected traction when her TikTok video, where she publicly declared her commitment, went viral, amassing over a million views and 6,000 followers. This surge in attention provided her with both support and accountability, aiding her in adhering to her financial goals.

Mia Westrap [05:02]:
"I couldn't afford to do anything... my Finanacial literacy was at an absolute zero percent. I couldn't afford to do anything."

Throughout the year, Mia meticulously categorized her spending into green (essential expenses like bills and groceries), yellow (necessary replacements), and red (non-essential items such as dining out and carbonated drinks). This structured approach enabled her to save nearly £9,000 by the end of the year, a testament to the efficacy of mindful spending.

Mia Westrap [11:15]:
"I actually ended up saving just under £9,000, which I think in like USD, that's maybe eleven and a half thousand dollars or something."

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3. Aja Barber's Perspectives on Consumerism

Aja Barber, another key figure in the conversation, offers a critical analysis of consumer culture. With over two decades of advocacy against fast fashion, Aja emphasizes the ethical and environmental repercussions of rampant consumerism.

Aja Barber [18:59]:
"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 hand, especially when I know what fabric costs, what a machine costs, you know."

In her book, "Consumed: The Need for Collective Change," Aja outlines the systemic issues underpinning the consumer-driven economy. She argues that the obsession with affordable goods often masks the exploitation of labor and environmental degradation.

Aja Barber [20:23]:
"I think the need to consume so much is really built into the fabric of our society."

Aja challenges the economic structures that necessitate overconsumption, advocating for a shift towards sustainability and ethical consumption. She underscores the importance of individual responsibility in questioning corporate practices and making informed purchasing decisions.

Aja Barber [22:35]:
"Our economy cannot be structured in a way where we have to buy cheap garbage in order for us to survive in a way that thrives."

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4. Broader Implications and Economic Tensions

The episode also touches upon the inherent tensions within a consumer-driven economy. Noel King and Aja Barber discuss the delicate balance between individual financial responsibility and the broader economic impacts of reduced consumer spending.

Noel King [23:11]:
"We do have consumer economies. It is true that when people buy less, our economy suffers, people lose jobs, the markets might go down..."

Aja Barber [21:59]:
"I see this all the time in my generation, right? Can't buy a house, don't have health care, but you know what you can get? You can get a cheap summer dress and that'll be the band aid that you'll put over the scrape on your arm..."

Aja articulates the systemic issues that drive consumerism, such as eroding social safety nets, which in turn force individuals to seek solace in material possessions despite the lack of long-term fulfillment they provide.

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5. Conclusion: Rethinking Consumerism

The episode concludes by urging listeners to rethink their consumption habits and to challenge the status quo of a consumerist society. Both Mia and Aja emphasize the importance of community support and collective action in fostering a more sustainable and ethically responsible economy.

Aja Barber [26:19]:
"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..."

The "No Buy 2025" movement, as explored in this episode, serves as a catalyst for broader discussions on financial responsibility, ethical consumption, and systemic change, encouraging listeners to become more conscious consumers and advocates for a just economy.

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Notable Contributors:

• Mia Westrap: English social worker and advocate for financial literacy.
• Aja Barber: Author of "Consumed: The Need for Collective Change" and critic of fast fashion.

Production Credits:

• Produced by: Victoria Chamberlain
• Edited by: Jolie Meyers
• Fact-Checked by: Laur Bullard
• Additional Team Members: Peter Balan, Rosen, Avishai Artsy, Gabrielle Burbe, Miles Brian, Carla Javier, Travis Larchuk, Amanda Llewellyn, Hadi Muagdi, and Devin Schwartz.
• Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

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Support and Membership: Listeners are encouraged to support the podcast through Vox’s membership program, ensuring the continued production of insightful and impactful journalism.

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the "What If We Stopped Shopping?" episode of Today, Explained, highlighting personal stories and systemic critiques of consumer culture.

Transcript

[Noel King]

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.

[Mia Westrap]

It's official.

[Noel King]

My debt will be 100% gone, including.

[Aja Barber]

My car loan by August of next year.

[Noel King]

Protest.

[Aja Barber]

These prices are ridiculous.

[Noel King]

I'm not okay with them.

[Aja Barber]

I'm sure you're not okay with them. So what we need to do is.

[Noel King]

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 buy 2025 boycott community.

[Aja Barber]

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.

[Noel King]

Coming up on Today explained what happens when so many of us decide we.

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[Astro Teller]

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[Noel King]

You are listening to Today explained.

[Mia Westrap]

So my TikTok story is quite funny. I had no idea how to use the app. I didn't have it over lockdown or anything. My friends and family were saying, get TikTok. And I was like, it's going to just damage my brain. Like, I don't want to download TikTok. I eventually did because I was seeing quite a few funny videos on social media.

[Noel King]

I'm fast as fuck, boy. Come get some. Hi.

[Mia Westrap]

Hi.

[Noel King]

Good morning.

[Mia Westrap]

And I made a video thinking that just my friends would be able to see it.

[Noel King]

Oh no. You are like that person who thinks your Venmo is private.

[Mia Westrap]

Exactly. Exactly. So I made a TikTok video with absolutely no makeup and hair done. I was in my work uniform. So 2024 is going to be the year that I get my shit in terms of my finances. I have been, please just support me for the next year because I'm not going to buy anything because I'm poor. I go to sleep, I wake up. The video has over a million views. I've already got about 6,000 followers. Thank you for being so supportive. And I was like, oh, okay. I didn't quite understand how this website works but I guess I'm gonna roll with it now. Maybe it'll keep me motivated. I'm here to hold myself accountable and if I help somebody else along the way, then that's just a bonus. Alright, bye.

[Noel King]

Mia Westrap, 27, English social worker Sometimes goes to extremes.

[Mia Westrap]

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. 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 had 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.

[Noel King]

Let's talk about those behaviors and what your financial circumstances were that animated this whole thing. What was going on with your. Your money?

[Mia Westrap]

So I to really, really rewind. I grew up. My mum was a single mom 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 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. 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. So that's when I began to realize, okay, 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, experiencing.

[Noel King]

So as 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.

[Mia Westrap]

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. I didn't put any limit on the groceries that I was going to buy because I knew that it was going to be a year of me cooking my own food. So I might as well try and purchase things that I like and not try and skimp too much there. Yellow was the category of items where I was allowed to spend money, but only if there was a caveat attached to it or specific circumstances. So if my laptop charger broke or something that I use every day in the kitchen, for example, broke, then I would replace that. It was more replacements than anything. And then red was the long, long, long list of things that I was not going to let myself buy for an entire year. So meals out, carbonated drinks, which I was very much addicted to at the time. So the first absolutely abhorrent financial decision I made in 2023 was spending over £1,000 on Cherry Pepsi Max. And that's a very, very conservative estimate. No new clothes, no books, just things that I had enough of and could make do without buying more for a year.

[Noel King]

Did you, did you cheat at all?

[Mia Westrap]

I did a couple of times, but I was very honest with everybody about it.

[Noel King]

Did you go on TikTok and spill.

[Mia Westrap]

Or what did I did? So that was another good thing about TikTok was that it allowed me to kind of talk through my thinking if I was tempted to buy something on the yellow list or on the red list. When my other friend came round, we all went out for dinner. I've spent about £60 over the past three days that I probably didn't need to. Like we probably could have found things to do for free. And it makes me. There was a couple of times over the summer where my weight had Fluctuated. And I hadn't really accounted for that because none of my summer clothes fit me anymore. So I bought like a pair of trousers with a stretchy waist and one oversized T shirt that would go with kind of everything else I wore. And other than that, there wasn't any big breaking of the rules. It was more so like little breaking of the rules. But in a. They were mindful purchases and they've informed the way that I still think about consuming things.

[Noel King]

Now we are on zoom, and I am noting that your hair is quite cute. You have nice bangs. Your eyebrows are on fleek, as we said five years ago. What about beauty, hair care, makeup? What'd you do?

[Mia Westrap]

I am still getting through the same tinted moisturizer that I bought about two and a half years ago, so that's gross. You say I've got cute bangs. We're both kidding ourselves. I obviously cut them myself, but you cut them well. And then for eyebrows again, I went without for a year, but then that was the first thing that I treated myself to this year, was getting my eyebrows waxed because I was just taking to them with a razor. And I ended up looking like two completely different people, depending on which side of my face you were looking at.

[Noel King]

Okay, so you got through the end of your year and you worked really hard. How much money did you end up saving?

[Mia Westrap]

I actually ended up saving just under £9,000, which I think in like USD, that's maybe eleven and a half thousand dollars or something.

[Noel King]

Okay, that's a lot of money. It's about a thousand. Close to a thousand dollars a month.

[Mia Westrap]

Yes. Yeah. Which really, really surprised me. A lot of that was. Well, maybe a little less than half of that was TikTok paying its creators, which is always lovely, but, yeah, at least 500 pounds a month of that was just me saving my salary.

[Noel King]

What was the hardest thing? What was the thing that you wanted to buy and couldn't stop thinking about buying, but for that year you just weren't allowed to?

[Mia Westrap]

Clothes. That was my clothes. Yeah, they're my. Yeah, they're my downfall. I just love charity shopping and, yeah, going to vintage stores. And then the other thing that I missed was being lazy, basically because you are having to go out grocery shopping and doing a full grocery shop. You can't just rely on, like, food deliveries. You need to kind of organize how you're going to get places without an Uber. So that's what I found difficult at times, was the. The e. Letting go of the ease that I lived my life by beforehand.

[Noel King]

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?

[Mia Westrap]

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, 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. Maybe they were just curious to see if somebody could do it for an entire year.

[Noel King]

And you did. Mia, congratulations.

[Mia Westrap]

Thank you.

[Noel King]

That was Mia Westrap coming up. Why it seems like everyone is starting to agree that we buy too much crap. Foreign.

[Claire]

Support for today Explained comes from Deleteme. As humans, we tend to forget things over time. It's just one of the things that makes us who we are. Unfortunately, the Internet doesn't work that way. And your sensitive information can live online for a long, long time. Kind of gross when you think about it. Anyway, a lot of data can be collected and sold to the highest bidder by data brokers, which can lead to identity theft, phishing attempts. Not the cool kind, harassment and unwanted spam calls. But Deleteme wants to help you protect your privacy. Delete Me says they'll help you monitor and remove the personal information you don't want on the Internet. Claire, what did you think of Deleteme?

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[Guest]

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[Noel King]

Support for today explained comes from found. What is Found? Found is a business banking platform and they say that they make staying on top of invoices and payments incredibly easy. Found says they can automate activities such as exchange, expense tracking and you can even set aside money for different business goals and control spending with different virtual cards. Found says that when you add it all up, it doesn't just help you save money, it can help you save time. And other small businesses are loving Found too. According to Found, one user said, quote found is going to save me so much headache. It makes everything so much easier. Expenses, income, profits, taxes, invoices, even exclamation point. And found says they have 30,000 five star reviews just like this. You can open a Found account for free at f o u n d.com explained found is a financial technology company. It is not a bank. Banking services are provided by Piermont bank, member of the fdic. You can join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. Hi hi, Good morning Today Explained. I'm Noel King. Aja Barber loves clothing. She also loves knowing how things were made. About two decades ago, Aja started wondering about her clothes.

[Aja Barber]

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 and M could sell a dress for $5 that looked far better than anything I could create with my two hand, 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.

[Noel King]

The answer, of course, is the people making those clothes are often overseas and frequently paid very little. Eventually, Aja quit buying fast fashion. She quit buying from Amazon, and she wrote a book called the need for Collective Change. It was published in 2021, and we called Aja this week to see how it feels to be vindicated. So you've been. You've been banging the drum for a decade. Ten years ago, nine years ago, were you embraced online? Like, what was the reaction to what you were saying?

[Mia Westrap]

No.

[Aja Barber]

So I've been talking about, you know, fast fashion for a decade, and it was literally like telling a bad joke and people throwing tomatoes at you. And I've been in, you know, really like, liberal and lefty spaces. But I began to see that there was some raging hypocrisy surrounding fast fashion because people would be all about the feminism and they would be all about, you know, human rights. And then I'd be like, yeah, we need to stop shopping at Forever 21 because they are, you know, not paying their garment workers. And people will be like, boo. Like, how dare you make me think about this system I really enjoy engaging with.

[Noel King]

We've probably been asking ourselves this since time immemorial, but where do you think the need to consume so much comes from?

[Aja Barber]

I think the need to consume so much is really built into the fabric of our society.

[Noel King]

Now, the most important step of all. Velvety smooth Maybelline mascara to order your Betty Crocker 100 piece decorating kit for.

[Astro Teller]

$10 plus shipping and handling.

[Aja Barber]

But if you call now within the.

[Noel King]

Next 20 minutes, because we can't do.

[Aja Barber]

This all day, we'll give you a second set absolutely free. We are raised as consumerists from the amount of advertising that you see, from the messaging that we get from political leaders. This is something that I talk about and consumed after 9 11, George W. Bush told people to get out there.

[Noel King]

And shop 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.

[Aja Barber]

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.

[Noel King]

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, you know, their retirement in the market. So, like, 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?

[Aja Barber]

Our economy cannot be structured in a way where we have to buy cheap garbage in order for us to survive 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.

[Noel King]

Hmm. 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, access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream. That sounds to me like something that you would agree with wholeheartedly. It's not from the Green Party, it's not from the Socialist Party. It's from the Republican Party.

[Aja Barber]

Well, here's the thing. I think where we feverishly disagree is on this notion of the American dream. One person's American dream tends to be another person's American nightmare. What sort of dream is there for a country that is built on the exploitation of the indigenous people? That live there and the exploitation of imported people through chattel slavery. When we look at, at 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. Problem I see is we have eroding social safety nets in our society. And so because of 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 health care, but you know what you can get? You can get a cheap summer dress and that'll be the band aid that you'll put over the scrape on your arm that's annoying you that you're not going to go to a doctor to check out because you don't have health insurance. I remember telling someone when I was living in the US 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, that system, that's who you should be mad at. So, yeah, I do think that there's, there's some space for 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.

[Noel King]

All right, so many of us live in the us. It is a consumer economy. It's a capitalist society. The question then I guess is how can we be more responsible? No, buy 20, 25 is, is one option. What else do you see as useful?

[Aja Barber]

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, 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.

[Noel King]

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 Meyers edited, Matthew Billy and Andrea Christen's daughter Engineered and Laur Bullard checked the facts. Today Explained is produced by Peter Balan on Rosen we miss you, Bud, Avishai Artsy, Gabrielle Burbe, Miles Brian Carla Javier, Travis Larchuk, Amanda Llewellyn, Hadi Muagdi and Devin Schwartz. Patrick Boyd mixes masters, makes decisions. Amina Elsadi 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 Ramasfuram 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 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 Noel King. It's TODAY Explained.

[Burnett Grant]

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[Host]

Sometimes a single performance can define an artist's legacy. Think about Hendrix's fiery Woodstock national anthem or Beyonce's homecoming at Coachella. Coming up on Switched On Pop, we're exploring artists who've had recent transformative live shows. First is Missy Elliott, who recently put on her first world tour, where she taught everybody to get the freak on. And then there's her collaborator Timbaland, who recently evolved from beat maker to orchestra conductor at the Songwriter hall of Fame. And then Lady Gaga, whose Chromatica Ball featured a theatrical museum of brutality revealing the darker side of Gaga's mayhem. Listen to these live moments on Switched On Pop wherever you get Podcasts brought to you by Defender.