Tight and proud: how counting the pennies was rebranded as ‘loud budgeting’
Name: Loud budgeting.
Age: New for 2024.
Appearance: Tight and proud.
How much noise can budgeting actually make? As much as you want.
If this is about screaming at my kids for leaving the fridge open, I’m already doing that. Think of loud budgeting as the antidote to quiet luxury.
OK, I will, but first: what is quiet luxury? It’s a casual, “low-key” approach to luxury styling: “A battered Hermès Kelly bag or a £1,000 camel coat thrown over an ancient pair of vintage jeans,” according to Vogue.
Sounds stupid. It’s also very 2023. Loud budgeting is the opposite.
An ancient camel coat thrown over £1,000 jeans? More of a wholesale rejection of aspirational consumerism and an open embrace of thriftiness. The concept comes from a viral post by the TikToker Lukas Battle, now viewed more than 1.5m times.
Is he just telling me to admit I’m poor? “It’s not ‘I don’t have enough,’ it’s ‘I don’t want to spend,’” says Battle.
He’s saying I should give up trying to be like rich people. According to Battle, this isbeing like rich people. “If you know any rich people, you know that they hate spending money,” he says. “So it’s almost more chic, more stylish, more of a flex.”
And this is catching on? In the US it is. Social media is full of people telling you to “broadcast your spending limits” and be financially upfront with friends.
What are some of the techniques of loud budgeting? Financial experts suggest putting “deactivation stickers” on your credit cards, to remind you what you’re saving for.
I’m not doing that, but carry on. Turn down costly social invitations, and be honest about why. Unfollow luxury brands on social media. Be proud to pack your own lunch.
Hang on. Is this communism? No, this is actually the secret key to capitalism: being mean.
But being mean isn’t new. Apparently it’s a bit of a novelty for Gen Z.
Gen Z … Are they the ones who can’t afford to buy houses because they eat so much avocado toast? No, that was millennials.
And now we’re telling the next generation they can survive financial catastrophe by proudly bringing their own coffee from home? It’s a wonder they don’t murder us in our sleep.
Do say: “If it takes the stigma out of budgeting in these difficult times, then
I’m all for it.”
Don’t say: “Are you gonna eat that?”
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But the Granite state hasn’t taken the DNC’s proposals lying down. The state Democratic party here is plowing ahead with a primary regardless, even though the national party has said it will not honor the results. There is a sense that politicians, journalists and voters could be witnessing the end of an era.
“New Hampshire is a very white area with an average age that’s a bit on the older side, so I do understand that it’s maybe not the best group of voters to represent the entire country,” said Jamie Setzler, 20, from New Boston, New Hampshire.
“But from a selfish standpoint it is disappointing. I used to be able to look forward, every four years, to something interesting.”
Holding the first primary has long given the state an outsized influence in national politics. Hundreds of journalists essentially move here for an entire week every four years as they’re able to cover both Republican and Democratic campaigns: in recent days, TV satellite trucks have almost outnumbered the amount of political yard signs in Manchester.
But if Democrats persist with their plan, the state could lose some of its importance, said Chris Galdieri, a politics professor at Saint Anselm college in New Hampshire.
“That’s a concern. I think that’s a lot of what worries state Democrats. It’s not just that the new calendar would have pushed New Hampshire to second place, it would have been second place shared with Nevada, all the way on the other side of the country,” he said.
The change to the calendar came after Joe Biden, who came fifth in the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic primary before reviving his campaign with a win in South Carolina, wrote to the DNC in 2022.
“For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process,” Biden wrote.
“We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.”
Both Iowa and New Hampshire have predominantly white populations, which would appear to be out of sync with the Democratic party – in the 2020 presidential election about 40% of Biden voters were Black, Hispanic, Asian or of other non-white races.
The plan hit a snag, however, when New Hampshire Democrats said they would hold their primary on 23 January, the same day as the Republican party. They cited a state law which says the New Hampshire primary shall be held “on a date selected by the secretary of state which is seven days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election”.
It’s led to a quasi-primary in New
Hampshire, where Joe Biden hasn’t even applied to have his name on the ballot but two long-shot challengers, Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, and Marianne Williamson, an author and selfhelp guru who ran for president in 2020, are crisscrossing the state holding campaign events.
The DNC has said any votes from Tuesday’s primary will not count towards the nomination, but in a sign that the Biden campaign sees the potential for embarrassment, a movement has emerged encouraging people to write his name on voting slips.
The resistance by New Hampshire Democrats, which perhaps should have been expected in a state which has the word “die” in its official motto, has some people skeptical that the calendar change will persist in 2028, when the Democratic party will not have an incumbent president and the primary field is expected to be a lot wider.
“It would be a disappointment. But I don’t think it will happen. We have it in our [state] charter that if another state changes its date, we change the date,” said Amanda Whiby, a co-owner of the Red Arrow Diner, tucked away on a side street in the center of Manchester.
The 100-year-old diner has benefitted from the first-in-the-nation primary more than most. It has become a must-visit stop for both Republican and Democratic candidates, and behind its long, red-topped dining counter, the walls are plastered with framed photos of famous, and not-so-famous, politicians.
“The Democrats tried to make a change, and we’ve dug our heels in,” Whiby said. “We feel very strongly that we do a great job of vetting the candidates here for the rest of the country, and I don’t think that tradition is going to change.”
While it remains to be seen what happens in 2028, there is an argument that New Hampshire has already lost some of its influence, said Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire.
“I actually think the order of states on the calendar now matters less than it did two, three decades ago,” Scala said.
“The whole nomination process has become much more national in scale and scope. Nowadays, I think candidates feel this pressure to build a national name ID, a national brand within their party months ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire.”
Scala pointed to Biden’s poor performance in New Hampshire in 2020, when he won just 8.4% of the vote, as evidence that results here don’t necessarily dictate who will become a party’s nominee.
Added to the sense that New Hampshire’s influence could be on the wane is the way the media has changed. The days of a candidate literally having to introduce themselves to voters in New Hampshire bars, and to give speeches in person, are largely gone.
“Iowa and New Hampshire voters get a lot of their news, not from local outlets, but from national ones. You’ve got New Hampshire conservatives, watching Fox News, and seeing Ron DeSantis and saying to themselves: ‘Oh, Ron DeSantis, okay,’ and then then maybe seeing him in person in New Hampshire.
“Now partisans in every state can have a front-row seat. They can see a televised town hall meeting with Anderson Cooper on CNN, they don’t have to live in Manchester, New Hampshire to go see a candidate. They can watch on TV. And so as a result of all that, I do think it’s a little less important who goes first, who goes second.”
It’s not just that the new calendar would have pushed New Hampshire to second place, it would have been ... shared with Nevada
Chris Galdieri