Thank goodness, it’s finally chic to be a cheapskate
It is chic to be cheap in 2024. Quiet luxury – that minimalist aesthetic that whispered wealth and ruled the world of fashion last year – is out and penny pinching is in.
Except we’re now calling it “loud budgeting” and it isn’t straight-up scrimping. As the name suggests, loud budgeting is about being loud and proud of your money-saving ways, putting your financial aspirations front and centre for friends and family to see, and taking control of how and where you spend your money.
Loud budgeting takes many forms. For some, it’s turning down social invitations that will cost more than you are prepared to spend and – here’s the loud part – being honest about why you’re not coming. Instead of rustling up an excuse, the loud budgeter would say: that’s more money than I’m prepared to spend.
For others, loud budgeting may consist of not buying a new outfit for an upcoming wedding, instead making do with a repeat look.
It could be telling a friend you can do dinner or drinks but not both, or piping up when someone at the table suggests you split the bill when all you had was tap water and a salad to their threecourse meal and bottle of wine.
At its essence, loud budgeting is about not being ashamed of discussing the minutiae of your personal finances and the reality of a budget. It’s about upholding your financial boundaries and not kowtowing to peer pressure.
The simple and surprisingly refreshing concept was coined on TikTok and has soared in popularity among moneysavvy Gen Zers.
New York comedian Lukas Battle invented the term and explained it’s not about being skint. Instead, loud budgeting is “more chic, more stylish, more of a flex” than splashing the cash. “It’s not: I don’t have enough. It’s: I don’t want to spend.”
In a cost of living crisis that shows no signs of abating, the concept is catching on among my millennial set too. My friends and I now boast about sofas we got for a song on Facebook Marketplace.
We choose a restaurant and put on the WhatsApp group chat that the place “is not spenny”. For the first time, I am sharing with certain pals actual details of how I am saving money.
I love this trend. When has frugality ever been fashionable before? But the real charm of this money movement, to me at least, is eradicating the social shame around having a budget and enabling the absolute joy of saying no to expensive plans you don’t actually want to do. Hello, pricey overseas hen do weekends.
When I was growing up, being on a budget was something you whispered about. Nobody spelled out the mechanics of savings and if you couldn’t afford suggested social plans, you either went and felt secretly ill at all the money coming out of your bank account or you cancelled with some other excuse.
I have some horrid memories of sitting in expensive restaurants, scanning the menu with despair and not saying a word as I was too embarrassed to suggest somewhere cheaper.
It is truly ghastly to eat a meal you can’t really afford and not even be able to enjoy a mouthful because you’re so resentful at yourself for not saying: “Hey, I don’t want to spend $30 on a plate of pasta.”
While I’m definitely not advocating that people stop shelling out for the social events that feed their soul, I adore watching Gen Z dismantle the outdated fiscal attitudes I never thought to challenge.
Let’s get rid of the reticence to admit we don’t have infinite funds (silly in retrospect, because who does?), the consumerist desire to keep up with the Joneses and that deep-seated aversion to talking about money.
Instead, we can get behind the cheering underlying message of loud budgeting: Your money has value, you earned it and you get to decide – free of social pressure – how you actually want to spend it.
– Telegraph Group