Mia Westrap
Appearances
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
You are listening to Today Explained. 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. I'm fast as fuck, boy.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
Come get some. And I made a video thinking that just my friends would be able to see it. Oh, no.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
So I made a TikTok video with absolutely no makeup and hair done. I was in my work uniform.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
so 2024 is going to be the year that i get my shit together 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
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
And I was like, OK, I didn't quite understand how this website works, but I guess I'm going to roll with it now. Maybe it will 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. Bye.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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 that was meals out, carbonated drinks, which I was very much addicted to at the time.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
So the first absolutely abhorrent financial decision I made in 2023 was spending over a thousand pounds 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. Did you cheat at all? I did a couple of times, but I was very honest with everybody about it.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
Did you go on TikTok and spill? I 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.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
We probably could have found things to do for free. 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 um
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
And other than that, there wasn't any big breaking of the rules. It was more so like little breaking of the rules, but they were mindful purchases and they've informed the way that I still think about consuming things now.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
I actually ended up saving just under £9,000, which I think in like USD, that's maybe $11,500 or something. Okay. That's a lot of money.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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 a month of that was just me saving my salary.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
That was my... Clothes, 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 organise everything. how you're going to get places without an Uber.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
So that's what I found difficult at times was the E, letting go of the E's that I lived my life by beforehand.
Today, Explained
What if we stopped shopping?
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.