The Trend That Made Me Feel Like a Good Person
Six months ago, I watched a TikTok where someone talked about buying nothing for an entire month and I felt that specific shame-cocktail that only social media can create. You know the one. Part envy, part moral panic, part genuine curiosity about whether I’m just trash at existing like a normal person.
The #underconsumption hashtag had blown past 500 million views by early 2025, and unlike most viral trends that die off like seasonal depression, this one actually stuck around. It positioned itself as the antidote to years of haul culture, all those videos of people buying things they didn’t need just to film themselves buying things. I got it. I was tired too. So I decided to actually track my spending for six months and see if I was the problem.
I created a spreadsheet. Not a cute aesthetic one. A real one. With categories. With shame built into the conditional formatting.
What My Spreadsheet Actually Revealed
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about tracking your spending: the honesty hits different when it’s your own data staring back at you. I successfully cut my clothing purchases by 60%. That part worked. I stopped buying things I didn’t need from my usual haunts. I thrifted more. I felt virtuous. I even posted about it. That was my first mistake.
But then something weird happened. While I was busy not buying clothes, my spending on experiences went up 31%. Kitchen gadgets increased by 44%. I bought a spiralizer. I bought a second spiralizer because the first one’s handle was weird. I took three weekend trips I probably would have skipped otherwise. My total discretionary spending dropped by only $67 per month. That’s not nothing. That’s also not the transformation I was advertising to people.
The data showed me something behavioral economists at Duke’s Center for Advanced Hindsight actually documented in their 2025 research: when you publicly commit to spending less on social media, you unconsciously increase spending in other categories by about 15%. They call it the licensing effect. You feel like you’ve already made the moral choice, so your brain gives you permission to spend elsewhere. I was living that study. I was the study.
Everyone’s Still Spending, They’re Just Spending Differently
I started looking at the bigger picture and found something that should be obvious but somehow isn’t being talked about enough. According to the NielsenIQ 2025 Consumer Outlook, Gen Z consumers who identified as underconsumers were still spending an average of $340 per month on discretionary goods. That’s only 12% less than people who weren’t even trying to reduce their consumption. We’re not talking about a fundamental shift in behavior. We’re talking about barely noticeable damage control.
What actually changed is where the money goes. The ThredUp 2025 Annual Resale Report showed that thrift store revenue jumped 7% in 2025. People framed this as a win for sustainability and mindful consumption. But read that statistic another way: it suggests that most “underconsumption” is really just consumption redirected. We’re not buying less. We’re buying used instead of new, experiences instead of objects, different things rather than fewer things.
That’s not inherently bad. Used is better than new from an environmental standpoint. Experiences might be more fulfilling than stuff. But we have to be honest about what the trend actually is. It’s not underconsumption. It’s conscientious consumption theater with the same budget and different categories.
The Part Where I Admit I Was Full of It
I was disappointed when I realized my tracking spreadsheet didn’t tell the story I wanted to tell. I wanted to be someone who had figured out the secret to buying less and living better. Instead, I was someone who had successfully repackaged their consumer habits to feel more intentional.
And here’s the genuinely uncomfortable part: I’m not sure that’s entirely wrong, but I’m also not sure it’s entirely right. The clothes I didn’t buy? Good. The secondhand pieces I bought instead? Also good. The random kitchen gadgets and weekend trips? That’s where it gets murky. Were those mindful purchases or were they permission slips my brain wrote for itself?
The reason I’m telling you this instead of just quietly deleting my spreadsheet is because this trend matters specifically because we’re all pretending it’s simpler than it actually is. We see the headlines about underconsumption going mainstream and we think behavior is changing. Meanwhile, spending stayed basically flat, categories just got reshuffled, and everyone got to feel good about trying.
What Actually Happened After Six Months
I kept tracking my spending because at that point I was committed to the bit. What I noticed in months four through six was a stabilization. The novelty of being “good at not buying things” wore off. I started buying some clothes again, but more intentionally. I kept the thrifting habit. The kitchen gadget purchases tapered off because I’d already bought a spiralizer. Twice.
My average monthly discretionary spending settled at roughly $240 below where I started. Not nothing. But not the dramatic transformation that gets engagement on social media. It’s boring. It’s the kind of thing that happens when you actually pay attention to your spending without the pressure of maintaining a persona.
The honest version of this story is that tracking your purchases is useful because awareness changes behavior, not because underconsumption is some revolutionary lifestyle hack. It’s useful because spreadsheets are humbling. Because knowing the exact number makes it harder to lie to yourself. Because sometimes the most useful thing you can do is just pay attention without needing to perform that attention for an audience.
Do you track your spending? Have you noticed the same category-switching I did, or did you actually make bigger changes? I’m genuinely curious whether my experience is universal or whether I’m just really good at self-deception. Drop a comment and tell me what your data actually says.