By Kimberly Palmer, NerdWallet
Spending less, it turns out, can be pretty trendy.
Social media influencers are celebrating the art of consuming less. They are thrifting, sharing no-buy challenges and buying items with longevity in mind, and showing followers how they can, too — all under the hashtag “#underconsumptioncore”.
“There is a discourse pushing back against overconsumption,” says Dana Miranda, author of “You Don’t Need a Budget” and the “Healthy Rich” newsletter on Substack. “Things have become so easy to get, including things we don’t value very much. We don’t need all this stuff in our lives.”
That stuff, adds Kasia Stolarz, a certified financial planner in Halifax, Nova Scotia, often “doesn’t make us as happy as we thought it would.”
While personal finance experts generally agree that consuming less is something to be celebrated, they also warn about taking this latest take on conscious spending too far. Here are five ways to save with the underconsumption trend without letting it negatively impact your lifestyle:
Tap into your own values
Embracing frugality in a healthy way depends on connecting spending to your own values, Miranda says. That means thinking about what feels right, where you want to make changes and what your goals are.
“Try to take a mindful approach,” Miranda says. “I can’t recommend just looking at what someone else is doing and adopting that in your life. Invest in what you’re actually needing and figure out how to make it work in your own way.”
In other words, she says, “Don’t do whatever ‘hashtag underconsumption’ is telling you to do.”
“The key is to have a really good sense of what your values are,” Stolarz says. For example, you might value spending time with family or traveling, so you decide to put more money and resources towards those categories instead of buying more items.
Make a customized plan
Smart spending depends on developing a plan that aligns with your own goals,…
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