Can We Loud Budget Our Way Out of Luxury?

Exactly halfway into 2024, now might just be the best time to revisit what had been predicted as the Ins and Outs for the year (really, why do these lists never have any follow-up?) Depending on whom you ask, however, it could also be the worst possible time, especially if those being asked have had (somewhat ambitious) New Year’s fitness resolutions yet to materialize.

In vaguely related news, maybe don’t ask me that either. *Sighs*

That being said, though, among the dozen or so such (generally obnoxious) listicles that have reared their heads in my corner of the Internet, perhaps the most delightfully random pertains to a certain Mr. Lukas Battle of TikTok, which reads:

• Outs – Being shy in social situations, buying from the frozen section at Trader Joe’s, quiet luxury, and stealing oil from other nations. 
• Ins – Being brave enough to ask the person in front of you in the bathroom line if they’ve knocked on the door already (quick note: they haven’t), growing your own food, and loud budgeting. Oh, and also cardigans.

One of the many reasons I love the Internet is that it chooses to look past the obvious fashion crime that is the cardigan (unless you happen to be Katie Holmes) and instead fixated on loud budgeting, Gen-Z’s latest mantra for spending.

Or not spending, to be more specific.

Don’t Spend More, It’s Recessioncore!

If you think about it, loud budgeting couldn’t be a more natural outcome to the state of affairs: it’s literally budgeting for better finances – and loudly, at that.

But its emergence has been in the making for quite some time now.

With the post-COVID economic downturn finally making its presence felt at the tail-end of 2022, a number of different micro-cores simultaneously cropped up across the social media landscape, from an all-around abandonment of logomania to the culture of thrifting and de-influencing among the TikTok crowd urging you—perhaps for the first time ever—not to buy that viral Stanley cup.

Or, for that matter, it’s a shady, dubiously quality-controlled dupe.

Thus, loud budgeting came around at an hour most opportune to the shifting dynamics of the luxury world and the broader consumer goods industry in general, with the “No-Buy January” challenge eventually making way for the year-round “No-Spend 2024” movement. As personal finance expert Jenny Park of @mohaewithjennypark recapitulates, “We all had this YOLO, seize-the-day mentality with money coming out of COVID. We did that for about a year and a half, and now reality is setting in. People are like, Wait, I need a sustainable way to continue living my life and pay my student loans. How do I manage this?”

From Quiet Luxury to No Luxury

Now, it’s one thing to eschew the monogram in light of the impending recessionary gloom and doom of the new world order; it’s entirely another to keep dropping similar (or higher) sums of cash on logo-less, sometimes bland paraphernalia that, at the end of the day, still signal your potential purchasing power – or lack thereof.

And therein lies the primary distinction Battle makes in his viral TikTok, which has now received over 1.4 million views on the platform, necessitating the man to come up with a follow-up reel explaining what exactly he means by loud budgeting.

In Battle’s words, therefore, loud budgeting proclaims, “It’s not I don’t have enough; it’s I don’t want to spend,” comparable to the feeling of “sneaking candy in a movie theater. You feel like you got away with something… an adventure. You feel like you’re winning.” In real life, you’d probably be kicked out of said theater.

But really, it’s all about making a choice – must you “invest” in that $10,000 grey couch (that your toddler will probably throw up on at some point) just because Kylie Jenner has said so? Battle thinks not, and clearly, neither do his legions of adherents – the penny-pinching average Joes who’ve had it with trying to keep up with the Kardashians. Maybe it’s time you quit that $21 Erewhon salad, too.

So, Does the Devil Not Wear Prada?

Clearly, the advent of loud budgeting has been as much a response—not to mention an audibly verbal one—to lifestyle inflation as it is to the general sense of luxury fatigue that has gripped many purse lovers in recent years.

But where stealth wealth is predicated in the form of yet more consumables (The Row, Phoebe Philo, Ralph Lauren, Savette, Khaite, Totême – how many more such labels can you name?) for the consumer to consume, loud budgeting instead puts the reins of the finances into their hands – it’s a feeling as freeing as it is empowering.

And so, what we’ve been seeing is that in this economy, the devil doesn’t wear Prada; she wears Miu Miu, her elegantly disheveled bowler stuffed to the brim with newspapers, wedges for the lengthy walks home, and flats for the subway, maybe even a lunch pail or two thrown in for good measure. Or perhaps she wears contemporary labels – the Polénes and Cult Gaias of the world that infuse personality rather than blatant branding into her outfits.

Why? That is the same reason Warren Buffett owns a private jet and a decade-old sedan. Get yourself your dream bag – and use the s**t out of it. Everyone’s out to get your money; ultimately, it’s where you spend it that counts.