The low-buy challenge isn't just about money
How spending less can make you happier and healthier
As a general rule, I'm not a big fan of social media trends. Most of them are stupid, dangerous, or pointless. (Okay, maybe I'm just a grumpy old man.) However I do rather like the low-buy trend that became popular on TikTok earlier this year.
The idea is simple. Don't buy anything you don't need. Make sure you use everything completely, and whenever possible, buy secondhand, recycled, or upcycled items rather than new.1
This appeals to me partly because it’s fundamentally anti-consumerist, but also because this is how I was brought up in the 1970s. Wartime slogans like “make do and mend” were drummed into me from an early age. Most of my clothing were hand-me-downs, secondhand, or handmade. We never threw away anything that was potentially useful. I remember old coffee tins filled with rubber bands, odds and ends of string, the last inch of pencils or crayons, and so on. When we got parcels in the mail, we carefully unwrapped them and saved the brown paper for another day. We even saved the wrapping paper from Christmas presents for next year. To this day, I try to avoid waste as much as I can. I still cut up envelopes and use them as jotting paper, and I'll squeeze every last scrap out of the toothpaste tube.
Saving money isn’t just a financial issue
However, something I hadn't appreciated until recently is how being frugal can affect your well-being as well as your finances. As Peter Muennig, professor of Health Policy at Columbia University notes, reducing your spending has some interesting effects, potentially improving your physical and mental health, improving your relationships and social life, and even increasing your longevity.2
According to numerous surveys, the vast majority of us say that financial stress has a major impact on their lives. CNBC reports that 90% of Americans say money impacts their stress level and 73% rank finances as the number one stress in their lives.3
As Muennig notes, when you reduce your cost of living, you’re more likely to be financially secure, which can make your day-to-day life much less stressful. It can also give you the freedom not to take on overtime or a side job to make ends meet, giving you more time to spend on activities that make you happy or with friends and family.
Better work-life balance and a better social life has been repeatedly proven to reduce hypertension, heart attacks, strokes, digestive issues, migraines and diabetes, as well as stress, anxiety, and depression.
Or, if you have a little extra money, you can choose to spend it on something that improves your lifestyle and health, such as having a better diet, joining a gym, or taking yoga classes. I’ve written a lot recently about the effects of diet and exercise: having the time and money to look after yourself physicall can play a huge part in improving your mood and your enjoyment of life, in addition to all the physical benefits.
Or you can treat yourself to a few luxuries without feeling guilt or regret. That may seem antithetical to the low-buy principle, but in moderation, there’s nothing wrong with treating yourself occasionally. In fact, that little hit of dopamine is actually good for your mental health.4
“When we give ourselves treats, we feel energized, cared for, and contented, which boosts our self-command — and self-command helps us maintain our healthy habits.”
Gretchen Rubin5
Saying no makes you value things more
In other words, the low-buy approach isn’t just about reducing waste and saving money (and, as a handy side-effect, saving the planet). It’s also good for our mental and physical health.6
But it’s not easy to do. As I wrote in my recent piece on limbic capitalism and an earlier piece on “need”, corporations manipulate our primitive desires into buying things we don't want or need. We’re conditioned into being acquisitive, even if that’s not in our own best interests.
The low-buy approach is a great way to combat this conditioning.
Effectively, your default response to everything becomes that you question whether you really need it. If you can't put your hand on your heart and say yes, then you don't need it, and you can’t justify buying it. So unless it’s a very, very special treat, you don’t buy it.
Paradoxically, this has the effect of changing the way you value things. When every single purchase is a carefully considered, mindful, choice, it means something to you, because it's not something you spent money on without thinking about it.
You may have less, but it’ll feel like you have so much more.
I'm not a doctor, dietitian, nutritionist, therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, meditation trainer, yoga teacher, or anything else. My academic background is in anthropology, and I've taken some neuroscience courses, but otherwise I'm self-educated. Nothing in this blog constitutes professional advice.
How to Do a Low-Buy Year Successfully in 2025, MintNotion, 2025
The Link Between Health and Financial Well-Being, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 2024
The Psychology of Rewarding Yourself with Treats, Psych Central, 2024
It's really refreshing to hear that this has been a trend again. It's a welcome healthy sign. I wonder if culturally we are beginning to turn in a new direction.
I think your mum was living like that until she died. And it is very much something I adhere to especially when it means less stuff and more money to spend on good food.
I kept expecting to see the Dickens quote "“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery" So as you didn't put it I'm adding it here :)