Underconsumption Core: The Anti-Spending Trend That's Actually About Contentment

🎥 What is underconsumption core?🔗

Underconsumption core is a social media trend built around a simple idea: use what you already have, buy only what you genuinely need, and stop treating constant acquisition as a default setting. In practice, that looks like someone filming their bathroom shelf with four half-used products instead of forty, or showing off the jeans they've worn for six years. No haul, no unboxing, no "TikTok made me buy it."

The "core" part is social media shorthand for an aesthetic or vibe, which creates a neat irony. As Depop trend specialist Agus Panzoni put it, "the irony lies in the fact that underconsumption is a practice, while 'core' refers to an aesthetic." At its heart, though, the trend is a pushback against haul culture, influencer-driven overconsumption, and the algorithmic pressure to buy more, all the time, whether you need it or not.

📱 Where did it come from?🔗

The trend exploded on TikTok in July 2024. One of the earliest viral posts came from Maya, an 18-year-old creator from Germany, who posted a video showing her old hair dryer and clothes she'd been wearing since seventh grade. That clip hit 2.3 million views and more than 446,000 likes. Sustainability creator Sabrina Pare (@sab.sustainable) started posting underconsumption core content around the same time, and her videos on the theme have accumulated nearly 15 million likes across her 250,000-follower account.

By September 2024, Google searches for "underconsumption core" had spiked 4,250% year-over-year. Mainstream coverage followed quickly: The New York Times ran a piece on 25 July 2024, The Guardian on 7 August, and ABC News Australia on 30 July.

It's worth placing this alongside the trend that came before it. Underconsumption core followed "deinfluencing," which peaked in 2023 and had creators telling audiences not to buy overhyped products, but usually still recommending alternatives, so it stayed fundamentally about buying. Underconsumption core went further: buy less overall, and try to interrupt the acquisition cycle itself rather than just redirect it.

🤔 Why it resonates so deeply right now🔗

The economic context is real. Gen Z is dealing with inflation eroding purchasing power, dwindling pandemic-era savings, a tighter job market, and housing costs that feel permanently out of reach. Business Insider research found Gen Z earning less than millennials did at the same age, a decade earlier. Australians reading this will recognise a lot of that shape, even if the exact numbers differ locally. Our guides to financial nihilism and doom spending go deeper on the Australian housing and cost-of-living data driving similar feelings here.

The cultural context matters too. For years, aspirational content meant hauls: thousands of dollars of clothing, shelves of collectible cups, skincare collections filling a bathroom cabinet twice over. Sustainable fashion creator Jade Taylor told The New York Times that "flagrant displays of wealth that were once aspirational are now insensitive, out-of-touch."

The trust shift is significant. Y-Pulse research found 53% of people aged 13 to 22 prefer recommendations from regular people over influencers, and 45% don't believe creators hold the same authority they once did. That shows up in the engagement numbers too: underconsumption-related posts averaged 633 likes per post, compared with 238 likes per post for #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt.

Megan Doherty Bea, assistant professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, summed up the underlying shift well: "It's really pushing back against this idea that you need to constantly be buying things to have a happy and fulfilling life."

🧠 The financial psychology behind it🔗

Hedonic adaptation. The emotional boost from a new purchase fades surprisingly quickly. You buy the thing, feel good, and within days or weeks it's just a thing you own. Your baseline resets, so you buy something else, and the cycle repeats. This is the dopamine-driven acquisition loop that underconsumption core, at its best, interrupts, not by telling you that wanting things is bad, but by creating a pause between the algorithmic prompt to buy and the actual decision to spend.

Decision fatigue. Constantly evaluating new products is exhausting. A default of "use what I have" removes a surprising number of small decisions from your day, which is its own kind of relief.

The compounding effect. Every dollar not spent on something you didn't genuinely need can go elsewhere, an emergency fund, a mortgage deposit, an investment. It's not dramatic in any single instance, but it accumulates the same way any other consistent habit does.

🎯 The essential: Underconsumption core, stripped of the hashtag, reconnects spending with actual need or genuine want, rather than with whatever the algorithm happened to show you today.

⚖️ Underconsumption core vs. deprivation: a critical difference🔗

This is the distinction that separates a genuinely useful mindset shift from a stricter, less sustainable form of restriction.

Sabrina Pare's own framing captures it well: the trend celebrates using what you have, it doesn't punish you for wanting things. There's no moral hierarchy where buying something new makes you a bad person. Restriction imposed from the outside tends to create resentment and rebound spending. A genuine internal shift toward "enough," coming from your own values rather than financial pressure, tends to be more sustainable and more satisfying.

🛠️ How people are actually applying it🔗

• Using up what you have before buying more. Finishing the moisturiser before opening the new one.
• A moratorium on non-essential purchases for a set period. A "low-buy" month, or a full no-spend challenge.
• Rediscovering what you already own. Decluttering often reveals forgotten items that would otherwise have been rebought.
• Unfollowing accounts that trigger consumption urges. Arguably the single most impactful action on this list.
• Mending and repairing instead of replacing.
• Thrifting and secondhand before buying new.

🤨 The honest caveats🔗

The performative irony is real. Posting content about not consuming is still content creation within the attention economy. Agus Panzoni's "core" vs. "practice" observation cuts right to this.

The class and privilege dimension is significant. Shanu Walpita, trend forecaster at the London College of Fashion, has pointed out there's "an element of privilege to choosing to actively lean into underconsumption and turn it into a form of viral, shareable content." Georgina Johnson, editor of The Slow Grind, has made a similar point: "a lot of people are responding to the trend by saying this is what it is like being working class." Sabrina Pare herself has acknowledged it directly: "lower-income individuals have been doing many of the things that are shown in these videos for ages."

There's a real difference between a lifestyle choice and genuine hardship. Underconsumption core as a lifestyle choice, made from relative financial security, is a different thing from underconsumption as genuine financial hardship. People who cannot afford to spend more aren't participating in a trend, they're navigating real constraint, and it's worth holding that distinction honestly rather than glossing over it.

There's also a risk of it becoming just another thing to consume. Watching hours of minimalism content without actually changing any behaviour is its own kind of irony. None of this invalidates the underlying idea, it just means it's worth engaging with honestly rather than treating it as a pure win with no complications.

🌱 What this means for your own money mindset🔗

You don't need a TikTok account or a hashtag for any of this. The most useful question to sit with is simple: "do I actually want this, or did something external tell me I should want it?" Asked consistently, that question creates a pause between stimulus and response, reconnects spending with your actual values, and slowly changes your baseline over time.

The compounding financial benefit of redirected spending is real. $200 a month redirected over five years adds up quickly, especially once it's invested rather than sitting idle. If part of what makes it hard to say no to spending is social pressure rather than genuine want, our guide to loud budgeting has the actual scripts for saying no without the guilt.

But the psychological benefit might matter more in the short term than the dollar figure does. Sabrina Pare put it well: "people are starting to realise that consumerism can make us feel lonely because it pushes us to seek fulfilment and happiness in material possessions, rather than meaningful relationships."

🎯 The bottom line🔗

Underconsumption core caught on because it names something a lot of people were already feeling: that constant buying wasn't actually making anyone happier, just tired and a little emptier. The trend has real limits, it's easy to perform, and it's a much easier choice for people with financial breathing room than for people without it. But the core mechanism underneath the hashtag is genuinely useful: hedonic adaptation means the boost from buying fades fast, and a deliberate pause before the next purchase is one of the simplest, most durable ways to interrupt that cycle, no aesthetic required.

❓ Frequently asked questions🔗