Don’t know how to save money? Please accept this consumption downgrade action plan
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “DT Finance” (ID: DTcaijing ).
The original title “150,000 people discussing on Douban: Consumption downgrade, summed up 3 action plans”
Author | He Shuyao
Edit | Luo Yujing
Design| Zheng Shuya
“What kind of life can I live in Shanghai with a monthly salary of 6,500?”
After reading this Zhihu push, Mia, who just found her first formal job in her life in Shanghai, suddenly became unhappy.
She silently collected an answer that was over ten thousand likes. The answerer summed up the state of the 6500 yuan monthly salary in this super city in one sentence: “Probably you have just entered a white-collar worker, you are a white-collar worker who has paid rent, water and electricity, and found that the salary has been paid.”
After Mia graduated from graduate school, she chose Shanghai as the ideal city for her future work without much thought.
At that time, she hadn’t realized that the problem she was about to face was not how to reach the pinnacle of life in this city, but how to learn to support herself when she was away from home.
“I feel that I have to spend and downgrade, and all food and clothing businesses have to reduce expenses, otherwise they can’t pay the rent.” Mia said.
Finding that income is not worthy of consumption, there are many young people like Mia who are stunned by the cruel social reality. The term consumption downgrade, which originated in 2018, has now become the daily life of many people.
The Douban group “Is consumption downgraded today?” (hereinafter referred to as the’elimination group’) gathered a group of young people who chose to downgrade consumption. Here, 150,000 people are enthusiastically discussing this topic on the Internet-how to speed up the pace of “consumption degradation”.
How do these young people consume and demote? Which consumer spending has the worst downgrade? Through consumption downgrade, do they live better?
Mr DT, who likes to study everything in depth, immediately launched an investigation into this group, hoping to find the answer for Mia to enter the society calmly.
How do young people consume? Downgrade?
Entering this group, what greets Mr. DT is the action plan left by the group leader that represents the spirit and will of the whole group. The sentence “Today, have you been downgraded in consumption?” asked the soul of every newcomer.
(The picture is an introduction to Douban “Is the consumption downgraded today?”)
So what did you discuss specifically?
We collected the titles and texts of more than 3,000 posts and found that the most frequently mentioned topics include how to consume downgrades, when to start to consume downgrades, and the feelings after consumption downgrades.
As you can see, the most discussed posts in the group mainly cover these topics.
For example, the two posts with the highest number of replies: A team member replaced the cake with “cake edge” (the leftover leftovers from the cake making process in the cake shop). Although it has received some criticism, there are also many groups The member agreed, shouting “cheap and delicious”; another team member successfully reduced the rent cost to 20% of the original rent by renovating a 17-square-foot bungalow in the suburbs.
The success index of the two downgrades has indeed exploded, making it a model for the whole group.
(The picture on the left is from the “Are you downgraded in consumption today” group post “Working for so many years and still buying “cake side “Eat, is it so embarrassing?”, the picture on the right is from the same group post “Rent 2600 drops to 600, coordinates Shanghai”)
Among the high-frequency keywords that appeared in all posts, “clothes” became the primary object of discard when the team members were degraded. Secondly, there are non-essential daily necessities such as “skin care products”, “takeaways”, “milk tea”, “snacks”, and “mobile phones”.
For example, “????Suddenly found that buying clothes cost a lot of money????”, “I always want to buy clothes without wearing them. What is this disease?”, “I love milk tea too muchI’m sorry, please wake up” and so on. Through these posts, DT seems to see the tearful complaints of the team members against the once lavish self.
In addition, how to buy more “cheaper” items is also a topic of frequent discussion. It can often be seen that Mengxin asked the team members whether “xx goods x yuan” is reasonable and whether it violates our action plan for consumption downgrade.
Master DT also noticed a keyword “epidemic”. Due to the impact of the new crown, the “income” and “salaries” of many team members have declined to varying degrees, which has also become the main reason for everyone to cut down on food and clothing.
Where is everyone spending Downgrade?
During the process of DT Jun’s “eliminating group”, he found a lot of treasures to share.
Three popular items are “what did you buy that fell at home”, “consumption is downgraded, everyone will never buy a consumption trap or hype concept goods”, and “what did you quit because of poverty” Take the post as an example, Mr. DT helped everyone sort out a guide for vomiting blood and pits from the consumer downgrade group.
First, let’s take a look at the items that everyone has bought. The top three consumer products are the instant noodle artifact Kindle, the digital tablet for drawing and the treadmill for drying clothes. In addition, the representative product of small home appliances, juicer, ukulele, guitar, and color lead that are necessary for literary youth are also discussed most.
In fact, most of these dusty items are not cheap and require a long-term investment of time and energy.
This also shows that quite a few members of the “elimination group” have not low consumption levels. These consumer products represent their longing for spending money to enrich their lives and improve themselves. Only in the end, they found that most of the consumption was a whim.
Next is the “consumption trap” in the eyes of the team members. If the above-mentioned items that fall into the dust can still be used to cultivate sentiment, cultivate hobbies and self-improvement, then the team members’ attitude towards products that are not worthy of the truth and obviously have a deceptive nature will be even more determined.
Among the most mentioned products, lipstick is the first one.
The reason why lipsticks are sold the most is because girls (including some guys) once bought lipsticks the most crazy. In those years, the Yang Shulin, cutting male sex, eating earthy color, the marketing of lipsticks did not emerge one after anotherPoor, basically a hot film and television work can bring a kind of color.
The members of the “elimination group” are now all expressing disdain for their collection of various slogans.
Other products frequently mentioned in the “consumption trap” are also related to the consumption of beauty, such as skin care products “samples”, “clothes”, “jewelry”, “cosmetics” and so on.
In addition, several team members mentioned “net celebrities”. For net celebrity products, which have the most marketing flavor, the team members said they would never accept high premiums.
Compared with the above consumption demotion, the more thorough thinking is that the seniors who have recognized the truth about poverty teach newcomers the consumption habits of living well even if they quit.
In this post of “What Did You Quit Due to Poverty”, the two major stars in the beverage consumer world, “Milk Tea” and “Coffee”, were turned away. Among them, the petty bourgeoisie “Starbucks” was also rejected. Criticize by name.
“Clothes” and “snacks” that frequently appear in various topics are also ranked high. The takeaway that urban white-collar workers can’t live without was basically ruled out. Even some members of the team said that I had given up socializing because of poverty.
A friend who nicknamed the son of Naniwa said that he simply quit the object.
(The picture is Douban “Are you downgraded today?” Netizens responded)
Although everyone’s consumption habits, income level and life experience are different, in summary, the biggest consumption degradation of young people is concentrated in eating and wearing.
Mia also told Mr. DT that the biggest change in the past year was the two things of buying clothes and eating.
“To be honest, I used to like to buy some trendy brands and famous brands, but now I buy the most from Uniqlo. The second thing is to reduce eating out. Even if I go out to eat, I will not go to restaurants with an average of more than 200 yuan.” Mia said.
Why consume downgrade?
Although Mia said that she was actively choosing consumption and downgrading, Mr. DT also tasted a bit of bitterness in her words.
“Of course I am happier when I have money. But after I work, I feel that I should really grow up. Can I ask my parents for money instead of asking them for money.” Mia’s thoughts represent Quite a few young people.
Parents have all the expenses during school. It was not until they stepped out of society that young people found out that they had to pay for their own money for their daily lives. Feeding themselves has become the primary research topic.
Especially this year we also encountered the black swan event of the epidemic.
The data also confirms this.
Although the consumption downgrade group was created in 2018, it was the year when the term “consumption downgrade” was born and became popular. However, when we collected all the posts of the group, we found that the post enthusiasm of the group members only ushered in the highest climax in February 2020, and the number of posts jumped from dozens to hundreds every month. This heated discussion atmosphere has been maintained until the last month.
Under the influence of the epidemic, the lives of many young people have undergone drastic changes. More practical problems have struck, and young people used to be no longer calm about life. Therefore, every expenditure has to be calculated carefully.
According to Zhaopin’s “Job Market Climate Report for Freshmen in the Second Quarter of 2020”, the CIER index (China’s job market prosperity index) in the second quarter of 2020 was only 1.35, a year-on-year decrease of nearly 30%, almost back to 2013 s level.
Not long ago, Mr. DT’s poll on Weibo also showed that among the more than 20,000 young people who participated in the survey, 46% of the respondents had a monthly salary of less than 3,000 yuan for their first job after graduation. Only 5% of them reached more than 10,000 yuan.
(The picture is a Weibo survey initiated by DT Finance “What is your first job salary after graduation”