‘Revenge Saving’ A cold turkey saving trend among Chinese teenagers

After the ‘Revenge Spending’ arose to compensate for the repression from the quarantine or being grounded for a long time, the spending trend is now changing because ‘Revenge Saving’ is going to take over, especially in Z generation people in China who decide to extremely save money due to the unstable economy and stability.

What is a Revenge Saving?

According to CNBC, the Revenge Saving trend is to limit monthly or daily expenses to as little as possible and save the rest of the money. For example, a 26-year-old social media account user named ‘Little Zhai Zhai’ said that he limits his expenditure to 300 yuan, or 1,500 baht per month, and limits his food expenses to 10 yuan or about 50 baht per day.

Saving money can be done in many ways, including by finding friends who save money to warn each other forbid spending money on luxury goods, and eat in cheap communal restaurants that are usually used by the elderly.

A change in consumption from the changing economic climate

In late 2023, CNBC revealed that Chinese young people are increasingly turning to shopping and dining in the basement of department stores, becoming a trend in social media called “B1B2 Economy” and a hashtag #YoungPeopleOnlyGoShoppingAtB1B2, which means that young people only eat and shop underground on the B1 and B2 floor. In addition, underground shops often have cheap items such as clothing stores, supermarkets, and low-cost consumer goods stores.

This trend reflects the changing consumption of the new generation, which is completely different from the 2010 teenage years, who needed to spend more money than they could get and borrow money for expensive items such as Gucci bags and iPhones.

Causes and factors of 'Revenge Saving', the extreme savings trend

The reason why Chinese teenagers choose to save more money than those in other countries is due to economic factors and rising unemployment. Although China’s GDP reached 5.3% in the first quarter, the IMF still sees the Chinese economy is likely to slow down to 4.5% in 2025.

In addition, China’s official data shows that the unemployment rate of the new generation reached 14.2% in May 2024, higher than the national average of 5%, with millions of students graduating, flooding the labor market in the bottleneck.

Meanwhile, salaries for new graduates in 2023 were 6,050 Yuan or around 30,000 baht, growing only 1% from the previous year. According to MyCOS Research, young people in China do not have as much purchasing power and confidence in spending as the previous generaions of working people.

This trend not only occurs among Chinese teenagers but also in their working age. According to the Bank of China, deposits in the first quarter of 2024 in China increased by 11.8% compared to 2023, reflecting that more consumers are choosing to save money although they have purchasing power.

References from
thestandard / bangkokbiznews / amarintv