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By Yi Whan-woo
A KakaoTalk user in his 20s says he routinely asks for and shares advice on how to spend less and save more money in an open chat with more than a dozen users also looking to live more frugally.
"We scold someone who spends money on dining out for no specific reason, and laud those who buy stuff on the cheap and who are as thrifty as possible," the user who goes by ID snowflake said, declining to give any other personal information.
Open chats of this type, referred to as "a chat among beggars" if translated from Korean, are easy to find on KakaoTalk, an indication that many young people are now interested in pursuing a money-saving lifestyle after the popularity of "flex culture," a term referring to flaunting one's wealth, in recent years.
"We speculate this new spending pattern is closely related to the high cost of living," said Kim, a member of Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ), who also declined to give his full name.
He analyzed that Generation MZ, a Korean term referring broadly to Millennials and Generation Z, in general hope to boast outwardly about luxury cars, clothing and other expensive goods online if they can afford them.
"But such flex culture was not realistic for most of Generation MZ anyway, and in a joking manner, they are now bragging about how frugal and even stingy they can be, especially at times of high inflation," he said.
Kim Eun-jung, the deputy secretary general of People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, also a civic activist group, voiced a similar view.
Citing Bank of Korea (BOK) data, she pointed out that those in their 30s or younger accounted for the steepest increase ― of all age groups ― in terms of an increased amount of money borrowed since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The remaining balance of the loans taken out by those in their 30s or younger from both banks and non-banking firms was estimated to be 514.5 trillion won in the fourth quarter of 2022.
The amount was up 27.4 percent from the final three months of 2019. The increase rate was higher than that of the other age groups during the same time period ― 25.5 percent for those in their 50s or older, 9.2 percent for those in their 40s and 2.3 percent for those in their 20s.
Correspondingly, annual spending shrank by 896,000 won for those in their 20s and by 613,000 won for those in their 30s as the key interest rate was hiked by 3 percentage points to 3.5 percent since August 2021, a Korea Development Institute (KDI) study showed.
"Under the circumstances, young people are believed to be expressing their bitter feelings in a self-deprecating manner by calling themselves 'beggars' in open chats, while trying to overcome financial difficulty through thrifty living," she said.
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