What is ‘loud budgeting’ and why is Gen Z opting out of splitting the bill?

Think of all the money you’ve wasted out of sheer awkwardness. The £750 Ibiza hen weekend you felt obliged to attend, because no one else seemed to raise an eyebrow at spending a month’s rent on a 48-hour trip to the Balearics. The time you agreed to split the restaurant bill, even though you ordered the salad while everyone else was eating steak. Now imagine if you’d just… explained your cash-flow situation and said “no”. Liberating, right? 

That’s the rationale behind “loud budgeting”, a concept coined by TikTok creator Lukas Battle. It’s all about being vocal about your financial constraints and prioritising your savings goals (rather than spending money through gritted teeth on things you know you won’t enjoy). “It’s not ‘I don’t have enough’, it’s ‘I don’t want to spend’,” Battle said in his original post. “It was meant to be a silly idea that allows people to be financially transparent without feeling embarrassed,” the New York-based comedian later told the Evening Standard. 

This “silly idea” has certainly resonated has now been watched 1.4 million times on TikTok, and has prompted a whole load more creators to share their advice on how best to broach those and speak honestly about your budgetary limits with the people close to you; #loudbudgeting has clocked up 10.8 million views and counting on the app. “It’s a very public declaration of what you plan to do with your ,” says Bola Sol, financial adviser and author of . “People are over the hush-hush mentality of discussing their money because it hasn’t always worked in their favour… Loud budgeting represents creating boundaries.”