Flex culture: Is shopping addiction driving Malaysia’s youth debt crisis?
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Hi guys, welcome to another episode of What In The World from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Gelbart and today's show is brought to you from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

Now I have just stepped outside a mall here in the city centre and behind me there are more than 400 shops and restaurants. Think glossy marble floors, impressive shop windows and all of the international luxury fashion brands and high street. Shopping culture here is big. Our favourite pastime is actually going to malls.

It's so hard to not be enticed into all of the different shops. People are obsessed with buying the latest fashions both online and in air-conditioned shopping malls like this one and that

Addiction to shopping is the number one reason that young people are falling into debt here. That's according to a major government survey. More than 70% of Malaysia's youth have debt issues and a lot of that is to do with consumerism and flex culture. I do have an unhealthy relationship with shopping. I know a bunch of guys who will have five, six hundred

maybe a thousand pairs of shoes. But as much as social media is part of the problem, it's also part of the solution. So in this episode, you are going to hear from shopping addicts and from finance influencers who are helping young people to get their money back on track.

Okay, we have just stepped into the mall and here to guide me through the shops and Malaysian shopping culture in general is Lilo Norcom, a fashion and lifestyle influencer. Hi! Hello! Welcome to the podcast. It is great to be here in Malaysia with you. Thank you for having me. You've got a million followers on TikTok. What do they follow you for? Oh, I would say a bunch of different things, but as of right now, my content is mainly fashion, lifestyle and fashion.

sort of upcycling clothes. Why did you want us to come to this mall in particular? This is one of Malaysia's newest malls and honestly it has something for everyone. There's a bunch of different levels. I think we go up about maybe five levels total.

There's things for like more middle class shopping, more higher end shopping, things for kids, families. There's a lovely garden on the top as well. So it's just a really nice place to be in. Tell me a bit about shopping culture here and how frequently Malaysians go to malls.

I would say it's a weekly occurrence because a lot of malls have grocery stores in them. So families every maybe Sunday would go and do their weekly shop there or even just on their lunch breaks every day they would come to a mall to get some food. It's so hard to not be enticed into all of the different shops.

And you're also part British, right? Yes. So how does the shopping culture here compare to the shopping culture that you have seen abroad and your travels when you've lived abroad? I would say we actually have a lot more brands that are accessible here that could probably affect the amount that people are shopping than when I was in the UK. And

I do feel like Malaysia has quite an excessive amount of shops to consume all of our money. Is there a lot of pressure on young people to show off their belongings, their wealth? I feel like a lot of the youth that do "flex" are kind of born into that type of lifestyle, so it's not a pressure on them.

to keep up this standard but I do believe someone who comes from humble backgrounds it does apply a lot of pressure to me to want to work harder, earn more money and reward these things to myself but not so much in a negative way where I'm envious. What is your relationship like with shopping? Like has it ever verged on toxic?

I sort of feel like I do have an unhealthy relationship with shopping because I'm always online shopping. I'm the worst texter in the world because I'm on my phone online shopping but trying my best to keep it window shopping.

Yeah. We know that shopping addiction is probably the main reason that so many young Malaysians are in debt. And is that something that you can relate to, that you see in your friends and people your age? I think the closest person to me that I see sort of fighting this battle is with my brother because we have a lot of pay later apps here. There's several different ones and if you've reached your maximum one, you can just turn over to the next one.

And it adds a lot of financial commitment that you easily forget about because once you've received it, you think you've bought whatever it is you've spent your money on. And then six months down the line, you're still paying for it. And I do see a lot of people be affected by that. Lilu mentioned there are several buy now pay later apps in Malaysia. But how did they get so popular? Doris Liu is an economist and researcher in Kuala Lumpur.

The e-commerce starts getting more popular in Southeast Asia during the pandemic when a lot of people could not go out to shop. So they use e-commerce to buy most of their necessities.

A lot of the platforms started using buy now pay later schemes to attract buyers to purchase higher cost goods. And the trend sticks even until today, when many people start using the platform to buy all types of goods. So shopping addiction and the pressure to keep up with this flex culture are growing concerns among today's youth.

I quote this from former Finance Minister Tengku Jafru. He noted that 40% of millennials currently are spending beyond their means.

There are online shopping companies that have Dynapillator scheme and they offer zero interest rate in their promotion but often when the youth take up this scheme beyond one month, it is no longer zero percent interest. So the lack of regulation and transparency in the terms is concerning.

You're going to hear more about shopping addiction in just a moment. But first, I want to quickly tell you about some of the other finance stories that we have covered on What In The World. Like you might remember the Ambani wedding. We talked about what that tells us about capitalism and wealth inequality in India. And we also talked about why the strength of the US dollar has a big impact on you, even if it's not your own currency.

We publish a different episode every single weekday. We talk about world issues and events, talking points, and you can find them wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Just search for What In The World. Okay?

Let's get back to shopping. We have come to Ampang in East Kuala Lumpur to meet Brian, who has more than 200 pairs of trainers. Yes. Tell me about your collection. Just a mixed bag of different, different brands. I've been collecting for maybe 15 years now and 200 pairs is not a lot in our world. Sneaker world. Tell me about sneaker world.

I have a lot of sneaker collecting friends and you know, 200 is like probably average in that world. I know a bunch of guys who will have five, six hundred, maybe a thousand pairs of shoes.

why do you need so many shoes when you only got two feet? I have no idea why. You know, it's a habit and it's an addiction as well, I guess. It's just like, oh, there's sale. Let's just buy, you know, one pair. And then you're like, oh, there's another sale. Okay, let's buy another pair. And before you know it, like you've already bought like four or five pairs in that month. Of all the things you could collect, what by trainers? So it was my 21st birthday. My mom brought us out for dinner and

And we were walking past this store and I fell in love with this sneaker. It was like super limited edition. There's only like 574 pairs in the world. And I was just geeking out over it. And my mom was like, do you want it? Happy 21st. And I think that's the start of it all. You described it as an addiction. Has it had negative consequences for you? Yeah, I think I remember some months just spending my entire paycheck on shoes. So it's not good.

Where did that leave you? Doing odd jobs just to cover for the mistake I did. But no regrets, you know, like you're so addicted to it and you manage to get that pair that you've been chasing and you're so happy and you're like, okay, never mind, I'll just do this extra job. Tell me a bit about the shopping culture here and how common it is for people to have a, what you call an addiction. There's a mall in almost every neighbourhood. There's one like five, ten minutes away. And it's hot in Malaysia.

We like to go to places that have air conditioning and malls tend to have the best ones and we sometimes slip up and buy a pair of shoes. Well, one pair of shoes is not a slip-up. 200 might be something different but hey, no judgement here. This is a safe space. It's been 15 years, you know. 15 years? Yeah, 15 years. So like, you know, I've obviously sold

traded, given away. I think maybe more than a thousand pairs gone through my hands in these past 15 years. What's the most expensive pair of trainers that you own? Okay, there's two kinds of expensive. One is like the kind of pair, the expensive that I buy.

And the expensive pair that I own in terms of value, I probably bought it at maybe £100, let's say. And because of the value and the resale price, it's now worth $666. And you bought it for how much? Yeah, $120, $130. So that sounds like an investment to me. That's not just buying for consumerism. That's actually buying because these things have value that goes up. And then if you are selling them on, you're actually making money from them.

It's actually a bad thing. Basically, you just want to buy it, right? And you're just giving yourself all these reasons and you can actually sell it back for the same price you actually bought it. So you don't really lose money or sometimes you even make money. This whole resale market really feeds this addiction. It's a cycle.

As you've been hearing, young people here are falling into debt and one person they're turning to to learn how to budget, to save and to plan is Peter Yong, who is better known here in Malaysia as Mr Money TV. Hi! Hello! Great to have you with us. Thank you for being on the podcast. So tell me a bit about your YouTube channel and what it does. My YouTube channel teaches people about personal finance or financial literacy in short. What we want to do is to help Malaysians to

To better manage their money. We think that when people are able to manage their money better, they can achieve a better quality of life. And that's the ultimate goal of our channel. How much is the average salary that a young Malaysian person might earn if they leave school? Let's say you have a degree. You are much likely to make about $600 per month. Yes, that's right. How much debt are young people in here?

So according to the AKPK report, which is one of our government agencies regarding money, they published a report on April 24th this year and it was about $8,000 USD average of debt

So every young Malaysian owes $8,000 USD? Out of 53,000 youth aged 30 and below. What can be done to try and tackle the shopping culture here? I honestly think that it is much more of an individual problem and a social media problem as well. These days you can't help but at the moment you turn on social media, Instagram, you see everyone...

Everyone is living the life, right? They look like they are. Yeah, they look like they are, right? It needs to come down to themselves and actually really ask themselves, is this necessary? And how does it really help me as an individual? You know, there's this saying that goes, you spend money to buy things that you don't need to impress people that you don't care. And I think that's the biggest problem. So for someone who is in debt, where do they start to try and clear that? I think the best way to start clearing debt is not by thinking about the debt first,

start by setting aside some backup savings or emergency savings. The problem with people who are in debt is that they usually have no savings at all. So what happens is that when they clear up a certain amount of debt, they still go back to zero. When certain expenses come in, they'll end up swiping their credit card again. So,

end up they still have no savings. So I would say the first thing that you should be doing is actually to set aside at least RM2,000 or either I would say USD500 or depending on where you're at, right? Yeah. The whole point is that you can take care of those unforeseen expenses. Now, once you have that taken care of, the first thing you need to do is start paying off your credit card. I actually used to owe about more than RM10,000 in credit card debts in USD.

I had a very aggressive plan with my wife. We told ourselves very clearly every month how much we're going to set aside to clear the credit card and we cleared to a certain milestone. Let's say we hit say 5,000 then we are going to take out say 200 ringgit and we're going to buy ourselves a nice meal right. So you don't feel like such a big struggle to clear off that debt. You're going to make debt clearing fun as well. The next thing that you really have to do is don't go back into debt. But I

But I think when it comes to that part, it's more emotional than understanding the numbers. You can tell anyone, right? Spend less than you earn. If you don't deal with how you see yourself, right? And have a right view of your own self and self-confidence and self-esteem, I think money problem will always come. Money is actually just a tool.

I think too many people fall in love with money and they have this emotional, romantic connotation about money. But when you just look at numbers and money as numbers and you ask yourself, the next thing is,

what do you really want in life? Maybe what you want is just to spend more time with your family. Then that doesn't mean that you need a million bucks in your bank account. Maybe that means that you just need to live in a smaller house and spend more time with your kids, right? So you have to define what you want. Peter, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Thank you very much.

That is it for today's episode. Thank you so much for joining me on this shopping trip around Kuala Lumpur. It has been great to speak to people about their spending habits and to meet our listeners out here. I'm Hannah Gelbart and you have been listening to What in the World from the BBC World Service. We'll see you next time. Bye.