A Cartier store.
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A woman in Singapore claims “girl math” means her Cartier earrings are basically free.Chloe Liem walked people through her calculations in a TikTok post.”Anything is possible with girl math,” Liem told The Straits Times.
A 20-year-old woman in Singapore is going viral for breaking down the cost of her Cartier earrings on TikTok, and claiming that “girl math” means the jewelry is basically free.
“I just got a new pair of Cartier earrings for S$3,950, so I thought I’d ‘girl math’ my way through the purchase,” content creator Chloe Liem said in a TikTok post published on September 12. Her post has been viewed 3.4 million times and has been liked more than 397,000 times as of press time.
In her video, Liem said she is a “stay-at-home daughter” and that her father is an investor. Liem held up what she said was a pair of $2,900 Cartier earrings in the video — still in the box — then whipped out a calculator and started breaking the cost of them down.
According to Liem’s calculations, she started off by “making a profit” of about $950 by buying Cartier’s Trinity earrings instead of their pricier Love earrings.
She says she then managed to defray the cost of the Trinity earrings by using around $730 worth of shopping vouchers. She says these vouchers were from a “previous shopping investment.”
Liem then divided the cost of the earrings by half, saying that all earrings are essentially sold on a “buy-one-get-one-free deal.” This meant each earring cost around $1,000 each.
“These Trinity earrings are literally so classic, so timeless, I could probably be wearing them till the day I am dead. But let’s say, for simplicity’s sake, I wear them every day for the next four years,” Liem said in her video, punching the numbers into the calculator.
Liem rounded off her calculations, saying that the cost-per-wear of each earring was less than $1 per use.
“Last but definitely not least, these earrings were quite literally free. Zero dollars. Because I remember my dad’s credit number off my heart,” Liem said at the end of the video.
Liem also released another video on September 14. In that TikTok post, Liem attempted to “girl math” what she claims was a $4,500 Van Cleef & Arpels bracelet.
“Girl math” is the latest financial trend to go viral on TikTok. Posts where people talk about “girl math” usually involve them trying to justify their purchases by breaking the cost down into the smallest unit possible, like Liem.
Liem told The Straits Times in a story published on September 20 that her video was her way of entertaining her audience on TikTok, and talking about what she, too, thinks could be bad spending habits.
“Anything is possible with girl math,” Liem said to The Straits Times. She added that girl math, to her, could mean buying extra things to get free shipping, adding that people often justify exorbitant purchases.
But, financial consultants think that the trend could encourage irresponsible spending and jeopardize one’s finances.
“Girl math looks fun, and like most fun things, should not be taken too seriously,” Lorna Tan, head of financial planning literacy at Singapore’s DBS Bank, told The Straits Times.
Liem did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Insider.