Woman Shocked by Amount She Spent on Beauty Products in Just 3 Years (Exclusive)

When 23-year-old Alyssa Gillis from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, decided to start creating makeup content on TikTok, she wasn’t looking to sell the next trending product — she wanted to stop the cycle of overconsumption. 

A full-time worker with a deep love for makeup, she realized she had been spending like a beauty influencer, not someone living on a 9-to-5 budget. 

Wanting to approach content creation in a way that felt authentic, she tallied up the cost of all the various products she already owned — and the total shocked her. 

That moment inspired Gillis to join in on Project Pan, a popular beauty challenge focused on using products completely before buying more.

In a TikTok post that garnered over 1 million views, Gillis revealed just how much she had spent over the past three years on lip products alone: a total of more than $4,200.

“I knew I spent a lot; the individual pricing is quite high, but I always had them scattered between rooms and bags,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. “When I compiled them all together for the post, I knew from looking at them it would be a substantial amount.”

In the final photo of her slideshow, Gillis pointed out that the money she spent on lip products alone could have easily been saved and used for something productive.

“Please make better financial decisions than me,” she warned viewers. In follow-up TikTok posts, Gillis revealed that she had also spent $3,983.08 on perfumes and $879.39 on body products – both after tax.

Combining just those three categories, Gillis has spent over $9,000 — and she has yet to tally the price of her other makeup, such as eyeshadows, foundations and more.

Now, in the early stages of buying a home, Gillis realizes just how much her cosmetic spending has cost her — enough to make a real difference in a down payment. 

“All this money could’ve been spent on a trip, a used car or towards a down payment…It’s easy to get carried away with the individual purchases and not think of how it all adds up over time,” Gillis says.

By sharing her own habits and regrets, Gillis aims to provide followers with the “reality check” that she and many others desperately need. 

“Influencers are always posting each brand‘s new products online, and it’s easy to see these products and think you should get them for yourself,” Gillis says. 

“I’ve been influenced, and I know many others have as well. I wanted to put it out there not only to hold myself accountable, but for others to learn from my mistakes.” 

What struck her most was how each purchase felt small and harmless at the time, but added up to a significant missed opportunity.

“I knew it was going to be a large amount due to how many I had and knowing how much they all cost approximately individually,” she explains. “So it was expected, but I had never previously thought of it in that way — that all of these lip products used to be money.” 

Looking back at her collection, Gillis questioned why she felt the need to own the same lip products in multiple shades – or even in multiples of the exact same one, just to keep them in different places. 

While some purchases were driven by her genuine love for the formula or packaging, many were influenced by limited-edition drops and clever marketing.

In fact, many of the products she owns go untouched, often because the texture doesn’t suit her or the shade looks different on her skin tone than it did on the influencers who promoted it.

She realized that both traditional advertising and influencer-driven hype had played a major role in convincing her she needed more, even when she already had plenty.

“I am definitely an impulse buyer, I see a TikTok for a product that spikes my interest — add to my cart,” Gillis admits. “I rarely purchase right away, but I will fixate on it and the more videos I see, I will finally go back after a few days and purchase it, disregarding how much I already own.”  

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Gillis even confesses that she almost always shops for makeup online and rarely returns anything, a habit she now regrets — especially since retailers like Sephora offer generous return policies. 

“I definitely am using this as a wake-up call to change my beauty buying habits moving forward,” Gillis shares. 

“Try to put it in perspective of how many hours of work equal a lip product, or in my case, many lip products. Was a big pile of lip balm worth all those hours? Definitely not. On top of the financial impact, it’s also bad for the environment.”