https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/realtors-to-millennials-stop-buying-sandwiches-if-you-want-to-buy-a-home/ar-BBEXGqz?li=BBnb7Kz
One young lady quoted in the article states that no previous generation was asked to forego meals out in order to save for a house. Not true - my first husband and I ate almost all our meals at home. We never even thought about eating out regularly. We both grew up in homes where the family sat down to a home-cooked meal every night and everyone ate together around a table properly set with dishes and flatware.
Yeah, when I was a kid in the 70s we ate out probably 2-3 times a year. Yeah, because we were a large family in a rural area (not close to many restaurants), we were on the bottom of the curve, but eating out wasn't a constant thing for most families back then. I literally never had a take-out pizza until I was in college. We kids went out occasionally with our grandparents one or two at a time.
We ate well and ate as a family practically every night. I don't mean we had fancy meals: in the summer, we ate a lot of pimento cheese sandwiches or homegrown tomato sandwiches -- yes, sometimes on napkins. Year-round typical meals were tacos, taco salad, lasagna, and homemade pizza. Not fancy fare.
Did both of your parents work full time?
My dad abandoned us when I was a kid, and -- yes -- my mom worked. We had a very elderly relative who lived with us too; she could supervise us in the kitchen but didn't have the stamina to do much herself. From about age 10, every kid was assigned a night of the week to cook and clean the kitchen. Today every one of us is a good cook. My mom was an excellent and adventurous cook, and meals were always better on "her nights".
That shit takes work and planning. You're underestimating the heartbreak when one little thing throws off your whole night. You forgot about an expiration date, didn't thaw something, ran out of an ingredient and didn't know it, open a brand new bag of shredded cheese and found mold, lost track of the evening and forgot to pre-cook tomorrow's dinner
I genuinely can't relate to this. I don't really "work and plan" meals. I keep a fairly large pantry of staples, and I buy whatever fresh foods are on sale. Sometimes I plan and thaw meat, other times I just make stuff up -- it always works. A whole lot of "little things" have to go wrong to throw off a meal I'm making; for example, just tonight I was planning to use the last of some roasted turkey from last weekend, but my husband ate it for lunch ... no problem, I subbed in a can of chili -- totally different from my original intention, but it was a good dinner. It's all about knowing how to cook -- not just being able to follow a recipe.
But I digress. Whether or not prior generations had to sacrifice to buy a home is irrelevant. The truth is, unless already wealthy, most people planning to buy a house today will in fact need to sacrifice and save. People of all ages spend an enormous amount eating (and drinking) out these days -- $10 here and $5 there really adds up quickly over time. You can stomp your feet about the injustice of it all you want, but that doesn't change anything.
True: I know the stories of how my grandparents and parents saved for their houses; I went through that same sacrificing process; now I see my oldest child entering (joyfully!) into those sacrifices. It's naive for young people today to think that houses essentially grew on trees in the past and now require monster-sized sacrifices.
Yes, people of all ages are spending more on food and drink outside the house, but the obvious difference is that most young people aren't yet "established" in the world -- that is, they're still saving for houses, retirement, etc. and can less afford such splurges. EVERYONE has to make sacrifices when they're just starting out.
You know, people love to talk about millennial spending, but previous generations did have luxury spending too.
Cigarettes would be the most obvious example, given how wide-spread smoking used to be. Cars were real gas guzzlers. A lot of working people bought their lunch. Alcohol consumption was higher in the 1960s and 1970s than it is now. Television and radio were free but a lot of people went to the movies on a weekly basis at one time.
I'm not saying that there aren't people crying poor who shouldn't be, or that the ways people spend their money on a percentage basis hasn't changed, but I don't think it's as easy as "virtuous older generations vs. spendy young people" either.
Having lived "back then" and now, I think I'm qualified to see the differences:
- Yes, my grandparents' generation smoked pretty heavily, but for my parents and my generation smoking became a social class marker; by that, I mean, it seems to be a low-class thing now.
- When I was in high school, I borrowed my mom's Honda Civic. Hardly a gas guzzler.
- Yeah, my family spent more on alcohol, but my dad was an alcoholic, so I don't think we were typical. When I was a child my mother (and the rest of my family) drank about like I do today -- 3-4 drinks per year, maybe more if we go on a big vacation.
- Yeah, TV and radio were free when I was a kid. We had one 13" B&W set with four channels and rabbit ears -- that's all that existed. When I was in high school we got a 13" color set. A few of my friends' families bought video players when I was in high school. In college we'd sometimes rent a video player along with tapes from the video store.
- Yes, we went to the $1 movie theater often, especially in the summer because we didn't have air conditioning in the house. My mother always made sure to feed us a big meal before going to the movies because she wasn't going to buy popcorn and sodas.
Electronics were a lot more expensive than they are today, as were appliances ... Families had one phone or if they were really lucky, one upstairs and one downstairs, tethered to the wall by a cord. My phone bill when I got married in 1977 was less than $10 a month and was probably closer to $5 or $6. It's hard to compare the way we live today to the way people lived in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
Yes, electronics are an area in which everyone spends more today, and I do think young people are more interested in owning "the latest and the greatest". It's hard to compare this category because so many things just didn't exist back then.
When I was kid, we had what most people had in terms of telephones: a phone in the kitchen with an extra-long cord and a phone in my parents' bedroom. The electronic item of which I was super-jealous: Families who had a second phone line for the kids. In my whole school, I think only 2-3 families had such a splurge. In college I went weeks without talking to my mother; when I did call her, it was from the pay phone in the lobby of my dorm. When I was first married in 1990, we didn't have unlimited phone service -- those were the type of sacrifices we made so we could have a house -- we could receive unlimited incoming calls, but our outgoing calls were limited to something like 20 per month -- so I made all my phone calls at work during my lunch hour. Also, back then everyone was limited to a small geographical area for "free calls"; other calls were "long distance", so you never called anyone "long distance" until after 5:00 or the weekend.
Wait, how many outfits am I supposed to have now?!
Now that's something we had more of when I was a kid. I don't know how many outfits I had, but I think my students today have fewer outfits. When I was a teen, clothing was our "status symbol" ... today it's electronics.
I think the article is trying to show people that eating out is incredibly expensive and to try to empower them to save.
If you eat out too much it really does add up.
BTW, us GenXers were the hated generation a while back. We were considered a bunch of losers with no ambition. There is always a generation that seems to get targeted. I guess it's the Millenials turn. <I jest..I jest> :)
Yes, absolutely: I think a lot of people don't stop to add up just how much they're spending on eating out, and it's an easy way to cut back your spending.
However, I'm a Gen-Xer as well, and I never once felt our generation was "hated" -- even when our shortcomings were pointed out in the media. Nor do I think anyone "hates" Millennials today. As a generation, we've all had our ups and downs, our strengths and our weaknesses, but "hate" -- no.
Remember, observations or discussions aren't always criticisms.
Whenever we'd have beach outings with cousins, everyone brought their homemade food, even if we went to a further beach location for a week or weekend. My mom always batch cooked before the trip and we'd eat that on our beach weekends.
Yep, when we went to the beach or hiking at a state park, we ALWAYS took homemade food and a cooler full of ice water and plastic cups.
There's probably people doing this. But you can't simply add these numbers together. Some people may buy coffee every day, and some people may go on international holidays every year, and some people may go on very expensive drinking binges. But I'd bet most people don't do ALL these things. Heavily implying that this is a normal millenial lifestyle, and then situating it next to a quote from a young person who says she doesn't want to give up her life to buy a house (and she may not be doing any of this stuff!), is just typical outrage porn.
Yeah, it's lazy journalism implying that every Millennial is spending heavily in every one of those categories ... it's the same stuff they print in parenting magazines about how working mothers don't realize they could afford to quit if they stopped buying lunch out every day and dry cleaning their clothes.
However, the article isn't entirely wrong either. The main theme behind the sloppy math is absolutely true: If you're careful with your spending and plan instead of spending impulsively, you will be able to save and buy the things that you prioritize.
I guess what I'm saying is, think a lot of things are actually CHEAPER now than we were growing up.
Yes, this is true. The bill I pay today for three smart phones is about the same as I used to pay for a home phone. College textbooks are much easier to find at a discount price. Food's been mentioned a lot on this thread; discounts and coupons for restaurants are widespread now -- they didn't exist when I was a kid; I guess the restaurants didn't have to compete for our business. Quite a few things are cheaper today than they were in the past.
A closely connected point: As society has become more casual, people aren't required to spend as much on clothing. In the 60s-70s, my father wore a suit/tie to work 5 days a week (and to church on Sundays). My mother worked for the airlines, and she wore tailored skirts, blouses, and heels. Today most people are able to wear something more along the lines of khakis, which are cheaper and can be laundered at home. The point: People are excused from buying /maintaining some things that were considered "mandatory" in the past.
I wonder how much of the "Millennials have it so much harder than previous generations" is a mixture of:
1. Increased societal expectations as mentioned above (cell phones, computers),
2. New College Grads comparing their much-poorer lifestyle to their parents' established, wealthier lifestyle, and
3. Social media allowing us to make our lives look so much more glamorous, that the comparisons make everyone feel worse.
Totally agree. Add to it simply not listening /not believing that other generations didn't have their own problems.
Absolutely, but I'm just trying to explain the thought process. Probably the last packed lunches millennials experienced consisted of a slice of ham and some iceberg lettuce in white bread, a packet of crisps, a carton of juice, and a banana which got all mushy. As I said, lunch packing is one are where millennials suck. And actually, although buying a supermarket sandwich is not good nutrition, in Britain we have lots of high street chains that do very nutritious takeaway lunch food, which is what a lot of millennials are eating - the kicker is just that of course you have to pay for it.
Eh, what you're really doing here is making an excuse. When you discover that you're not good at something, you don't say, "Okay, I quit. I'll just pay someone else to complete this simple task for me." You practice at it. You search for solutions. You gain competency. What I really hear you saying above: Millennials don't excel at searching out multiple solutions when paying someone exists as an easy option.
An example: I made my kids' lunches when they were in elementary school. In middle school I shifted that responsibility to them. At first, they ate yucky lunches with mushy sandwiches ... then they decided they wanted better. I specifically remember the oldest digging out a kids' cookbook we had around the house, and she became interested in making cute lunches. Soon afterward, she discovered Bento box lunches online, and she became OBSESSED. Both my kids started making cutsie little lunches with shaped boiled eggs, cut-out sandwiches, and lots of vegetable munchies. They wanted Bento lunch boxes and cutters to make their sandwiches fun shapes. They started making lists of things they wanted me to buy for their lunchboxes -- "Mom, do we like Craisins? Were those Plums or Pluots we had two weeks ago?" And they started making MY lunch for me!
Today they're both very good cooks.
And I just don't think millennials on average value buying a house that much. I know some people who are looking at buying sometime soon but they're not that bothered. You move around a lot for work, everyone knows after the recession that people get screwed over putting all their money into a house, life is for living not owning shit... The generations above don't understand that. Millennials don't want to give up their twenties to buy a house not because they're entitled little shits but because they don't want a house that much.
I'm not buying it. My Millennial daughter bought a house last year, and now -- seeing her building her life, having her own place -- are all dying to do the same. They all want to hang out at her house now.
While it kinda feels like eating together as a family for dinner is a good thing to do, it's a real kick in the pants productivity-wise.
No, no, no, when you're sitting down to dinner as a family, you're building relationships. You can find articles on how kids who eat dinner with their families have all sorts of benefits -- they're closer to their parents, get into trouble less often, make better grades. It's a bonding experience that you shouldn't skip. Nothing you could do is more productive than a family dinner with your kids.
