The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: coppertop on November 15, 2017, 07:32:31 AM
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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.
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My mother started working when my youngest sister was about 12. Another sister and I were in college and working then, but my middle sister was in high school and took over cooking dinner when she got home from school. BTW, I am 62. My daughter and her husband both work full time, and have a daughter, age 6, and a son, age 3. They eat a home-cooked meal six nights out of seven. Friday is dinner-out night. Eating healthy home-cooked meals is definitely do-able even when both parents work.
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Lumping generations together as if a single human ... Zzz ... :)
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I love the whiny 22-year-old who equates not eating out every day to "not having a life." That girl has some real growing up to do.
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Expecting a 22 year old to actually have the perspective of what "other generations" did is pretty misguided.
And all of that ignores the fact that it used to be you bought a starter home which was probably less than half the size of current homes and likely in a less than desirable neighborhood. I don't see very many millennials doing that, much less giving up any luxuries.
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"Forgoing an annual vacation, lottery tickets and an annual phone upgrade could save around $900 (£700), $1,100 (£832) and $200 (£154), respectively."
I am not one to judge how people spend their money most of the time but seriously who the fuck spends more on lotto tickets than they do on vacations
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My mother started working when my youngest sister was about 12. Another sister and I were in college and working then, but my middle sister was in high school and took over cooking dinner when she got home from school. BTW, I am 62. My daughter and her husband both work full time, and have a daughter, age 6, and a son, age 3. They eat a home-cooked meal six nights out of seven. Friday is dinner-out night. Eating healthy home-cooked meals is definitely do-able even when both parents work.
Indeed, but prioritizing a properly set table, rather than considering a healthy home cooked meal by itself the goal is generally a marker for households that have (had) an FTE devoted to running the household.
It doesn't take long to put a few dishes and some flatware on the table, and it contributes greatly to the ambience of the meal vs. eating from paper towels, which I've seen some people do. Afterwards, the dishes are placed in the dishwasher, which likewise takes only a few minutes.
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It doesn't take long to put a few dishes and some flatware on the table, and it contributes greatly to the ambience of the meal vs. eating from paper towels, which I've seen some people do. Afterwards, the dishes are placed in the dishwasher, which likewise takes only a few minutes.
We eat at home on real plates most nights, and yet I still somehow feel condescended to by your posts. Impressive.
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It doesn't take long to put a few dishes and some flatware on the table, and it contributes greatly to the ambience of the meal vs. eating from paper towels, which I've seen some people do. Afterwards, the dishes are placed in the dishwasher, which likewise takes only a few minutes.
We eat at home on real plates most nights, and yet I still somehow feel condescended to by your posts. Impressive.
Seriously? Not my intention. We're not talking expensive china and crystal here. I don't understand why you would feel that way. I believe that one of the problems in the country is that people don't sit down to a family style meal together; it's all run here and run there and grab McDonald's on the fly. Plus it's expensive and unhealthy. But whatever. Sometimes written words don't convey the meaning that is intended.
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It doesn't take long to put a few dishes and some flatware on the table, and it contributes greatly to the ambience of the meal vs. eating from paper towels, which I've seen some people do. Afterwards, the dishes are placed in the dishwasher, which likewise takes only a few minutes.
We eat at home on real plates most nights, and yet I still somehow feel condescended to by your posts. Impressive.
I had a similar gut reaction. And similarly use plates and silverware most nights although, I generally don't go through the theater of setting a place at the table before sitting down to dinner.
Perhaps this topic -- unlike the financial prudence of preparing food at home or the value of eating together as a family, which I think are universal click bait headlines about snake people (millennial) aside -- might be an example of a genuine generational divide? But I'm generalizing from a single datapoint, so *shrug*.
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Seriously? Not my intention. We're not talking expensive china and crystal here. I don't understand why you would feel that way. I believe that one of the problems in the country is that people don't sit down to a family style meal together; it's all run here and run there and grab McDonald's on the fly. Plus it's expensive and unhealthy. But whatever. Sometimes written words don't convey the meaning that is intended.
Maybe it's the ageism coupled with the deliberately-obtuse "it's just not difficult even if you're both working" type comments.
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'm organized. I write stuff down. That stuff still happens and it's frustrating as hell.
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My mother started working when my youngest sister was about 12. Another sister and I were in college and working then, but my middle sister was in high school and took over cooking dinner when she got home from school. BTW, I am 62. My daughter and her husband both work full time, and have a daughter, age 6, and a son, age 3. They eat a home-cooked meal six nights out of seven. Friday is dinner-out night. Eating healthy home-cooked meals is definitely do-able even when both parents work.
Indeed, but prioritizing a properly set table, rather than considering a healthy home cooked meal by itself the goal is generally a marker for households that have (had) an FTE devoted to running the household.
It doesn't take long to put a few dishes and some flatware on the table, and it contributes greatly to the ambience of the meal vs. eating from paper towels, which I've seen some people do. Afterwards, the dishes are placed in the dishwasher, which likewise takes only a few minutes.
I'm only a household of two millennials, but I'm the one at work 9-5 and then home to cook dinner. It's really not that big a deal. And yes, we eat on real plates (which I don't think of as special? They cost like $2 each.), but don't have a dishwasher. Sometimes it's leftovers, but leftovers are usually from dinner for later breakfasts or lunches. "Forgoing an annual vacation, lottery tickets and an annual phone upgrade could save around $900 (£700), $1,100 (£832) and $200 (£154), respectively."
I am not one to judge how people spend their money most of the time but seriously who the fuck spends more on lotto tickets than they do on vacations
This caught my eye too. What the hell?
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It doesn't take long to put a few dishes and some flatware on the table, and it contributes greatly to the ambience of the meal vs. eating from paper towels, which I've seen some people do. Afterwards, the dishes are placed in the dishwasher, which likewise takes only a few minutes.
We eat at home on real plates most nights, and yet I still somehow feel condescended to by your posts. Impressive.
Seriously? Not my intention. We're not talking expensive china and crystal here. I don't understand why you would feel that way. I believe that one of the problems in the country is that people don't sit down to a family style meal together; it's all run here and run there and grab McDonald's on the fly. Plus it's expensive and unhealthy. But whatever. Sometimes written words don't convey the meaning that is intended.
Just saying that I agree with you coppertop 100%. We are also 2 working parents (early 40s), 2 little children, and this is our routine as well. It really is not a big deal, just a nice, regular family meal. I cannot see how what you wrote would offend anyone. This reminds me when I went to graduate school and people would tease me about dressing "so nice" just because I was not wearing a sweatshirt like 90% of my classmates.
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I'm a single working person and I manage to make dinner from scratch for myself almost every night, and keep some for lunch the next day. Even though I'm a millennial. It's kinda ridiculous to spend $17,000 a year on eating out, vacations and lottery tickets, that's almost my entire annual spending. If she thinks that not eating out is living a deprived life, then she better start making a lot of money if she ever wants to have that house.
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“Just cutting these things out would save money, but does that mean we aren’t allowed to have a life while we save up for a home? I don’t see any other generations having to have done that,” 22-year-old Charlotte Windsor told the newspaper.
Growing up in the late 70s/early 80s we almost never ate out, only for special occasions and then mostly Mexican or Chinese food. Didn't have a TV until around '85 and no cable. Our car had mismatch door colors because the originals quite literally rusted apart (cars are really much higher quality these days) and my dad replaced them with ones from a wrecked car. Annual vacation was camping at the lake for 5 days. We never even left the state until I was in highschool when we crossed all the way into Nevada from California LOL. Mom was SAHM until I was in Jr High, then she worked FT. We almost always ate together as a family, on real plates :) Usually buffet style -- serve yourself in the kitchen then sit together at the table. My parents scrimped and saved to buy their house. I think some (not all) millennials are too precious with their whining. Previous generations had their fair share of whiners, but they didn't have 24x7 "news" coverage and the internet as a platform to voice their opinions.
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.
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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.
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There have always been people who overspend and people who are thrifty. However, when I was in my early 40s, I started working as an estate and trusts paralegal. I was impressed when handling estates when I saw that extremely few of my decedent clients had passed away with mortgages on their homes. That's what originally gave me the idea to work toward paying off my own home before I retired. Apparently 'back in the day,' owning your home mortgage-free was the desirable condition. I can remember my parents whispering about someone who had declared bankruptcy, because it was considered to be shameful. There were no commercials telling people to call certain law firms because the credit card companies didn't want you to know how easy it is not to have to pay them; or the IRS has super-secret programs to get you out of paying your back taxes and if you call this number, we'll let you in on it too. Zeitgeist? Probably has something to do the generation previous to mine having lived through the Great Depression.
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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.
Cigarettes and gasoline were relatively cheap back then. They weren't the big bite out of a family's budget that they are today. It's good that cigarettes are expensive if it gets people to quit, but generally I've seen smokers' families do without something else in order to afford the cigarette habit. Electronics were a lot more expensive than they are today, as were appliances. However, they were expected to last a whole lot longer than the new ones do now. 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.
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It doesn't take long to put a few dishes and some flatware on the table, and it contributes greatly to the ambience of the meal vs. eating from paper towels, which I've seen some people do. Afterwards, the dishes are placed in the dishwasher, which likewise takes only a few minutes.
We eat at home on real plates most nights, and yet I still somehow feel condescended to by your posts. Impressive.
Seriously? Not my intention. We're not talking expensive china and crystal here. I don't understand why you would feel that way. I believe that one of the problems in the country is that people don't sit down to a family style meal together; it's all run here and run there and grab McDonald's on the fly. Plus it's expensive and unhealthy. But whatever. Sometimes written words don't convey the meaning that is intended.
Just saying that I agree with you coppertop 100%. We are also 2 working parents (early 40s), 2 little children, and this is our routine as well. It really is not a big deal, just a nice, regular family meal. I cannot see how what you wrote would offend anyone. This reminds me when I went to graduate school and people would tease me about dressing "so nice" just because I was not wearing a sweatshirt like 90% of my classmates.
I also don't understand why this is offensive, or how setting the table could be considered theater?
We need the plates, forks etc, and cups anyway. I make things as easy as possible by stacking the placements and napkins in drawer next to the table, or even leaving them on the table from the previous meal. We are two FT+ adults with two kids who eat out about twice a month. But our home cooking is very easy and repetitive (frequent pasta and rice dishes, always make enough for leftovers), and travel with apples in case it gets close to meal time.
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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.
Consumption patterns shift over time. Vacationing in Hawaii was a once in a lifetime event for most families in the 70s whereas today it's commonplace, blazé even. Adjusted for inflation, flights were a lot more expensive back then so that explains part of it but not all. We spend more now than in the 60s or 70s, a sign that the nation (and world) has become wealthier.
To me it has more to do with lack of perspective rather than virtue. It's weird to hear someone complain that cutting back or eating out less is somehow living less of a life. Are we so enthralled by a consumptive lifestyle that we've allowed this to completely define our value?
For perspective on how good we have it now: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-america-spends-money-100-years-in-the-life-of-the-family-budget/255475/
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Also we now have way more things available to spend money on that advertising has brainwashed people into thinking they need to buy. For example, I grew up thinking I needed to buy bread. I didn’t realize I could make it myself until I came to this blog. Also- tortilla chips. One day I realized I could just cut up some tortillas and stick them in the toaster, instead of buying a bag. I’m slowly un-brainwashing myself of these little things. Also clothes. With fast fashion a lot of young people now feel like they need to constantly buy more clothes than previous generations I recall reading that the average woman 40 years ago had just 9 outfits.
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Also we now have way more things available to spend things on that advertising has brainwashed people into thing they need to buy. For example, I grew up thinking I needed to buy bread. I didn’t realize I could make it myself until I came to this blog. Also- tortilla chips. One day I realized I could just cut up some tortillas and stick them in the toaster, instead of buying a bag. I’m slowly un-brainwashing myself of these little things. Also clothes. With fast fashion a lot of young people now feel like they need to constantly buy more clothes than previous generations I recall reading that the average woman 40 years ago had just 9 outfits.
Wait, how many outfits am I supposed to have now?!
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Also- tortilla chips. One day I realized I could just cut up some tortillas and stick them in the toaster, instead of buying a bag.
This is an amazing idea, and I am going to have to try this the next time I buy tortillas.
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Expecting a 22 year old to actually have the perspective of what "other generations" did is pretty misguided.
And all of that ignores the fact that it used to be you bought a starter home which was probably less than half the size of current homes and likely in a less than desirable neighborhood. I don't see very many millennials doing that, much less giving up any luxuries.
In which case you aren't looking very hard. Which millenials are you hating exactly? The poser tiny home buyers that are wearing thrift store clothing and choosing not to climb on the corporate ladder, or the financially illiterate ones? The ones who only want to work in jobs they like, or the ones who can't find a job no matter what? The ones buried under mountains of student loans they have been fooled into taking on, or the ones who don't want to do that and are therefore lazy and unambitious?
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I'm calling BS on some of these numbers. cut $8,000/ a year from giving up going out once a week? Each couple is spending $150 each time they go out? They are buying $20 of lottery tickets a week? They save $13 from packing versus buying a sandwich? Maybe Great Britain is very expensive?
I don't know if these are real numbers re: how young people are spending their money, or just trying to make millenials look bad.
I want to say yes it is still possible to buy your own home. But my impression is in areas like London and expensive metro areas the average young people now has a bigger hill to climb to buy a house, than our parents did in the 1960's. I think my parents wanted to buy an "expensive" home that was 35K, but compromised and bought a 30K home instead (half of a duplex).
Or maybe not. I just typed it into a calculator, and 30,000.00 in 1972 had the same buying power as $176,227.74 in 2017. The 35K house was like 206K.
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Seriously? Not my intention. We're not talking expensive china and crystal here. I don't understand why you would feel that way. I believe that one of the problems in the country is that people don't sit down to a family style meal together; it's all run here and run there and grab McDonald's on the fly. Plus it's expensive and unhealthy. But whatever. Sometimes written words don't convey the meaning that is intended.
Maybe it's the ageism coupled with the deliberately-obtuse "it's just not difficult even if you're both working" type comments.
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'm organized. I write stuff down. That stuff still happens and it's frustrating as hell.
Gen X'er here. We are a family of two. Both of us work full time and maintain rigorous workout schedules as well. We still sit down every night for dinner, with china plates, proper service wear and slowly eat our meal together. We do use paper towels, instead of linens. I may change this habit to linen napkins, more often. Paper towels are expensive and wasteful.
It isn't difficult to plan meals for the week. It's mostly about staying on task, planning and organization. I use lists and when something goes wrong, my pantry is stocked enough to have a plan B.
Please don't feel this is condescending, I just want you to know that it can be done. Having a nice sit down meal is good for a family bond as well.
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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> :)
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I grew up with two workouts my parents in the 1960s - and my dad was an engineer. We ate almost every meal at home and my dad took his lunch. There was no pizza delivery and we lived in a starter house with 3 small bedrooms, tiny closets, and 1 bathrooms. I guess gas and cigarettes were cheap, though.
It’s easy to think that everything was so much easier in the past, but it feels to me like expectations have changed, a lot.
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It’s easy to think that everything was so much easier in the past, but it feels to me like expectations have changed, a lot.
Curious to hear, could you elaborate on that? Who's expectations, and which expectations are different?
Just a milennial trying to understand the perspective of those who grew up in different times. :-)
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It’s easy to think that everything was so much easier in the past, but it feels to me like expectations have changed, a lot.
Curious to hear, could you elaborate on that? Who's expectations, and which expectations are different?
Just a milennial trying to understand the perspective of those who grew up in different times. :-)
Gen X-er here too.
I grew up in an immigrant family. We had a stay-at-home mom and a dad who made a good salary. 4 kids. We took our lunch every day to school - I never ate at the cafeteria. We had home cooked meals every night. The only time we'd eat out really was after church on Sundays and occasionally Chinese take out.
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.
Occasionally we'd have a treat when my parents had a night out to themselves. The babysitter would come and on the way to pick her up, we'd have drive through McDonald's as a treat.
No cable TV. No cell phones (well they weren't around then).
4 children shared one bathroom.
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Did both of your parents work full time?
My mother started working when my youngest sister was about 12. Another sister and I were in college and working then, but my middle sister was in high school and took over cooking dinner when she got home from school. BTW, I am 62. My daughter and her husband both work full time, and have a daughter, age 6, and a son, age 3. They eat a home-cooked meal six nights out of seven. Friday is dinner-out night. Eating healthy home-cooked meals is definitely do-able even when both parents work.
I wanted to address both the above points, because they both have merit.
We sat down to a home cooked dinner with properly set table also. Every night. Because my mother was a SAHM. But she went back to work when I was 12. We still had a home cooked dinner, even then (when she worked late 2x a week), BUT - it required my sister to do the cooking. Likewise, long before that my father was a single dad, and my sisters had to learn the cooking at a very young age. FWIW, I'm 47. What is important to note in my above comments are the following:
- very rural area
- very few restaurants nearby (only a couple of bars with some bar food, maybe a pizza place)
- eating out wasn't a "thing"
- activities outside of school did not exist (meaning, when I eventually started playing a sport in 9th grade, I took the bus home, which dropped me off 1/2 mile from home, and I walked home in the dark)
- my mother did not work when the children were very young
- my father was home by 5 pm. Unheard of in my world.
Quote from: Cranky on Today at 07:15:18 PM
It’s easy to think that everything was so much easier in the past, but it feels to me like expectations have changed, a lot.
Curious to hear, could you elaborate on that? Who's expectations, and which expectations are different?
Just a milennial trying to understand the perspective of those who grew up in different times. :-)
Expectations way back then, from a poor rural kid.
- we went on exactly one vacation growing up, a one week driving trip to NC from PA to visit an uncle
- we did camp 2-3x at Lake Erie, 1.5 hours away. We borrowed the gear and slept in the tent pitched in the parking lot
- there was no cable TV
- there were no restaurants
- no cell phones, internet, computers
- no school club things unless it was free. I declined National Historians, because I couldn't afford any of the trips.
Even for my husband's more middle class family
- vacation trips were always to visit family
- they were only able to go every other year (to Europe, to visit family), and only up until the point the kids were an "adult ticket"
- they had to save up for everything, no credit cards
- they did not eat out
- no computers, cell phones, etc.
- when husband joined the ski club, he had to get a job to pay for the ski club
When we got married:
- we paid for our own relatively modest wedding
- we honeymooned in the Caribbean, which was a cheap and short jaunt from the east coast
Expectations today:
- Most middle class people that I know have been to Europe. Many times.
- I have a number of friends who traveled to Europe with their SO, and then went back on a lavish trip to get engaged there, then of course the honeymoon HAD to be better, so let's go to the South Pacific for 2 weeks! Most of these honeymoons were more than my wedding.
- Eating out is just...normal. It's so much easier now. When I graduated from college, it only took until my first raise, then I was eating out often, sometimes breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I never learned to really cook. I mean, why would I? My mom cooked until I was 12, then my sister cooked. I always set the table and did dishes.
- Many people I know eat out every. single. day. Some of them are older and the kids are grown. I figure they've got the means for it. Many others, though, do it because they just don't know how to cook, or don't want to cook for one.
- So I had cable TV when I first got out of college. I ate out. I went to bars.
Every millenial that I know has
- cable TV or internet
- a smart phone
- multiple computers
- a non-beater car
Many of them take vacations to Hawaii, or Europe, or Asia, or wherever
Frankly, I would not even consider living without internet, a smart phone, a computer. These are things that are "changed expectations" but they are pretty much required for the vast majority of people.
Also, I cannot speak for others, but in my industry a certain amount of overtime is "expected", and you aren't paid for it. I don't see the kinds of schedules that my parents had, which were defined hours and home by 5:15 pm.
Just like my grandparents talking about not having indoor plumbing. Well, I didn't have a cell phone or a computer. But I'd rather not go back to the days without one, you know?
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those mutha fickn SNAKE PEOPLE!!! get a job! and get off my lawn!
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I'm calling BS on some of these numbers. cut $8,000/ a year from giving up going out once a week? Each couple is spending $150 each time they go out? They are buying $20 of lottery tickets a week? They save $13 from packing versus buying a sandwich? Maybe Great Britain is very expensive?
I don't know if these are real numbers re: how young people are spending their money, or just trying to make millenials look bad.
I want to say yes it is still possible to buy your own home. But my impression is in areas like London and expensive metro areas the average young people now has a bigger hill to climb to buy a house, than our parents did in the 1960's. I think my parents wanted to buy an "expensive" home that was 35K, but compromised and bought a 30K home instead (half of a duplex).
Or maybe not. I just typed it into a calculator, and 30,000.00 in 1972 had the same buying power as $176,227.74 in 2017. The 35K house was like 206K.
I agree that the numbers are not right. The original source seems to be collecting a series of 'averages' from various diverse sources and then adding some extreme extrapolation and conclusion-jumping to them (https://www.struttandparker.com/knowledge-and-research/the-residential/tough-choices-for-first-time-buyers-to-help-save-a-deposit). For example, to get how much 'millenials can save by dropping coffee for 5 years', what they seem to have done is find the average cost of what it would cost a hypothetical person to buy a coffee from a 'specialist cappuchino outlet' every day (https://www.buddyloans.com/blog/how-much-is-your-coffee-addiction-costing-you/), extrapolate that a hypothetical millenial couple may each do this, and then calculate how much they could save by not doing this over 5 years. Typical latte-formula-gone-wild stuff. Not based on actual millenial spending.
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.
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It’s easy to think that everything was so much easier in the past, but it feels to me like expectations have changed, a lot.
Curious to hear, could you elaborate on that? Who's expectations, and which expectations are different?
Just a milennial trying to understand the perspective of those who grew up in different times. :-)
Gen X-er here too.
I grew up in an immigrant family. We had a stay-at-home mom and a dad who made a good salary. 4 kids. We took our lunch every day to school - I never ate at the cafeteria. We had home cooked meals every night. The only time we'd eat out really was after church on Sundays and occasionally Chinese take out.
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.
Occasionally we'd have a treat when my parents had a night out to themselves. The babysitter would come and on the way to pick her up, we'd have drive through McDonald's as a treat.
No cable TV. No cell phones (well they weren't around then).
4 children shared one bathroom.
I was recently thinking about how the average number of bathrooms per house seems to have jumped over the past few decades, after a different post here about the skill and cost involved in constructing them vs. a bedroom or living room. This might sound like a minor point, but it might have impacted housing prices (I'm guessing many nowadays would scoff at a 3-5bed/2bath for a family of 6, opting instead for at least 5/3). I have never had a bathroom completely to myself, and why would I? Most people do not spend more than an hour or two a day in there. But looking at houses in the US, it's common to see 1-1.5 bedrooms per bathroom.
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Things are different today than they were back when I was growing up, 40 years ago. But some of these spending habits stem from prices of things changing. It used to be more expensive to travel overseas or have a fancy vacation. Even though towards the end my family was upper middle class we were from the midwest we never went to Disneyworld (I don't think I knew anyone who went to Disneyworld, because we had six Flags). A stereo system and speakers was a major purchase, as well as a television and naturally 1 tv per household. ipads or ipods can do those things.
Construction I believe may be cheaper. I do feel it is ironic, that larger homes are housing smaller families. Thinking about my own family, my Dad when he first immigrated, shared an apartment with another family plus other people. His bed was some makeshift thing in front of a window. Our family first lived in an apartment, but then moved our family (of 7) to half of a duplex, with our aunt and uncle and 4 cousins sharing the other half. Honestly, I remember thinking how NICE our home was, even though of course the kids shared rooms and bathrooms (eta I looked it up and it was a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath duplex for all of us). We packed lunches. I do admit our family ate out a lot more than most, because my Dad and uncle were in the restaurant business.
I guess what I'm saying is, think a lot of things are actually CHEAPER now than we were growing up. However I do feel there is a different mindset about eating out, that it is a more regular things than a special thing, and most people are not satisfied with the base base model of things when purchasing. However even being frugal, housing costs in some areas, seem extremely high and seems harder for entry level people to participate in. There are still things that can be done, like live very simply while saving up a downpayment, buying in a less expensive area first and mabye not a regular house first.
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Maybe it's the ageism coupled with the deliberately-obtuse "it's just not difficult even if you're both working" type comments.
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'm organized. I write stuff down. That stuff still happens and it's frustrating as hell.
Gen X'er here. We are a family of two. Both of us work full time and maintain rigorous workout schedules as well. We still sit down every night for dinner, with china plates, proper service wear and slowly eat our meal together. We do use paper towels, instead of linens. I may change this habit to linen napkins, more often. Paper towels are expensive and wasteful.
It isn't difficult to plan meals for the week. It's mostly about staying on task, planning and organization. I use lists and when something goes wrong, my pantry is stocked enough to have a plan B.
Please don't feel this is condescending, I just want you to know that it can be done. Having a nice sit down meal is good for a family bond as well.
So the post where I said OP was condescending, you saw where I wrote that we generally eat at home on real plates every night, right? We have lists and plans B, that doesn't mean it's less stressful or not actually work. That was my whole point from the beginning: this takes work, and too many people write it off like it doesn't.
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Yo. Middle class, British millennial (born 1990) living in notoriously expensive London here. Let’s get real.
Numbers in the article
I’ll start with these numbers, dividing the total by 52 to get a weekly amount.
£115 for a couple on a night out? I mean, define “night out”, but this isn’t insanely high spending. You go out to a bar and get a few cocktails and some snacks to share, then get an Uber home. Four cocktails @ £10 each = £40, £15 share of snacks, £10 Uber == £120 for two people.
£50 on takeaways? I did raise my eyebrows a little at this one, but it’s easily done. You can get a Chinese, Indian or pizza for two for £15, but you have to be paying attention. £25 on a takeaway happens very easily, so that’s two takeaways for two a week.
Save £50 by bringing lunch rather than buying? Go to Pret and get a sandwich, a packet of crisps and a drink and you’re looking at £6. Two people, that’s £12 a day for a total of £60 a week. I’m not convinced you could make a similarly nice packed lunch for two for £10 a week, but £20 a week would certainly be realistic, so you could indeed save £40 a week on lunches (£2080 a year).
We don’t exactly go nuts on holiday, but £700 seems on the tight end. We holiday in the UK or reasonably close by in Europe and budget £1000 for a week for the two of us.
£16/week on lottery tickets? That’s fucking ridiculous and totally made up. Ignore.
£154 on an annual phone upgrade? I’m still using a paid-for iPhone 4S, but that seems plausible.
So the only number which is totally pulled out of the estate agents’ arses is the lottery tickets. All the other weekly totals seem to be derived from a normal, non-baller middle class young professional lifestyle.
And the quote from Charlotte Windsor? That’s just bait to make you angry. Or she’s been baited and made angry by some righteous estate agent telling her first that she must buy a home ASAP or she has failed at life (buying a home is really not an aspiration for many in my generation) and then telling her she is literally never allowed to do any of the things that she enjoys ever for decades until she has paid off her exorbitantly-priced house just before she dies. And she’s 22. Many many people are idiots at 22 and go on to be perfectly functional adults (and maybe even buy homes!). Odds on she’s only been working for a year and *if* she aspires to buy a home, imagines doing it sometime between 30 and 35. So why should she be interested in their no-fun-ever* five year plan?
*Though admittedly they haven’t dared to suggest giving up takeaway coffee…
What middle-class professional millennials actually do
So let’s think about the actual real lives of millennials I know (many of whom are doctors, lawyers, bankers, consultants…). Clearly, the estate agents have done their research by saying “How much would you spend on a big night out?”, taken the answer, and multiplied it by 52. They have not taken actual spending data and seen how much millennials spend on nights out in a year.
Nights out: No one I know goes on a big night out to a proper bar every week. Maybe every month for the spendy ones? If people do go out every week it’ll be something like having a couple of beers (average price £4.20) in a pub. I went through a period of going to the pub once a week after a class I took. I had a single Diet Coke every time. I was not the only one. And millennials are very clued-in at looking places up before they go and using online vouchers and what have you. I’m going to a chain restaurant tonight and automatically googled “Pizza Express discount voucher” so we’re getting 25% off. That’s just what you do. And a huge number of middle class professional millennials live in flatshares with roommates who don’t share their entire friendship group, so they cannot just invite people over instead. If they want to see their friends, they have to do it outside their home. Our “going out” spending has gone way down now we actually have our own little house to entertain in.
Takeaways: Lots of people buy prepared food. I don’t know many people who could say they genuinely cook 100% from scratch every night. We don’t. But there is a whole spectrum here, not “full-on scratch roast dinner” at one end and “most expensive takeaway available” at the other. What I think is much more normal is buying semi-prepared foods (like jars of pasta sauce, ready-made pastry, pre-mixed curry pastes, or those packets of meat or fish that come with a little tub of sauce all ready) or, in a crisis, buying ready meals from the supermarket. I can get a perfectly decent ready meal for two from Tesco for £4. I can’t eat onion or garlic (and need to limit lactose) so that’s hard for me to do in practice, but we buy ready-made pesto, ready-made tortellini, fancy sourdough bread, those little plastic tubs of deli things like roasted peppers in oil or feta and olives… Sure, we could make these things ourselves but, as they say, ain’t nobody got time fo dat shit when Tesco will do it for me for only slightly more than the cost of the ingredients. So it’s much more realistic to imagine busy professional millennials assembling meals from semi-prepared ingredients and having the odd panic microwaved lasagne.
Packed lunches: Tough one. I would say most millennials I know buy their lunch a LOT. There is a LOT of scope for saving here. But think about the trade-off they’re making – you can buy a sandwich, crisps and drink from a supermarket for £3. £15/week. What’s the other option? Spend all of Sunday roasting vegetables and slicing chicken to make lunches for the week; panic and make a peanut butter sandwich every morning; buy semi-prepared ingredients that constitute a lunch on their own (like bread and hummus – but that’s about as much as a meal deal and much more boring than a different sandwich every day)? Food has cultural value in Britain now. We care about food. We learn about nutrition. We value good food. ‘Proper’ food is both a necessity and a luxury to middle-class millennials. I think they are conscious of that. So yes, lunches is somewhere that millennials should pull their socks up and sort their life out, but the value of the lunch in the eye of the beholder is not just something to fill them up until the end of the day.
Annual holidays: You know why we think it’s normal to go on holiday every year? Because OUR PARENTS taught us that it is. When I was growing up, every year we went either to a cottage in the countryside or to a European city…and sometimes both! AND we went to visit my grandparents in Devon. AND other family in other parts of the country. So in a good year we might go away four times. And now suddenly you’re telling me that what ‘just happened’ to me and all my friends is massively abnormal? It’s a weird thing to process, especially when holidays are so cheap these days with EasyJet and AirBNB. And, as you’ll know from these boards, travel is valued these days as being an essential cultural and personal experience. And…maybe millennials value it more than buying a home!
Lottery tickets: As discussed, totally ridiculous. Absolute max that I could ever imagine anyone doing is playing the National Lottery once a week for £2. But even then, I seriously doubt that professional millennials do this. It’s people like my dad (spoiler: not a millennial) who are spending a lot of money on the lottery.
Phone upgrades: Yes, millennials do this more than they need to. But the phone isn’t just a phone. You do seriously miss out if you don’t have a smartphone. In my opinion, millennials are more likely to have a creaky old laptop and the absolute tip top newest smartphone – it’s just you only ever see the smartphone (which is part of the point).
And what millennials say
Full comments from millennials in the original article:
Charlotte Windsor, 22, sales worker from Walthamstow. Currently rents with friends paying £625 per month, bills included, to live in Zone 3.
She said: “I think it’s ridiculous. Even if I did give up all of these things, it would still take 94 years to save that up. I pay £625 all inclusive and with the sort of job I’m in it is just ludicrous to expect us to save that amount. Just cutting these things out would save money, but does that mean we aren’t allowed to have a life while we save up for a home? I don’t see any other generations having to have done that. Maybe you could have fewer takeaways, but cutting it all out is going to be a depressing life.
“You have to make some sacrifices, but why should we be deprived of all luxuries? It feels like they are trying to curate who can live in London. You have to be rich enough.”
Lauren Whelan, 20, sales assistant. Lives with her mother at home in east London.
She said: “I think it’s a joke with the prices in London. I would like to get out of London so I can live a bit more. What’s the point of having a house and nothing to put in it?”
Annabelle Gater, 21, works in performing arts and lives in Walthamstow.
She said: “I rent with two others in a flat that costs £1,600 per month. Where I come from, near Manchester, it costs £500 for the same thing. I don’t think people should have to give up their social lives to afford a house. I want to be able to have a family in my own home and not to be renting for my whole life.”
Note that they all live in London, where house prices are genuinely jaw-droppingly high, and they’re all the youngest possible working millennials in low-paying jobs (and possible know each other? Look at jobs and locations).
Charlotte… Yes, it would take 94 years, but that’s because you are working a starter job in London. Your income will go up and you could always move out of London. I know that seems unfair because maybe you grew up here, but that’s the way it is. You’re right, though, that it’s not all or nothing – fewer takeaways, not none, and some sacrifices but not giving up everything. I hope you manage to action that. Also, you didn’t see your parents doing that because by the time they had done it they were old and had already bought the house.
Lauren… You’re absolutely right. It sucks to grow up in London and have to decide between being house poor forever or moving away from family.
Annabelle… Have you considered moving back to Manchester? Or not working in performing arts? People don’t have to give up their entire social lives to afford a house elsewhere in the country.
Conjecture
I am pregnant now and have had a few conversations with my parents about our family life when I and my younger brother were babies and toddlers. It goes something like (not all real examples):
Mum: Do you remember in the old house how we had to keep all your brother’s things in our bedroom because we didn’t have a room to put him in?
Me: No, I was three.
Dad: Do you remember how we could only afford to buy you four babygros so we had to wash them all every single day?
Me: No, I was a literal baby.
Mum: Do you remember how you used to ask if you could go and play in the garden like the characters in your book and we had to say no because we couldn’t afford a garden?
Me: No, I was three.
Dad: Do you remember how we used to have beans on toast every night because we were saving up to buy our current house?
Me: No, I wasn’t eating solids then.
My parents moved into their fancy-ass house (that they live in now) when I was four and a half. They were about 40. But I literally do not remember the 20 years of saving up to get to that point because I was either not alive or a baby. Is it the case that middle class millennials think luxuries are normal because their parents had them late enough in life that the real ‘young professional saving up’ hardship was over by the time they started forming long-term memories? I have no personal experience of the generation before me sacrificing to buy a house because they waited to have children until they were basically there. So a big house and lots of holidays is all I have ever remembered.
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But think about the trade-off they’re making – you can buy a sandwich, crisps and drink from a supermarket for £3. £15/week. What’s the other option? Spend all of Sunday roasting vegetables and slicing chicken to make lunches for the week; panic and make a peanut butter sandwich every morning; buy semi-prepared ingredients that constitute a lunch on their own (like bread and hummus – but that’s about as much as a meal deal and much more boring than a different sandwich every day)? Food has cultural value in Britain now. We care about food. We learn about nutrition. We value good food. ‘Proper’ food is both a necessity and a luxury to middle-class millennials. I think they are conscious of that. So yes, lunches is somewhere that millennials should pull their socks up and sort their life out, but the value of the lunch in the eye of the beholder is not just something to fill them up until the end of the day.
If people think these are the only options, that is the problem right there. Buying a deli or restaurant sandwich every day is not good food or good nutrition. I have brought my lunch to work for decades at this point and have never spent all Sunday cooking or brought peanut butter and jelly. The easiest strategy is leftovers from dinner. One legitimate issue that I see is that people living with several roommates in an apartment don't have much room for food storage. We save a lot of money on food by getting deals on large packages and freezing most of it.
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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.
I agree that when we Gen-Xers were young we got a lot of flak from older folks too, so there's always some "Kids These Days!" RO going on.
I think these articles also look for the most whiny, entitled people they can find. My guess is that the whiny 20-somethings in these articles will be whiny for the rest of their lives, and we'll be posting about them in the Wall of Shame and Comedy. Everyone else will be buckling down and doing what needs to be done.
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But think about the trade-off they’re making – you can buy a sandwich, crisps and drink from a supermarket for £3. £15/week. What’s the other option? Spend all of Sunday roasting vegetables and slicing chicken to make lunches for the week; panic and make a peanut butter sandwich every morning; buy semi-prepared ingredients that constitute a lunch on their own (like bread and hummus – but that’s about as much as a meal deal and much more boring than a different sandwich every day)? Food has cultural value in Britain now. We care about food. We learn about nutrition. We value good food. ‘Proper’ food is both a necessity and a luxury to middle-class millennials. I think they are conscious of that. So yes, lunches is somewhere that millennials should pull their socks up and sort their life out, but the value of the lunch in the eye of the beholder is not just something to fill them up until the end of the day.
If people think these are the only options, that is the problem right there. Buying a deli or restaurant sandwich every day is not good food or good nutrition. I have brought my lunch to work for decades at this point and have never spent all Sunday cooking or brought peanut butter and jelly. The easiest strategy is leftovers from dinner. One legitimate issue that I see is that people living with several roommates in an apartment don't have much room for food storage. We save a lot of money on food by getting deals on large packages and freezing most of it.
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.
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But think about the trade-off they’re making – you can buy a sandwich, crisps and drink from a supermarket for £3. £15/week. What’s the other option? Spend all of Sunday roasting vegetables and slicing chicken to make lunches for the week; panic and make a peanut butter sandwich every morning; buy semi-prepared ingredients that constitute a lunch on their own (like bread and hummus – but that’s about as much as a meal deal and much more boring than a different sandwich every day)? Food has cultural value in Britain now. We care about food. We learn about nutrition. We value good food. ‘Proper’ food is both a necessity and a luxury to middle-class millennials. I think they are conscious of that. So yes, lunches is somewhere that millennials should pull their socks up and sort their life out, but the value of the lunch in the eye of the beholder is not just something to fill them up until the end of the day.
If people think these are the only options, that is the problem right there. Buying a deli or restaurant sandwich every day is not good food or good nutrition. I have brought my lunch to work for decades at this point and have never spent all Sunday cooking or brought peanut butter and jelly. The easiest strategy is leftovers from dinner. One legitimate issue that I see is that people living with several roommates in an apartment don't have much room for food storage. We save a lot of money on food by getting deals on large packages and freezing most of it.
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.
As an older millennial, I spend a good amount of time batch cooking either on Sunday or Monday. That handles dinners and lunches (generally soup and fruit) for the week. I didn't really know how to cook until after college. I've pretty much taught myself via the Internet, cookbooks, and Food Network.
Now when my husband is home (he's in another state for school currently), we eat out quite a bit because it's an activity we enjoy together. And I'm more likely to cook for both of us every night rather than batch cook. But I still make a big soup most weeks for lunches.
My two-years-younger coworker buys his lunch in the cafeteria almost every day (~$7 maybe?). My ten-years-younger coworker brings her lunch almost every day.
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My parents moved into their fancy-ass house (that they live in now) when I was four and a half. They were about 40. But I literally do not remember the 20 years of saving up to get to that point because I was either not alive or a baby. Is it the case that middle class millennials think luxuries are normal because their parents had them late enough in life that the real ‘young professional saving up’ hardship was over by the time they started forming long-term memories? I have no personal experience of the generation before me sacrificing to buy a house because they waited to have children until they were basically there. So a big house and lots of holidays is all I have ever remembered.
I think this is a big issue. I'm 26 and living on my own since 20 (well, with my girlfriend, but not with my parents is my point) but I have a lot of coworkers around 22-24 that are still living with their parents, with a lifestyle to match. When they talk about moving out (or not), it generally seems to be with the implicit assumption that they won't be "downgrading."
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Packed lunches: Tough one. I would say most millennials I know buy their lunch a LOT. There is a LOT of scope for saving here. But think about the trade-off they’re making – you can buy a sandwich, crisps and drink from a supermarket for £3. £15/week. What’s the other option? Spend all of Sunday roasting vegetables and slicing chicken to make lunches for the week; panic and make a peanut butter sandwich every morning; buy semi-prepared ingredients that constitute a lunch on their own (like bread and hummus – but that’s about as much as a meal deal and much more boring than a different sandwich every day)? Food has cultural value in Britain now. We care about food. We learn about nutrition. We value good food. ‘Proper’ food is both a necessity and a luxury to middle-class millennials. I think they are conscious of that. So yes, lunches is somewhere that millennials should pull their socks up and sort their life out, but the value of the lunch in the eye of the beholder is not just something to fill them up until the end of the day.
Annual holidays: You know why we think it’s normal to go on holiday every year? Because OUR PARENTS taught us that it is. When I was growing up, every year we went either to a cottage in the countryside or to a European city…and sometimes both! AND we went to visit my grandparents in Devon. AND other family in other parts of the country. So in a good year we might go away four times. And now suddenly you’re telling me that what ‘just happened’ to me and all my friends is massively abnormal? It’s a weird thing to process, especially when holidays are so cheap these days with EasyJet and AirBNB. And, as you’ll know from these boards, travel is valued these days as being an essential cultural and personal experience. And…maybe millennials value it more than buying a home!
I wanted to address these two specifically, because they stem from the same thing, in my opinion.
I'm Gen-X and people said the same thing about us...and books talk about it all the time. Basically, going out into the world and expecting to live like your parents raised you. I mean, in the decades of ever-improving economy, that wasn't too terribly hard. For me, growing up poor, it was easy. I had to pinch pennies from the start.
What was lost, somewhere, is that for a lot of people - when they were young, in their 20's, first married, they were poor as shit. And the cable TV, holidays, eating out, didn't come until later, when the house was mostly paid for, the kids were older, maybe mom went back to work because the kids weren't small anymore, etc. But kids don't know that, or don't remember that. They want to live at 22 like they lived in their teens, when their parents were in their 40s and 50s.
All my kids know, though, is upper middle class living. Why would they know any different? There are ways around it. I mean, I had a friend whose parents were wealthy early retirees. They took their kids on fanstastic vacations, but once they were adults and had jobs, the kids had to pay their own way there.
Packed lunches can be much easier than that too, and tastier. But for me it was always the "cooking for one" problem. The other problem is hedonistic adaptation. I grew up eating PB&J and bologna sandwiches. So did my spouse. Long after we got married, and after I lost the "shit I eat out too much" weight, he realized that I was taking dinner leftovers for lunch. Then, suddenly, I had competition. After years of sandwiches he was tired of them... so now, I'm an adult. A childhood of cold cereal, sandwiches, and "American" or "German" food has morphed into this delicious array of Indian, Thai, Mexican, Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern... and, well, other food is "boring". I want "variety". It's so easy to get a sandwich one day, then burrito, then sushi...yum yum. It took work to cure me of that daily habit and move it to a "once in awhile" habit. (I eat salad every damn day for lunch now.)
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One legitimate issue that I see is that people living with several roommates in an apartment don't have much room for food storage.
Friends of mine are in their mid 20s and recently moved to London (in zone 3). He is a software engineer at a Fintech company, she works in HR - reasonably well paid jobs compared to most people their age. They are both East European, smart, hard working, grown up poor & watch their pennies carefully. They share a room in a house that originally would have been a 3-bedroom family home, but is now sublet to 4 couples. There is no amount of saving money on food that would have any impact on their chances of ever buying a house in London. I doubt there is a return on investment on the extra cost of renting somewhere with proper cooking facilities vs just buying food. As for the holiday thing, you can spend more on a train ticket to the airport or parking than the price of a flight to Europe at this time of year.
Equally, I know someone who just bought a nice house, aged 21, without any parental help (other than he was living with his mum until he got this place and not paying any rent.) Key difference is that he lives in Suffolk, not London, took a summer job aged 16 at a grain storage facility and never went back to school.
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As Zelinski would say, it's your money or your life. Everything is a choice. Eat pre-made or restaurant food, or buy a house while in your 20s. Rent now and buy a nicer house in a few years, or buy today in a less expensive house. Work until you're 65 or 70 to support more spending, or FIRE to have freedom (and maybe less money) today in your 40s.
The choices are yours, and there isn't really a wrong choice. But you can't blame anyone except yourself for making the choices that you do.
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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.
It's like driving a car - sure, it can be convenient to drive but it's not something people aspire to. ESPECIALLY in London with its excellent public transport and ridiculous housing prices (and the Evening Standard is a London paper so we have to think about it in a London-centric way). I do want to buy a house one day but I grew up in London so in order to do that I'm going to have to move away from my parents (who are about to be grandparents). Sucks, right? But if I do seriously want to buy a house, no amount of free childcare from my parents could offset the difference in house prices between London and, say, the ex-industrial north. Young people IN LONDON do, imho, have to make unreasonable sacrifices to buy a property. I have looked at this and decided the answer is "Don't buy in London." But this is a London paper reporting on London issues and it is a fact that London wages and house prices are not in reasonable proportion to one another.
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ESPECIALLY in London with its excellent public transport and ridiculous housing prices (and the Evening Standard is a London paper so we have to think about it in a London-centric way). I do want to buy a house one day but I grew up in London so in order to do that I'm going to have to move away from my parents (who are about to be grandparents). Sucks, right? But if I do seriously want to buy a house, no amount of free childcare from my parents could offset the difference in house prices between London and, say, the ex-industrial north. Young people IN LONDON do, imho, have to make unreasonable sacrifices to buy a property. I have looked at this and decided the answer is "Don't buy in London." But this is a London paper reporting on London issues and it is a fact that London wages and house prices are not in reasonable proportion to one another.
FWIW, the original piece is from Strutt & Parker - high end London estate agent owned by BNP Paribas.
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I'm Gen-X and bought in my 20s. For me it wasn't about wanting to own shit just for the sake of owning it. I pushed hard to buy ASAP because the SF Bay Area has a chronic undersupply of housing...for a variety of reasons we don't build enough (http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/housing-costs.aspx).
Unless you can get into a rent controlled unit (only certain cities/areas, difficult to find what you need) then renting long-term means increased housing insecurity for most because rents outpace incomes.
Buying in my 20s means that, by the time kids came along in my mid 30s, the cost of owning was significantly less than renting.
Not sure what the supply/demand situation is like in London, but if I were setting down roots in a different area with saner urban planning then I wouldn't have cared nearly as much about owning.
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It doesn't take long to put a few dishes and some flatware on the table, and it contributes greatly to the ambience of the meal vs. eating from paper towels, which I've seen some people do. Afterwards, the dishes are placed in the dishwasher, which likewise takes only a few minutes.
We eat at home on real plates most nights, and yet I still somehow feel condescended to by your posts. Impressive.
Seriously? Not my intention. We're not talking expensive china and crystal here. I don't understand why you would feel that way. I believe that one of the problems in the country is that people don't sit down to a family style meal together; it's all run here and run there and grab McDonald's on the fly. Plus it's expensive and unhealthy. But whatever. Sometimes written words don't convey the meaning that is intended.
Just saying that I agree with you coppertop 100%. We are also 2 working parents (early 40s), 2 little children, and this is our routine as well. It really is not a big deal, just a nice, regular family meal. I cannot see how what you wrote would offend anyone. This reminds me when I went to graduate school and people would tease me about dressing "so nice" just because I was not wearing a sweatshirt like 90% of my classmates.
I'm a millennial, have a kid, and eat on plates/silverware at a table every night with my wife and son. It kinda drives me nuts though. Since about university on I've always eaten my meal while doing something else . . . watching TV, working, reading a book, walking somewhere. 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. Between the commute, variable working hours, picking up our son from kindergarten, walking the dog . . . that extra time would really come in handy. We're able to eat as a family with two working parents only by doing all cooking on the weekend and simply reheating food before we sit down.
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It doesn't take long to put a few dishes and some flatware on the table, and it contributes greatly to the ambience of the meal vs. eating from paper towels, which I've seen some people do. Afterwards, the dishes are placed in the dishwasher, which likewise takes only a few minutes.
We eat at home on real plates most nights, and yet I still somehow feel condescended to by your posts. Impressive.
Seriously? Not my intention. We're not talking expensive china and crystal here. I don't understand why you would feel that way. I believe that one of the problems in the country is that people don't sit down to a family style meal together; it's all run here and run there and grab McDonald's on the fly. Plus it's expensive and unhealthy. But whatever. Sometimes written words don't convey the meaning that is intended.
Just saying that I agree with you coppertop 100%. We are also 2 working parents (early 40s), 2 little children, and this is our routine as well. It really is not a big deal, just a nice, regular family meal. I cannot see how what you wrote would offend anyone. This reminds me when I went to graduate school and people would tease me about dressing "so nice" just because I was not wearing a sweatshirt like 90% of my classmates.
I'm a millennial, have a kid, and eat on plates/silverware at a table every night with my wife and son. It kinda drives me nuts though. Since about university on I've always eaten my meal while doing something else . . . watching TV, working, reading a book, walking somewhere. 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. Between the commute, variable working hours, picking up our son from kindergarten, walking the dog . . . that extra time would really come in handy. We're able to eat as a family with two working parents only by doing all cooking on the weekend and simply reheating food before we sit down.
I think the point is that it IS productive to do this, it's not just nice to do. But productive in a way that you can't necessarily see right away. There have been studies to show that sitting down and eating dinner together as a family correlates to positive long term outcomes for children. I'm not too familiar with the how and why of it, but at the very least I think its a great way for the family to connect after a long busy day.
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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.
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I am not excusing millennial and their crap lunch-packing (and eating out) habits - I am EXPLAINING them. This is the MMM forum - you really think I don't pack my own lunch?!
But I've been thinking about eating out culture in Britain in general. Options for eating out in the early 1990s in London were largely crap unless you went super-high-end. You had to really search for a reliable middle of the road option between the Ritz and McDonalds. Pizza Express was fancy for us (upper middle class). Nowadays food culture in the capital has exploded. I can get a brilliant meal for a tenner, rather than paying £25 for something mediocre. Same with food delivery - Deliveroo can deliver the aforementioned amazing food right to my house. (Note before everyone starts piling on: I'm an MMMer, no I do not take advantage of this abundant food landscape for my general eating.)
When I was growing up, my family ate out twice a year (birthday meals), got a takeaway once a year (can't remember the occasion), and once a year our au pair would take us to McDonalds for a happy meal (we looked forward to this literally all year). When I moved out I had to google how to go to a restaurant and how to order a takeaway because I had been so infrequently I didn't know how to manage the logistics. My parents were upper middle class (albeit a bit house poor and school fee poor) and we lived in London so we didn't lack options but we just didn't eat out much. Could this have anything to do with the fact that they had two young children and it was a PITA to go out?! Comparing your life in your early twenties when you're flush with money from your first professional job and freedom from moving out with your life when you've got a family is slightly disingenuous. Most millennials are still footloose and fancy free. As many have said, Gen X were called feckless and lacking ambition in their twenties. Do not mistake age differences for generational differences.