Have you tried making your sandwiches at home?
Hooray! The ingredients cost 30 dollars and I get to eat sandwichs everyday for a week or watch the ingredients spoil. Wow greatest country in the world.
Yeah seriously, the “cOoK aT hOmE” crowd really annoys me sometimes. Unless you only buy non-perishables, more often than not it’s just not economically practical for one or two people. Grocery stores are optimized for families.
I don’t know what it’s like where you live but I’ve never had that problem and I mainly just buy groceries for myself.
From personal experience, it’s a personal failing and not an environmental issue. The only time I have issues with food spoilage like described above is when I over buy, forget about, or get tired of something. If I properly plan out my meals (lol) and space out purchases and freeze leftovers when necessary, I have very little issues with spoilage.
And having sandwiches regularly without having ingredients go bad is something I do all he time.
When ever I hear how expensive it is to cook I know I’m dealing with a young person who’s clueless. Have parents not been teaching their kids to cook?!
Reminds me of visiting my niece and her husband for dinner. They never cooked but made a nice meal that night. But they said it just wasn’t economical when they totaled the price vs. portions. They did the math and proudly claimed it was cheaper to eat out. My wife and I were stunned.
Well, duh? Now you have leftover ingredients. Add to those and plan another meal. FFS, they had to buy salt and figured that into the total meal price. They literally started with nothing. Yes, it’s expensive to spin up a fridge and pantry, but once you’re rolling it’s cheap to eat.
Eating out in the US used to be famously cheap. Now that people have been conditioned that way and everything belongs to a few oligopolists, they’ll squeeze every last drop of blood out of people.
For what it’s worth no, my parents did not teach me how to cook, and none of my friends’ parents taught them how to cook either
I was taught to cook so poorly I had to start from scratch and learn how to make food taste good. There’s no shame on not having been taught basic life skills, but cooking is definitely a skill worth learning. Begin by talking to the laziest home cooks you know, figure out their tricks because we tend to live off cheap and easy stuff
eg. black bean tacos: two cans of black beans, rinsed, cooked in water and store bought taco seasoning until it’s been sufficiently absorbed, put on store bought tortillas, salsa, sour cream, and cheese are optional, I’m partial to jarred nopales as well. Experiment at will.
If only there were some method available, allowing you to search for and obtain information on any possible topic! Maybe in some sci-fi future world, this incredible information resource will also include instructional videos!
Look, all I’m saying is that sometimes I just want to buy a little bit of parsley or cilantro for a dish, but can’t. I gotta buy the entire bundle and waste most of it. And that’s just one such example I can think of on top of my head.
Then you chop it all off and freeze it, put it in a ice cream box or something and then use it for stews or soups where it’s not so important to use fresh
Been there, done that. Produce doesn’t freeze well at all. It just turns soggy and mushy. It’s a non-option but thanks for trying.
Yeah…I almost never order out unless I have company in town or I’m completely out of food to cook after work and I’m lazy (which is like once/mo). And even then I’ll usually scrape something easy together like cereal or pasta/red sauce or even just toast/butter if I’m really desperate.
I’m not constantly throwing out food or eating the same things. Just every week or so I’ll grab enough to make like three separate dishes plus a few staples and just like that I’m set to scrape together something new or eat at least three different set meals. Or I can run down to grab one extra ingredient and make an entirely new dish combining what I have.
I definitely get eating out is delicious and much easier, but let’s not pretend it somehow saves you money lol
what? I have never had this problem for myself. it seems people just want an excuse to eat out
Well I’m glad that you’ve found a way to reuse the same ingredients several days in a row, but the GF and prefer to have variety in our diets. By the time comes around that I have second use for the ingredients I bought, they’ve already gone bad. We got sick of wasting so much food.
Edit: You keep making the same arguments over and over again. I’m not buying too much. Produce tends to be sold in large bunches and can’t be easily frozen. Meat is sold as several pounds and goes bad before I can finish it all. Same goes for milk and eggs. They go bad too quickly.
I think you guys need to buy more versatile food then if you get so bored quickly. you need to look into spices. I don’t mean to sound rude, but if you want to save money, you have to come to a point where you go “yeah i had this 2 days ago but beats ordering food” because it saves you money that you could be using for something else (saving etc…)
Plus learn to buy in smaller quantities, to me this seems nore like an issue of buying more than they can eat.
Also, has no one heard of a freezer?
If you want to get fancy, vacuum pack it. I’ll admit, I cannot stand even the slightest freezer burn. It makes me gag immediately. Vacuum packing basically eliminates that.
Do you know what a “refrigerator” is?
Did you know that refrigerators don’t stop food from going bad, they just slow the process? And before you mention the freezer: not everything can be frozen. Like most produce, for example. It’s not a temperature issue, either. I regularly probe the temperature in several areas to make sure all parts of the fridge stay below 38°F.
Even with a fridge, most of the groceries the SO and I buy end up going bad before we can use all of the ingredients. It’s cheaper to just eat out most of the time.
most of the groceries the SO and I buy end up going bad before we can use all of the ingredients.
So what you mean to say that for YOU it’s cheaper to eat out given your current eating and cooking habits. But you are generalizing this for everyone. There are lots of reasons buying groceries and cooking may not be working for you. If you really want to save money, there is absolutely no question that it’s cheaper than paying someone to cook for you every meal. Just because you haven’t figured out how to do that doesn’t mean you can say that’s universally true.
This said, it sounds like eating out all the time is working for you and you are happy with it.
So this may not apply to you, but… If you do want to optimize for cost, I’d suggest:
- Don’t buy cheap ingredients. Discounted groceries are old groceries. Buy from a farmer’s market if you can as things are WAY fresher and will last much longer.
- Work out a small set of meals that you can put on repeat, last long and/or freeze well. Make these in quantities for several meals.
- Buy as your base ingredients things that aren’t perishable or can be frozen easily. Dried beans are an obvious example.
- Pool food resources with friends.
Unless you’re doing heavy veggie sandwiches that’s strange to me. I’ve packed my lunch my entire adult life, and sandwiches are the primary staple. Back when I ate meat I was able to mix it up between two different types of cold cuts day by day using the big containers and I can’t remember them ever going bad. Since I quit meat I just do peanut butter out of convenience and it’s similar. Occasionally a slice of bread or two goes bad but with the big whole wheat loaves from Aldi it’s an end piece and a few cents of spoilage. And all this is with me being the only one to eat these things.
Are you under the impression that families are going to the grocery store every day and trying to eat everything within 48 hours of picking it up from the store? No, people are buying the week’s worth of stuff and might not be getting to actually cooking it until 6 days later.
Buy a week’s worth of food, with each perishable item in quantities small enough to go into a few meals per week, out of the 21 meals you’ll be eating that week.
Fresh vegetables and fruit last a week or two. Fresh meat lasts a week. Eggs last a few weeks. Most dairy products last a week or two.
Make meals out of a combination of fresh ingredients, dry goods (pasta, rice, beans, breads), canned/preserved foods/sauces/condiments, frozen foods. With basically one perishable feature ingredient per dinner, it doesn’t take that much planning to feed yourself for maybe 10-25% as much as it costs from takeout or restaurants. Even if your food waste is double as a single person, that’s still 20-50% the cost.
If you save $12 every work day, you save 50%. And you can buy cheaper stuff that lasts longer.
The ingredients spoil?! Either you don’t have a fridge or don’t have a clue how to cook. Or maybe turn your fridge temp down?
Lunch meat lasts a month, easy. Cheese? Multiple months. Bread? Depends. 1-day to 2-weeks, forever if frozen.
I get ham slices every trip. Any idea how many things you can do with those?! Fry them for eggs benedict, with melted cheese on a bagel, chop into an omelette, ham and cheese melt, part of a charcuterie board, 20 different kinds of sandwiches, and more.
All of that only talking about one of the ingredients you have bought. Learn to cook or pay someone a premium to do it for you. That’s how it works.
sounds like a fucking good time. i love sandwiches.
Oh goodie, first world problems. Never get sick of hearing ungrateful privileged people act the most oppressed by their super easiest problems to fix.
You know, you don’t have to buy everything in industrial quantities.
Signed by the “never heard of a freezer gang”
“Enjoy your tv dinner, micro plastics and preservatives gang”
I prefer macro plastics myself
That’s what your girlfriend said you prefer macro cuckold.
The avocados keep going bad though
I had this problem. If it helps, avocados keep for a good deal longer in the refrigerator.
Eat them
neurotypical propaganda
This only really works when you’re at home.
You’ll be so amazed when you learn about sandwich boxes.
Something funny I noticed at my last two jobs. The people who had their financial act together always brought their lunch. The broke people, like me, almost always ate out. Go figure.
I’m sure these two things have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.
Game changer!
Then we can afford housing!
My local sub shop has great sandwiches for $8
Same. People need to stop buying from giant corporations. Everything they sell is cheap shit sold at a ridiculous price now because investors expect a 30% profit margin.
For real. Who the fuck eats at subway these days, the food quality is absolute shit, they treat their staff like shit, and they charge you more for the pleasure
well but also just born in time to live the golden age of computer games as a teenager. oh man those gorgeous manuals of 1990-2000 era games
As I read your comment, I could smell the manual, hear the gentle crack as I broke the hymen of a new manual, it’s semiglossy pages revealing the secrets of button layouts to me.
Uhhhh phrasing
The joy of using red filters to find keywords to start those games.
You are the chosen one
I blame Hardee’s normalizing a $6 burger mid 2000’s, oh and greed, a fuck ton of greed.
They couldn’t even offer the $6 Burger for $6 longer than a month or so. They were almost immediately $7 or more. They were also supposed to be comparable to a sit-down restaurant burger. Somehow they cost more and are lower quality. It’s cheaper to get a burger at Denny’s than it is to get a burger at any fast food place these days, and it’s a better and bigger burger.
Yeah chili’s is 10.99 for an app, burger and fries
They say it’s all about the timing.
I was amazed a McRib combo is only 8 dollars… ONLY 8 dollars…
And that’s still too rich for my blood, fuck you McDonalds, I curse you and mourn that I took the Dollar Menu for granted
Fif
Fif teen
Fif teen dollar foot longI’m sorry, I have no control.
🎶 five dollar foot longggg 🎶
Fifteen*
🎶 five dollar 1¼ foot longggg 🎶
The average sandwich made of bread, meat, cheese, done vegetables and various condiments goes from 3 to 8 dollars
What kind of sandwiches are those?
Who tf pays $15 for a sandwich? Y’all motherfuckers need to learn how to cook.
Oh yeah apartment rentals/living in a vehicle are known worldwide for their spacious cabinets for pots, pans, cups, dishes, bowls, mugs, knives, forks, spatulas, spoons for eating and cooking, cutting boards, flour, sugar, yeast, oven mitts, thermometers, and sinks to clean up and counter space to cook and dry all that is needed for “learning to cook.”
Happy Thanksgiving.
Uhh, apartments have kitchens.
Yeah y’all need to learn how to be self-sufficient! Look at the people surviving during the Great depression. That’s how we all need to be.
What tf kind of lame ass strawman is that? News flash: its usually cheaper to prepare your own food. Film at 11.
I might have misunderstood the context. I took OPs post to mean the sandwich will eventually become 15 dollars, not that they are currently. So I took the post I replied to as indifferent to that future suffering. Was I mistaken?
Honestly, yes. We need to learn how to make do with less. We can indulge when times are good, but some people just splurge in good times instead of saving and struggle to make do in bad times.
Literally
Just a constant reminder that gen z home ownership by individuals is up. But who cares, let’s be doomers all the time. The economy certainly didn’t have any effect on anything important like an election or something.
Up compared to what, where, and by how much?
Millennials and on par with gen X. Also top third as a country.
Economist put together a nice article or you can dig through the omb data. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/04/16/generation-z-is-unprecedentedly-rich
Right, so the “where” is the USA.
If we take this definition of the generations and table 12 from here, we can compare the values 16 years apart to see generations at equivalent ages. 2023 is the most recent data on that table, so millennials would be 27 to 42. We can’t match that perfectly with the 5 year bins on the table, so I’ll just average every bin that that generation covers a majority of. With that, we get:
2023 2007 1991 Gen Z 23.6% x x Millennials 47.9% 24.8% x Gen X 72.0% 53.4% 15.3% Boomers 78.5% 76.9% 49.1% We can compare generations at the same age by looking along the topleft-bottomright diagonal. This shows gen Z having a lower ownership rate than Millennials did 16 years ago. Millennials were doing better than gen X 16 years before that, but have now fallen behind both gen X and the boomers.
Sure enough, the entirety of the discussion of homeownership in the article you linked is:
American Zoomers’ home-ownership rates are higher than millennials’ at the same age (even if they are lower than previous generations’).
Not sure what data they’re using since that doesn’t tally with the above, but that’s still second-worst, and the actual worst is the generation the post is actually talking about.
no way 47% of millennials own a home. i’m 34 and don’t even have a cent in the bank. I’m happy with renting though because home ownership has alot of responsibilities i don’t really want because im super lazy.
Your link is paywalled. But I’ve also heard this before and the main reason for this is that we’ve changed how inflation is measured, among other things. I don’t like replying with a half-hour video link but coldfusion’s “why is gen z so poor” Video gives a good overview, also using the article you linked as a source in the video.
Home ownership rates don’t need to take inflation into account. At the end of the day gen z, as individuals, own housing at roughly the same rate as gen x. The standard of living is higher and yes you can have this with inflation up and disposable income down people can still buy houses and do.
The US has weathered this global shift incredibly well, yet this sentiment displayed put Trump in office. It hurts me to see this disconnect and to see concepts like doom spending cheered.
Sure, but exclusively focusing on housing as an indicator for how rich a generation is gives a skewed perspective. Gen Z isn’t implicitly richer for owning a home, as they were able to use the low interest rates during covid which made mortgages less of a burden. They also have more opportunities to work from home, which allows them to buy cheaper houses in less desired areas.
However, just owning a home doesn’t mean you can actually get by.
It’s somewhat telling that despite all of those advantages, the average age at which people buy their first home is at a record high.
The wording is highly biased and the article is poorly sourced. Here’s another link for the article referred to: https://archive.ph/wJJZv .
The Fed working papers ctrl-f “generation” -> : https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/has-intergenerational-progress-stalled-income-growth-over-five-generations-of-americans.htm - the pdf paper includes the figures with non-biased language and here’s the conclusion:
Using data from 1963 through 2022, we evaluate whether younger generations are seeing slower income growth relative to the generations that came before. We confirm that there has been a slowdown in intergenerational progress, except for Millennials who saw their incomes grow slightly faster than Generation X but still more slowly than Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation. Intergenerational progress has remained positive for all generations. Positive growth has been maintained for Generation X and Millennials in spite of their stalled growth in hours worked. We investigate the role of two potential explanations for perceptions of worsening outcomes for Millennials despite their observed income growth relative to previous generations. First, we find that the higher household incomes of Millennials relative to Generation X, through their 20s, is a result of dependence on their parents rather than a rise in their own market incomes. By age 31, however, less than 10 percent of Millennials are still dependent on their parents and by then their own market incomes exceed that of previous generations. Second, we find that the rising cost of college offsets only a small portion of the income gains achieved by Millennials, especially when accounting for the growing generosity of financial aid. Our results focus on aggregate comparisons across generations, as opposed to direct comparisons between individuals and their own parents. Each type of comparison provides important information about absolute improvements in economic wellbeing across generations. Future research should continue to consider alternative measures of wellbeing for evaluating intergenerational progress, including consumption, wealth and social wellbeing (e.g., Fisher and Johnson 2022). Results on changes in wellbeing over time, including the intergenerational 26 progress made in rising incomes, should inform discussions about how best to promote wellbeing in the future.
Gratitude - I learned something despite the misleading trailhead.
Gen Z is just coming of age, so it makes sense that their home ownership rate is rising.
Data without context is meaningless.
https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation-2023/
26% of adult Gen Zers owned a home in 2023, little changed from 2022. Meanwhile, the homeownership rate for millennials rose to 55% from 52%, and the rate for Gen X climbed to 72% from 70%. Still, most adult Gen Zers are tracking ahead of where their parents were at the same age. That’s likely because many Gen Z homeowners were able to buy when rates were near record lows.but what about new home owners? certainly no one can afford them at this prices?
Turns out bloomers trying to gaslit people about how “actually the economy is great!” wasn’t an election winning strategy.
I demand my right to COMPLAIN! How insensitive of you to infringe upon my right to constant butthurt!
Fuck gen z. Millennials have had it way worse and have been beaten to death by the economy since our late teens.
Also it’s mainly mommy and daddy buying them houses.
They didn’t graduate into the worst economy since the Great Depression, and then when they finally regained their footing get the rug pulled out with covid. And the cost of housing quadruple. Nah. In fact wages skyrocketed under covid if they were lucky enough to get a work from home “job”.
Hey, graduating Gen Z here, where are those mythical high-paying remote jobs? Hell, where’s somewhere that will actually look at my resume? People that got hired during COVID got laid off and now we’re competing with people who have 2-4 years of experience for a junior position, inflation is significantly higher and paying for college and rent didn’t exactly get easier. How can you look at the current situation and say we have it easy, just because you also had it rough?
I’m not saying there aren’t gen z who are suffering. You’re one of many and I’m sorry for that.
Millennials still, as a generation, have it objectively worse financially.
I protested during OWS and got pepper sprayed for it. I worked for the Bernie campaign just to see the DNC royally fuck their base in the ass no lube. The only peaceful action we have left is a general strike and everybody’s struggling so hard trying to fend for themselves that no one has it in them to organize a strike let alone all the fucking bootlickers who’d be against a unified labor action anyways.
We’re fucked. Violence appears to be the only answer, and for now it’s only the far right with an appetite for it. And they love the state.
Also it’s mainly mommy and daddy buying them houses.
How else can you afford a down payment? I’m a home owning millennial and I’ll happily admit my house down payment was covered in large part by what was left in my college fund. No way I’d just have $50k laying around at age 30, otherwise
And that was ten years ago, when housing was half the price it is today.
You’re extremely privileged. I didn’t have a college fund, I was coerced into taking out a mortgage on my worthless education.
My mom is on the brink of homelessness (she lost the house after dad died) and my dad is dead (thank you for profit american healthcare system). Despite being college educated, the most money I’ve ever consistently made per hour is $25. I’m just barely getting by, and jobs in my field pay less than what I currently make as a valet driver with tips (~35 an hour but half is tips).
Unless I win the lottery or fall into exceptionally lucky circumstances, I will never have a house of my own. And all I want is a simple house with a mother in law apartment so my mom and I can share the house but live in separate quarters.
Being in vermont I’m surrounded by rich people and my job is a pointless job fellating the egos of the rich. They hate us and we hate them.
There are types of loans that require 0% down. It’s difficult, though, because monthly payments will be higher. Still a valid approach in some parts of the country. I managed to buy my first home this way with no help from my parents - and yes it was in the Midwest where no one wants to live.
This is a super shitty comment you wrote here dude. Gen Z isn’t having life handed to them any more than we millennials did. If anything it’s worse for them because inequality isn’t getting any less striking.
I’m a millennial who has a remote, work from home job, go ahead and shit on my career. Gen Z are our friends and allies in the end, they understand pretty well what we went through and they’ll almost certainly go through worse because gestures vaguely at the state and trajectory of everything. The pain Olympics suck and someone’s suffering doesn’t invalidate yours.
We gotta use the empathy the boomers didn’t, we need to be better and not continue generational infighting or the only people who win are the rich.
Laughs in blue collar. When this country collapses, as it is currently doing, what are you gonna do with the skills from your fancy laptop job?
Fun fact: there are people who don’t live in the United States, we exist.
Personally I don’t give a fuck about blue collar vs white collar. We’re all working class in the end dude, and basing your whole life’s trajectory around fear is a very sad way to live. God knows it’s possible to have hobbies that are practical without making them your life.
I hope you find some way to deal with your anxieties instead of letting them rule you.
What a sad way to see things.
Saf?
*sad
Graduated in 09. No mommy money here 🤷♂️.
Quadruple 🤣. You realize when you say that to anyone educated that are just going to start nodding their head blankly right?
When did you buy? 2017/2018/2019?
The last time I could even think of getting a house was back then, and the prices here went up at least four fold.
Most millennials I know can’t afford houses and never could. If they didn’t buy before covid they can’t buy until the market crashes again.
Also you’re not gen z. The oldest gen zs are like 25… hence mommy and daddy’s money.
Gen z didn’t have a decade of extremely suppressed wages to account for, and if they graduated right into a cush work from home “job” during covid they won’t have any financial difficulties at all. They’re not dealing with the compound lost interest of a lost decade.
Home prices are rapidly falling in my area after several years of out of control growth. The real problem is interest rates, which add hundreds of dollars per month to mortgage payments for the same home price. Fortunately interest rates are temporary and are starting to go down too.
Where are you? In vermont prices just go up and up. I don’t even pay attention to interest rates as the prices are far beyond what I’m capable of.
Austin, TX. Prices here more than doubled from 2019-2023, but have been falling for well over a year now. A ton of new homes and apartments are still hitting the market too, so I doubt we’ve hit the bottom.
They built housing and aren’t a retirement home for rich boomers who like to ski and golf.
No, they did not increase 4x. Stop that, you sound silly.
2 years ago I purchased.
And while I understand your peer group may be struggling the group as a whole is still in largly able to afford homes over a 60% rate which is quite competitive in the Western world.
Don’t get me wrong, we should strive to improve housing, it’s just not the dystopia that the memes and shitty media would have you believe.
And the market isn’t crashing anytime soon (well with trump in office who the fuck knows). The last housing crash was fraud. This market is quite stable with good volume. It’s not a bubble.
In vermont where I live, $150k houses are now nearly $600k.
The market in vermont is a bubble. Full of wealthy people from NYC and Boston pushing out locals.
The bubble WILL pop.
When all the expats and retires decide to move back to New York?
No no no. Those prices aren’t coming down any time soon. This isn’t 2008. There’s no flood of liar loans to default on. These are fixed prices going forward.
Considering our health system is collapsing, I’m hoping they die / move back for healthcare.
Or the stock market crashes and all of their play money vanishes.
I very much doubt it. I doubt you’ll give me a zip code but there are incredibly few markets dealing with those increases. I won’t go to say it is impossible but it would be incredibly localized and an outlier on a national scale.
Vermont. Especially the commuting towns to the ski areas. The problem is state wide.
No, they did not increase 4x.
Really depends on your market. New homes on my street in Houston are selling for twice what they went for before the pandemic. If you’re in a hotter market, on the East or West Coast, prices are higher.
And the jump from 3% interest to 6-7% interest following the pandemic raised monthly mortgage rates around another 1.5-2x (since taxes and interest are the lion’s share of the cost).
95% is the national average and a good chunk of that was getting better. We’ll see what Trump does 😐
