The pandemic (and often stupid response to it) is on the verge of destroying it.
I have to confess that I wouldn’t miss it all that much, except when I travel. I can prepare my own food much healthier, and much lower cost. The fact that so many young people thought they could afford to pay other people to cook for them is one of the reasons that generation is having a tough time financially.
You know, I keep hearing the millennials being criticized relentlessly for their profligate spending habits, but I don’t see it.
My major expenses are rent, health insurance, and utilities. I tried being utterly cheap wrt food as a graduate student: Staples only, never eating out – and I still spent something like $200/month (down from a grand total of $400/month when I wasn’t being nuts).
It really doesn’t make a difference compared with the cost of living (closer to $2000, $2500, $3000/month depending on where you live.)
Same with electronics. I don’t care what sort of gaudy electronic bling you sport, it is a rounding error in your budget. Not to mention that you have to be the BEST OF THE BEST OF THE … just to get a hearing on an entry level job.
Gas is also not that significant relative to the big expenses, high or low cost states.
The fact is, millennials are POOR in terms of the primary costs of living – housing, education, healthcare. These are just harder to afford at anywhere near the same level of quality than in previous generations.
Edit: I’m no longer a renter. Need to stop calling my mortgage “rent” – one thing that many people could do to improve their circumstances is to buy instead of rent – it really isn’t that much more expensive, but you keep the equity.
Still, it isn’t that much more or less expensive.
Have to save that down payment first. It helps to have a goal, so you know that skipping that six pack or coffee will pay off in the end.
Except if you don’t pay your property taxes, which is when you find out you’ve been renting your property from the government (unless you’ve done alloidial title, which is just prepaying the rent).
If someone can take something away from you, then you don’t really own it, do you?
I guess I am in an unusual situation. My mortgage, insurance, and property taxes total about two thirds of the monthly rent I would pay for our house.
When I lived in the UK, renting was much cheaper than buying. The first house I bought was after I moved to Canada, where buying was cheaper than renting.
But when you buy, you’re also stuck with the place and the costs of maintaining it; if you have to move for work, suddenly you have to sell and buy another place rather than just hand in your notice and find a new place to rent.
So it’s not all that simple.
It is possible to eat out for about the same as it costs to cook. Cooking your own foods has bigger pay offs the more people you cook for and how often you like to eat leftovers.
I enjoy bargain hunting at the grocery stores. I have $1 per lb pork butts and $2 per lb organic chicken breasts in the refrigerator. They were on clearance. I don’t see how I could beat that at a restaurant.
I only bought whatever was on sale when I was a poor student and kept the habit. Now that I’m on sabbatical and have time to cook properly, our food costs (never high to start with) have been at an all-time low.
When the large cereal box is $4.99 but it’s on sale at $3.99 every two weeks, like clockwork, it’s stupid to pay full price.
Oh for sure. I like to cook and can make a dollar stretch at the store but if you are single, you will be eating a lot of pork butt.
It may be possible to eat out as cheap as eating in but rarely accomplished in actual practice.
On my way home from work yesterday I stopped at the grocery store and picked up enough food for 6 home cooked meals (as an afterthought, I was there for something else) for less than $30. When I got home my wife decided she wanted burgers from a local restaurant so I went and picked those up, $16 for 2 burgers. So $8 a meal for cheap restaurant food vs $5 a meal for home cooked. And the burger meals I picked up didn’t even include drinks (would have added $2 each).
There are a lot of industries that are being severely damaged or destroyed by the government’s response to COVID. Airlines, rental car companies, hotels, and restaurants are all heavily impacted due to the big decreases in personal and business travel. Hertz went bankrupt and dumped a few hundred thousand cars on the market. That’s going to further hurt weakened new car sales and manufacturing.
Just about all tourism related businesses are effectively shut down. A lot of places are heavily dependent on tourism. For example, if you go to visit Hawaii (or New York if you’re from over 25 states), you’re required to quarantine yourself for 14 days. Who would do that?
Many retail establishments were also heavily hit, with big names announcing bankruptcy practically every week. The latest I’ve heard is Steinmart. They’re going to close 300 stores. Much of brick and mortar retail was struggling already but this year pushed them over the edge.
The prohibition on “non-essential” medical treatment earlier this year hurt a lot of small community hospitals and health care providers. Small hospitals struggle to survive in the best of times. Gyms and fitness centers remain closed in some states. If you like to exercise, good luck finding home exercise equipment for sale.
TV and movie production is largely shut down, and most movie theaters remain closed. Convention centers and live entertainment venues remain closed. Bands, who make most of their money from concerts, are feeling the pressure. Even ticket resellers like TicketMaster have nothing to sell, but they’re very much hated so no one cares about them.
Yes, has anyone else noticed how the mostly leftish politicians behind the lockdowns have been hurting the mostly leftish industries the most: entertainment, publishing, medicine (that’s my impression, anyhow). It seems the more truly non-essential a business is – not including medicine in this part – the more left-of-center they turn out to be (because artists) and the more their own public servants gleefully sell them down the river. Truly the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.
It’s been bad for the restaurant industry, but I think its been far worse for the live entertainment and hospitality industries. We are going on a trip to get away, but while we normally plan to see a few shows and enjoy the nightlife; those things are verboten. It’s primarily a change of venue with a chance to enjoy the scenery along the way.
Yeah, one of the companies that’s been doing events (weddings, banquets etc) here since the 50s just announced they’re closing because CCP-19 restrictions mean they can’t sustain their business.
And one of the hotels here shut down a few weeks ago. Many of them rely on business from people coming here for concerts and shows… and there aren’t any concerts and shows.
The economic damage from these lockdowns will be one of the worst catastrophes in human history.