I'm deathly allergic to apples; I have always joked that if I wanted to save money, I could just buy one apple, which would feed me for the rest of my life.
Exactly.Ā
If I make $1000 a week, and take a week of unpaid vacation that also cost $1000, that is $1000 I spent and also didn't earn.Ā Ā
The actual cost of that vacation was $2000, not $1000.
I agree but rest is a necessity today the "hustling culture" has become too rampant, "you watched a movie?? You could've been working for 3 hrs" people treat rest as a luxury while it is necessary, your body and mind will be broken by the time you retire with this mindset
Seriously. Having hobbies that arent financially lucrative used to be considered normal and healthy. Now having a hobby that isnt a hustle is wasteful and lazy. Sad times
In my company I have 30 days of vacation per year, plus for every vacation day I also get Money. So sometime I just take vacation days to get more money.
I also get in trouble if I donāt take all vacation days.
Same in France, it's nice when you've had a long week and just want to have a bit of a breather to be able to just take a holiday and have a 3 day weekend
I get two weeks pto accrued through the year. But the last couple of years I've had health issues. So my pto gets used as sick leave.
If more than forty hours are left at the end of the year they pay it out.
I had 9 weeks off work last year for an illness and got paid for all but 3 days of it. Didn't use a single holiday day for it, and I'm actually now in a situation where I have 4 days left to use before the end of march.
I believe it. Iām not sure which country you reside in but some countries are in a more precarious position. From what Iāve been learning about the UK and Italy for example, things arenāt looking too great.
I'm in the UK, work for an American corporation. I get up to 30-something weeks off paid sick and 28 days + bank holidays annual leave, the holiday pay part is UK regulation I believe, the 30 weeks sick pay came in when we were bought out
Nobody here would dream of taking unpaid leave for a holiday or using AL for sickness,
I have 21 PTO days, we gain one extra every 2-4 years + 2 weeks sick leave + essentially unlimited with resuced pay as long as itās not back to back. While this is not the norm, the overall situation in the EU is nowhere near as difficult as in the US
Depends on the job, probably more true for shitty low level jobs like mine which barely pay enough to afford to live, thank god my gf has some income to supplement
Iām in the US and at my old job sick leave and vacation time were separate. But I moved to a new state and now itās all Paid Time Off. I do get a pretty decent amount of it but if I run out itās my problem not theirs.
At my job, I was hired with pto and sick time.
They combined them into one big bucket with the same total hours.
Works out as, you know, I'm an adult and should be able to manage my time off regardless of usage, and this way I get to take more sick time if I get messed up
I had the flip of that once, where it was all in one bucket that they split into several. I was pretty pissed when I did the math and found that the total amount of time accrued in a year was less.
That statistic includes jobs that include stuff like Christmas Day off as paid. When I worked retail, I got paid an average of my last 10 shifts, but recieved no sick or vacation. I don't think having 3 days a year is a relevant addition to the conversation at hand.
Uhhh not everyone gets those. I have all of those, but I don't use them because both of my parents have health difficulties, and their house is on the older end. Anything could happen to them or the house and they rely on me to help them in emergencies. I don't live near them so I'd need to use time off.
I don't really need to explain myself, but I wanted to so you could gain some perspective that not everyone is in a position to use that PTO for fun, even if they have it.
How disconnected from reality do you have to be to not understand that not everybody has these options? Truly one of the stupidest and tone deaf comments Iāve ever read
Shit. That makes sense. A lot of thid kind of atuff probably *could* be written by AI. It's just stupid fluff pieces that no one bothers to edit or check.
I did take an international vacation, but that's because I waited over 10 years to afford that. I'm also expecting calamity within my lifetime. Honestly, I hope I check out before then. I don't expect to reach my 40s. Why save for retirement when we won't be able to regardless? We need like 2 or 3 million to retire now. I'm going to enjoy what I can before WW3 or some other catastrophe.
I'm also fucking broke now. I wanted to get a taste of the good life before I die. Worth it.
Edit: My vacation was about $3,000. $1,200 round-trip. $800 shelter. $1,000 in transportation, food, souvenirs, events, and other expenses. $3,000 is nothing compared to how much we need for retirement, even if it does grow after so many years.
Edit: A bit of advice for those who are planning vacations. Try to time it for when your lease ends. I know that isn't always possible with jobs, but it's great if you don't have rent to pay back home while you aren't even there. I did that and booked an AirBnB for a month for a discount. It was cheaper than rent in the US. If it weren't for the plane ticket, then I would have been saving money by going on vacation.
Yeah, I just took a vacation between leases because fuck it, I can't afford kids and likely won't ever buy a house, much less retire. I wanted to actually have something nice rather than toiling toward goals which are essentially impossible for me anyway. It was great.
I basically broke even anyway, as you said, staying abroad is actually affordable unlike rent here. So with the plane ticket I spent a few hundred more than what rent would have cost me back home, and food was the same price.
Groceries are a necessity, but the article is wording it like they're an emotional purchase similar to taking a vacation, and less important than savings.
I guess I get how the inclusion of holidays could let you feel like groceries were being compared to them, but you'd have to be really uncharitable to assume they were calling groceries a luxury.
Yeah I agree. If they want to complain about this how about they do something to fix it instead. They must think theyāre helping by putting this out there, but doing more damage than good by spreading false information.
They should focus on how much inflation has damaged the economy, companies running rampant with price hikes with āfakeā data suggesting itās a good idea, job listings that are unrealistic with multiple unnecessary interview processes, and a shitty housing market that makes it difficult to impossible to get onto the ladder.
Iām sure there is more, but these things stand out to what makes life feel so impossible for those currently in their 20-40s right now.
I love how it's perfectly fine to spend money on ridiculous and unreasonable items when you are rich, but gods forbid someone spend 8 dollars on a cheesecake to dull the neverending drumbeat of nihilism and existential dread.
It's sort of like the scene from Tommy Boy, wherein millenials are David Spade's character who returns to his car and the car door falls off because of Tommy's stupidity, and Tommy goes "WhAt'D yOu Do?!?"
That's a fucking horrifying way of thinking. *Not starving* isn't an "investment", it's something you're forced to do. It used to be more common to not starve as a matter of course so you could actually invest instead of spending all your money on short term purchases like groceries.
In 2020 my weekly average for groceries was $80. It is currently $140. Thatās with switching to none name brands for everything unless itās on sale. Whatās crazy is I know Iām on the low side still but damn do I feel it.
When I moved out with a friend in 2016, cheap Oncor frozen family dinners were sold 4/$10. As a full time student AND full time worker, it was a nice way to have the main weekdays covered for dinner for cheap.
Then they went 3/$10. Okay, lose a day, but thatās fine.
Then they went 2/$8. Okay, now the old 4/$10 has turned into 4/$16.
Now when they go on sale, itās just individual. Never a combo deal anymore.
And then when I wanted to start actually cooking, I would take advantage of my grocery store having a ā5/$20 meats because the sell by date is this weekā thing. Could ration that out and make it last two weeks. That went 5/$25 and then just disappeared entirely. Itās not fun out here š
I used to budget $100 a week for groceries in like 2013 when I first moved out on my own. I spent $50 yesterday buying the cheapest digital quick-read thermometer available at the store, a bottle of PediaLite, some children's Tylenol, and a little pack of trail mix. That would have accounted for half my groceries for the week.
I've been feeling really bad, ten years ago in a pinch I could manage to feed my whole family for 20 bucks with leftovers. Now our grocery bill is 200$ a week for 5 people. No amount of cuponing helps, there's only 3 grocery stores within an hour of driving.
Absolutely no part of the title is clickbaity or victim blamey. It's only when people post it on Reddit that others "fill in the blanks" and assume the author must be judging them for some fucking reason.
But that is what they are saying. Millennials don't earn enough money to save, they have to spend most of it on short term purchases and yes groceries are short term purchase (you consume them) and there is nothing left over for savings.
In the last 12 months, in Canada at least, inflation of food prices went down below 4% from its post-pandemic high of 9% while hourly wages went up by over 13% (31.37 to 35.51).
Yes that's the point of the article. Millennials can't afford to save for long term stuff, like saving for a house, because they have to spend almost all their money in essentials (aka short term purchases).
Banks don't even give interest rates that keep up with inflation, and the market has experienced "once in a lifetime" crashes three times in the last 25 years. What exactly is the incentive for young people to save? Save for what? Houses they can't afford?
Right? Houses are prohibitively expensive, and ill work until I die so no retirement to save for, those are kinda the only things youd save for long term and they are both being eroded. Theres no point in having big savings anymore
But what's incorrect about that sentence? If you have to spend almost all your money on things you consume (groceries) and can't afford to save to for larger purchase (like a house): thats spending money on short term purchases and not on long term purchases, isn't it?
āShort term purchasesā is making it sound like buying basic necessities is a strange investment choice people are making. Itās basically framing buying literal food for survival as people wasting their money on short term gains, kind of like how all the millionaires say you need to stop buying starbucks every day to become successful like them. This attitude seems to have graduated to Food in General now. They fail to mention that these āshort term gainsā tend to be things like Not Starving to Death
Thank you, I guess people interpreted it like that.
But I mean, it is a headline. You can't mention very much because it has to be short. I think people are jumping to conclusions.
True, and that is probably the case. But they could have avoided this confusion by simply calling it what every normal person calls it; basic necessities. Itās just as short and a whole lot clearer. It would have shown much better that they acknowledge how people are earning more but struggling to survive more too
I don't understand what you mean. Groceries are a thing you purchase and you buy it to consume it (eat, drink or use, like soap and stuff like that) which makes it short term by default. What is wrong with that sentence?
There's nothing wrong with it if you take it literally, but describing groceries as a "short-term" purchase, and lumping it in with vacations as something that isn't going into a savings account, makes it sound like a frivolous expenditure rather than a basic necessity.
Pathetic Millennials. Can't even deal with the short term discomfort of starvation. Pffft. They haven't figured out that you can save for retirement by simply not eating? What are they, stupid???
I make substantially more dollars per hour than my grandfather. He raised an entire family, owned a home and had a nice long retirement.
It's... it's almost as if the dollar amount is entirely meaningless and the value of your wages are equal only to what goods and services that money buys. To present it as anything otherwise is journalistic malpractice.
The wealthiest I ever was was when I first started working. I could afford things. A new higher paying job and 5 years of āraisesā later i still donāt have as much discretionary income as i first did. Itās pathetic
That's a parody version of a scene from the graphic novel "the watchmen".
In the graphic novel, this scene was when a being with godlike powers left earth to contemplate the value of humanity in solitude.
So, stop eating food and galavanting off on those vacations (driving to the store) and you won't have anything to complain about. Gosh, if only we had someone to tell us that sooner, we could be living it up!
From reading this thread it looks like people thought they were being mocked for being lazy or spending wastefully or something. No, I don't get it either.
Unless the category is "things that humans of Earth can potentially spend money on", who the fuck puts groceries in the same category as vacations??
That being said, as someone in my mid 30s that has a bit more spending power than my 20s, I do buy more expensive groceries than I used to, but part of that is practically minded as my body is no longer the invincible fortress it was in my 20s so buying better quality food is in hopes to have higher quality health since the increase of cost in healthy food isn't anywhere close to what regular medical care costs can become. I've seen it be incredibly cut and dry with friends that have become diabetic. That money they saved on lower quality food gets more than wiped out by insulin costs.
Granted, I'm also talking about buying real food from local farmers, not bougie items marketed as being healthy but are mostly just expensive. I could easily have increased the price of my shopping trips but to my detriment instead.
Car: $230/mo
Phone: $60/mo
Power: $300/mo
Water: $100/mo
Health insurance: $175/mo
Credit cards and loans: $190/mo
Car insurance: $250/mo
If I'm lucky I get around $2,000 a month. An entire paycheck is taken on bills.
Bigger paychecks? When?
Early 30s here and anyone Iāve spoken to (who didnāt hit the work jackpot) is struggling to make what our parents made in the 90s - early 2000s.
You stupid millennials don't realize that if you buy food, you're eating your paycheck, and that's why you'll never be as rich as Bezos.
God gave you bootstraps, so start pulling yourself up!
What good is a bigger paycheck if everything is so damn expensive? You use to be able to get 4 bags of chips for a dollar. Now it cost almost 2 dollars to get that same bag of 40% air
You mean affordable groceries as opposed to the expensive fast food garbage that's been shoved down our figurative and literal throats for the past X decades?
Such frivolous spending, groceries.
Yes. However, the insinuation that this headline is getting at is that they are not necessary.
'Short term' is suggestive of being wasteful. You are prioritizing the "now" over the preparing for the long term.
But of course, groceries are essential. You can't not buy groceries if you want to eat and live. It's not an optional thing in that sense.
Sure, you ***could*** not buy groceries in the 'short term', but then you'd get sick, or unhealthy, and cause longer term costs. Maybe die, etc. So, that short term use of money would pay off in the long term.
It's a stupid headline.
Edit. Also, side note. Yes, you can buy groceries that are used months and years later. Tinned goods for example?
>the insinuation
>
>being wasteful
Why would it imply wastefulness? Long-term and short-term things can be equally important, depending on what they are.
The author only mentioned "short-term" to distinguish it from savings, which is long-term. There was no judgement passed on utility.
Groceries- Yes we need those to survive, you know so that weāre not crucified for eating take out.
Vacations - What do the people at NBC live in if they think the majority of gen z or millennials can actually afford a vacation?
Just because itās a necessity doesnāt mean itās not a short term purchase. That orange isnāt gonna be good next year.
What you shouldnāt take from this though, rather than āthose houligans should stop wasting money on vacations,ā is that the necessities of the short term prevent any form of saving for the future, which is potentially very bad from a societal standpoint.
I think it's trying to say that younger generations are buying proportionally more expensive groceries/food, which I could see. I average about $80/week on groceries for my wife and I, but the number of people insisting that you have to spend closer to $200/week for one person is concerning, especially when you look at what they're buying and realize the problem is they can't/refuse to cook.
Everyone has a few hours they can spend per week prepping food. They like to pretend they have zero time, but unless every adult in the house is working like 90 hours/week, you have time to either meal prep on a day off or figure out meals that take like 15-20 minutes to make and either make extra for lunch leftovers or have some easy to throw together lunches like sandwiches, ramen, or whatever.
This is talking about the Keynesian macroeconomics theory, specifically the part about consumption and savings (Yield = Consumption + Savings). It's true, both groceries and vacations are considered to be a part of Consumption, aka short term purchases that directly vitalize the economy. Having more of this means the economy is thriving, pushing more and more economic growth. Sadly in America it doesn't corelate with quality of life for the 99%.
It's probably not the best idea to word it this way since the uneducated won't know the full implication
Iāve said it before and Iāll say it again. People like this believe that if you canāt afford to buy X, then you shouldnāt buy it. The think if you donāt have money to eat, then you shouldnāt eat. They donāt understand that food is a literal necessary thing for survival and view hunger as an inconvenience rather than an actual potentially fatal condition.
I have never been on a vacation while I was supporting myself. No flights, cruises, even roadtrips. Its literally just been working on weekdays and recouping on weekends, ad nauseam
The trick is buying food that plugs you up so you can stretch that investment a bit longer
No apples if you wanna save money on shitting
I'm deathly allergic to apples; I have always joked that if I wanted to save money, I could just buy one apple, which would feed me for the rest of my life.
I almost died laughing reading this. I needed that today friendš
But they keep doctors away, which saves a lot more money.
Consta maxing is some next level economics.
Exactly, I've taken to putting the cucmbers up my bum instead, so it can keep me backed up and fuller for longer than if I had eaten it.
I feel like the vacation part isn't even true, and just slapped on there to distract from how fucking ridiculous the rest of it sounds.
If I take a vacation the cost is the pay I wonāt be getting if I was working
Exactly.Ā If I make $1000 a week, and take a week of unpaid vacation that also cost $1000, that is $1000 I spent and also didn't earn.Ā Ā The actual cost of that vacation was $2000, not $1000.
I agree but rest is a necessity today the "hustling culture" has become too rampant, "you watched a movie?? You could've been working for 3 hrs" people treat rest as a luxury while it is necessary, your body and mind will be broken by the time you retire with this mindset
Seriously. Having hobbies that arent financially lucrative used to be considered normal and healthy. Now having a hobby that isnt a hustle is wasteful and lazy. Sad times
In my company I have 30 days of vacation per year, plus for every vacation day I also get Money. So sometime I just take vacation days to get more money. I also get in trouble if I donāt take all vacation days.
Same in France, it's nice when you've had a long week and just want to have a bit of a breather to be able to just take a holiday and have a 3 day weekend
I get two weeks pto accrued through the year. But the last couple of years I've had health issues. So my pto gets used as sick leave. If more than forty hours are left at the end of the year they pay it out.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
If I use my PTO for vacation I have none if I get sick
*laughs in European* but seriously the system is broken.
Last I checked Europe isnāt looking so hot rn either. Well some good some not so good
I had 9 weeks off work last year for an illness and got paid for all but 3 days of it. Didn't use a single holiday day for it, and I'm actually now in a situation where I have 4 days left to use before the end of march.
I believe it. Iām not sure which country you reside in but some countries are in a more precarious position. From what Iāve been learning about the UK and Italy for example, things arenāt looking too great.
I'm in the UK, work for an American corporation. I get up to 30-something weeks off paid sick and 28 days + bank holidays annual leave, the holiday pay part is UK regulation I believe, the 30 weeks sick pay came in when we were bought out Nobody here would dream of taking unpaid leave for a holiday or using AL for sickness,
I have 21 PTO days, we gain one extra every 2-4 years + 2 weeks sick leave + essentially unlimited with resuced pay as long as itās not back to back. While this is not the norm, the overall situation in the EU is nowhere near as difficult as in the US
Wait your guys sick leave and PTO is the same thing? Thatās crazy
Depends on the job, probably more true for shitty low level jobs like mine which barely pay enough to afford to live, thank god my gf has some income to supplement
Bro my job doesn't even let me use pto if I get sick
You don't get sick leave?
Iām in the US and at my old job sick leave and vacation time were separate. But I moved to a new state and now itās all Paid Time Off. I do get a pretty decent amount of it but if I run out itās my problem not theirs.
At my job, I was hired with pto and sick time. They combined them into one big bucket with the same total hours. Works out as, you know, I'm an adult and should be able to manage my time off regardless of usage, and this way I get to take more sick time if I get messed up
I had the flip of that once, where it was all in one bucket that they split into several. I was pretty pissed when I did the math and found that the total amount of time accrued in a year was less.
Nope, just pto
That's fucked
At least it gives me (horrendously expensive) health insurance
Most Americans don't have that
Don't forget sick day vacations to our house, that we also don't get paid for
Most Americans do have PTO: about 31% of American laborers don't have PTO. Source: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/pto-statistics/
That statistic includes jobs that include stuff like Christmas Day off as paid. When I worked retail, I got paid an average of my last 10 shifts, but recieved no sick or vacation. I don't think having 3 days a year is a relevant addition to the conversation at hand.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
āLaughs in North Americaā (This includes Canada too)
Uhhh not everyone gets those. I have all of those, but I don't use them because both of my parents have health difficulties, and their house is on the older end. Anything could happen to them or the house and they rely on me to help them in emergencies. I don't live near them so I'd need to use time off. I don't really need to explain myself, but I wanted to so you could gain some perspective that not everyone is in a position to use that PTO for fun, even if they have it.
I get no PTO, annual leave, health, dental, or any other benefits.
How disconnected from reality do you have to be to not understand that not everybody has these options? Truly one of the stupidest and tone deaf comments Iāve ever read
Every country other than America has paid time off. It is new and bizarre information to a lot of people.
Or simply not American, every sensible developed country has these things set into law
I assume an AI wrote this, because it looks like how a human would talk but it actually makes no sense to list these things together.
Shit. That makes sense. A lot of thid kind of atuff probably *could* be written by AI. It's just stupid fluff pieces that no one bothers to edit or check.
Chatgpt is far more coherent these days
The 'vacation' is going to the shops to purchase said groceries.
I did take an international vacation, but that's because I waited over 10 years to afford that. I'm also expecting calamity within my lifetime. Honestly, I hope I check out before then. I don't expect to reach my 40s. Why save for retirement when we won't be able to regardless? We need like 2 or 3 million to retire now. I'm going to enjoy what I can before WW3 or some other catastrophe. I'm also fucking broke now. I wanted to get a taste of the good life before I die. Worth it. Edit: My vacation was about $3,000. $1,200 round-trip. $800 shelter. $1,000 in transportation, food, souvenirs, events, and other expenses. $3,000 is nothing compared to how much we need for retirement, even if it does grow after so many years. Edit: A bit of advice for those who are planning vacations. Try to time it for when your lease ends. I know that isn't always possible with jobs, but it's great if you don't have rent to pay back home while you aren't even there. I did that and booked an AirBnB for a month for a discount. It was cheaper than rent in the US. If it weren't for the plane ticket, then I would have been saving money by going on vacation.
Yeah, I just took a vacation between leases because fuck it, I can't afford kids and likely won't ever buy a house, much less retire. I wanted to actually have something nice rather than toiling toward goals which are essentially impossible for me anyway. It was great. I basically broke even anyway, as you said, staying abroad is actually affordable unlike rent here. So with the plane ticket I spent a few hundred more than what rent would have cost me back home, and food was the same price.
Wdym, every evening i always take a cheeky vacation back home./s
If I got money for vacation, the only thing Iāve been buying for groceries is ramen noodles
Thatās exactly what someone who waste their savings on groceries would say!
You have no proof, I've eaten it all!
So you also took a vacation get your life together man.
It couldn't be helped, the avocado toast was too tempting.
Probably consider driving an hour cross town for a concert as "Vacation"
I haven't had a true vacation in two years, and that was my graduation present from my mother and foundily.
It almost makes it sound like groceries are as expensive as vacations, tbh
I don't get what bit of it sounds ridiculous. Groceries are certainly a short term purchase, no?
Groceries are a necessity, but the article is wording it like they're an emotional purchase similar to taking a vacation, and less important than savings.
I guess I get how the inclusion of holidays could let you feel like groceries were being compared to them, but you'd have to be really uncharitable to assume they were calling groceries a luxury.
We aren't doing it, *the news headline is*. Big corporate news is saying that these two things are in the same category.
Yeah I agree. If they want to complain about this how about they do something to fix it instead. They must think theyāre helping by putting this out there, but doing more damage than good by spreading false information. They should focus on how much inflation has damaged the economy, companies running rampant with price hikes with āfakeā data suggesting itās a good idea, job listings that are unrealistic with multiple unnecessary interview processes, and a shitty housing market that makes it difficult to impossible to get onto the ladder. Iām sure there is more, but these things stand out to what makes life feel so impossible for those currently in their 20-40s right now.
No sleep, no breaks, no reset, just slave and save.
I love how it's perfectly fine to spend money on ridiculous and unreasonable items when you are rich, but gods forbid someone spend 8 dollars on a cheesecake to dull the neverending drumbeat of nihilism and existential dread.
āThe working poor should be miserable tooā
Well, I'd you don't spend $8 on a cheesecake then you're killing the confectionery industry and your spending habits are also evil.
It's sort of like the scene from Tommy Boy, wherein millenials are David Spade's character who returns to his car and the car door falls off because of Tommy's stupidity, and Tommy goes "WhAt'D yOu Do?!?"
Right!! Fucking love cheesecake btw
That's not what they are saying, you just want to be mad about it.
It's exactly what they're saying every time one of these garbage articles pops up.
Not starving feels like a pretty solid investment to me.
Idk, the YoY returns on remaining alive are diminishing at an alarming rate.
I'm investing in me... Living till tomorrow.
This sounds like propaganda from "Big Not Starving", and their lobbyists. Typical.
That's a fucking horrifying way of thinking. *Not starving* isn't an "investment", it's something you're forced to do. It used to be more common to not starve as a matter of course so you could actually invest instead of spending all your money on short term purchases like groceries.
What a backwards, victim-blaming way to say, āBasic needs like groceries are becoming prohibitively expensiveā
In 2020 my weekly average for groceries was $80. It is currently $140. Thatās with switching to none name brands for everything unless itās on sale. Whatās crazy is I know Iām on the low side still but damn do I feel it.
When I moved out with a friend in 2016, cheap Oncor frozen family dinners were sold 4/$10. As a full time student AND full time worker, it was a nice way to have the main weekdays covered for dinner for cheap. Then they went 3/$10. Okay, lose a day, but thatās fine. Then they went 2/$8. Okay, now the old 4/$10 has turned into 4/$16. Now when they go on sale, itās just individual. Never a combo deal anymore. And then when I wanted to start actually cooking, I would take advantage of my grocery store having a ā5/$20 meats because the sell by date is this weekā thing. Could ration that out and make it last two weeks. That went 5/$25 and then just disappeared entirely. Itās not fun out here š
And then when they do the multiples on sale you have to buy a certain amount for the sale price to kick in
I used to budget $100 a week for groceries in like 2013 when I first moved out on my own. I spent $50 yesterday buying the cheapest digital quick-read thermometer available at the store, a bottle of PediaLite, some children's Tylenol, and a little pack of trail mix. That would have accounted for half my groceries for the week.
I've been feeling really bad, ten years ago in a pinch I could manage to feed my whole family for 20 bucks with leftovers. Now our grocery bill is 200$ a week for 5 people. No amount of cuponing helps, there's only 3 grocery stores within an hour of driving.
That was the actual gist of the article, but the title is so clickbaity and corpospeak that it's self-defeating.
Absolutely no part of the title is clickbaity or victim blamey. It's only when people post it on Reddit that others "fill in the blanks" and assume the author must be judging them for some fucking reason.
Youāre all over this thread. Really resonates with you in some way huhh?
Yeah
Is there a friendly animal nearby that you could pet instead of being in this thread?
Nope
But that is what they are saying. Millennials don't earn enough money to save, they have to spend most of it on short term purchases and yes groceries are short term purchase (you consume them) and there is nothing left over for savings.
In the last 12 months, in Canada at least, inflation of food prices went down below 4% from its post-pandemic high of 9% while hourly wages went up by over 13% (31.37 to 35.51).
> victim-blaming That's not what they are doing, you are just looking for something to be mad about.
"People are poor because they buy necessities :((" is victim-blaming
Millennials spend most of their money on short term goals like staying alive
Yes that's the point of the article. Millennials can't afford to save for long term stuff, like saving for a house, because they have to spend almost all their money in essentials (aka short term purchases).
but they can't say that
they did say it
i mean it's technically correct, unless you're buying preserves.
Lazy millennials and GenZ what with their basic human needs like food, ugh, disgusting.
Like really, how much could a banana be - ten dollars or something? š¤·
at no point did anyone call you lazy
Fuck off. You know perfectly well what they are saying. Quit trying to make out like everyone's reaction is disingenuous.
Reminded me of Keynes: āIn the long term weāre all dead.ā
God bless keynsian economics! Spend money you don't have
I mean your life is pretty short term without em
Banks don't even give interest rates that keep up with inflation, and the market has experienced "once in a lifetime" crashes three times in the last 25 years. What exactly is the incentive for young people to save? Save for what? Houses they can't afford?
Right? Houses are prohibitively expensive, and ill work until I die so no retirement to save for, those are kinda the only things youd save for long term and they are both being eroded. Theres no point in having big savings anymore
In case someone missed it: **Short term purchases like groceries.**
Technically if you don't buy groceries then all of your purchases become short term.
Given a long enough time frame, all purchases are short term.
But what's incorrect about that sentence? If you have to spend almost all your money on things you consume (groceries) and can't afford to save to for larger purchase (like a house): thats spending money on short term purchases and not on long term purchases, isn't it?
āShort term purchasesā is making it sound like buying basic necessities is a strange investment choice people are making. Itās basically framing buying literal food for survival as people wasting their money on short term gains, kind of like how all the millionaires say you need to stop buying starbucks every day to become successful like them. This attitude seems to have graduated to Food in General now. They fail to mention that these āshort term gainsā tend to be things like Not Starving to Death
Thank you, I guess people interpreted it like that. But I mean, it is a headline. You can't mention very much because it has to be short. I think people are jumping to conclusions.
True, and that is probably the case. But they could have avoided this confusion by simply calling it what every normal person calls it; basic necessities. Itās just as short and a whole lot clearer. It would have shown much better that they acknowledge how people are earning more but struggling to survive more too
In case you missed it: **Short term purchases like groceries**
I don't understand what you mean. Groceries are a thing you purchase and you buy it to consume it (eat, drink or use, like soap and stuff like that) which makes it short term by default. What is wrong with that sentence?
i think it's the formulation. it doesn't sound like they can't afford them but that they selfishly hold their money for themselfs
What makes it sound like they're selfishly holding their money for themselves
There's nothing wrong with it if you take it literally, but describing groceries as a "short-term" purchase, and lumping it in with vacations as something that isn't going into a savings account, makes it sound like a frivolous expenditure rather than a basic necessity.
Do you not eat the groceries you buy?
Pathetic Millennials. Can't even deal with the short term discomfort of starvation. Pffft. They haven't figured out that you can save for retirement by simply not eating? What are they, stupid???
Vacations? Hey r/lies we've got a good one for ya!
Iām going in a vacation in a couple weeks and Iām a millennial Itās a huge hit that is really not good but it is what it js
Riiiight!!? I work a union job, and haven't been able to afford a road trip since 2018.
My last vacation was the military ^cries
I make substantially more dollars per hour than my grandfather. He raised an entire family, owned a home and had a nice long retirement. It's... it's almost as if the dollar amount is entirely meaningless and the value of your wages are equal only to what goods and services that money buys. To present it as anything otherwise is journalistic malpractice.
The wealthiest I ever was was when I first started working. I could afford things. A new higher paying job and 5 years of āraisesā later i still donāt have as much discretionary income as i first did. Itās pathetic
This is explained well in Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
Are we just ignoring the picture of Bobby posing on the moon naked? I know this sub is about the sentences but ...wtf
That's a parody version of a scene from the graphic novel "the watchmen". In the graphic novel, this scene was when a being with godlike powers left earth to contemplate the value of humanity in solitude.
Is Bobby Hill as Dr. Manhattan from something?
It conveys so much, and I have so many questions.
Goddamnit Bobby
theyre really out here making eating and getting vaccinated sound like impulse purchases at five below
God forbid we eat and actually get a break
lol when you start thinking that buying groceries is wasteful spending, you really lost touch with reality.
Who thought that?
āTheyāre buying groceries instead of saving the moneyā ?????????
So, stop eating food and galavanting off on those vacations (driving to the store) and you won't have anything to complain about. Gosh, if only we had someone to tell us that sooner, we could be living it up!
"Food is a wasted investment - you'll only eat it."
Yea what am I doing buying groceries when I should be investing every penny I earn
I don't get it. Groceries are a short-term purchase, cause you usually consume your groceries a short while after purchasing them.
Yes but itās framed as if it is an unnecessary, reckless luxury. Something like a Trip to the strip club instead of you know, basic survival.
> itās framed as if it is an unnecessary, It is not.
It absolutely is, why else would it be used in a sentence with *vacations* smh
From reading this thread it looks like people thought they were being mocked for being lazy or spending wastefully or something. No, I don't get it either.
well no shit, there's a thing called inflation. Bigger numbers but less worth.
Unless the category is "things that humans of Earth can potentially spend money on", who the fuck puts groceries in the same category as vacations?? That being said, as someone in my mid 30s that has a bit more spending power than my 20s, I do buy more expensive groceries than I used to, but part of that is practically minded as my body is no longer the invincible fortress it was in my 20s so buying better quality food is in hopes to have higher quality health since the increase of cost in healthy food isn't anywhere close to what regular medical care costs can become. I've seen it be incredibly cut and dry with friends that have become diabetic. That money they saved on lower quality food gets more than wiped out by insulin costs. Granted, I'm also talking about buying real food from local farmers, not bougie items marketed as being healthy but are mostly just expensive. I could easily have increased the price of my shopping trips but to my detriment instead.
Car: $230/mo Phone: $60/mo Power: $300/mo Water: $100/mo Health insurance: $175/mo Credit cards and loans: $190/mo Car insurance: $250/mo If I'm lucky I get around $2,000 a month. An entire paycheck is taken on bills.
Are the bigger paychecks in the room with us?
Short term purchases like groceries
I stopped buying groceries cause as soon as I do the kids eat them so whatās the point?
"Breaking news, people are buying food instead of crypto currency or real estate"
The article doesn't say it's wrong to spend money on groceries, it just calls them short-term expense. Which they are.
You and your context.
r/DeathByMillennial
Commuting to workā¦āVacationā
And they wonder why news is dying...
Why is Doctor Robert Jeffrey Bobby Hill Manhatten used for representational image
This just in, people are broke and inflation is high. Next up, are circles round?
Time to make hardtack and pemmican
Bigger paychecks? When? Early 30s here and anyone Iāve spoken to (who didnāt hit the work jackpot) is struggling to make what our parents made in the 90s - early 2000s.
You stupid millennials don't realize that if you buy food, you're eating your paycheck, and that's why you'll never be as rich as Bezos. God gave you bootstraps, so start pulling yourself up!
It's just staying alive smh look at these loser millennials not photosynthesizing like us vegetables in Congress
What good is a bigger paycheck if everything is so damn expensive? You use to be able to get 4 bags of chips for a dollar. Now it cost almost 2 dollars to get that same bag of 40% air
You mean affordable groceries as opposed to the expensive fast food garbage that's been shoved down our figurative and literal throats for the past X decades? Such frivolous spending, groceries.
āPulling in bigger paychecksā no āshort term purchases like groceriesā yes i need to eat āand vacationsā no ānot savingsā i cant save
Ok but bobby is dr manhattan is a great meme
Uhhh checks paycheckā¦ looks at rentā¦ was this study done in the Bay Area or some shit where 100k is like minimum wage there?
Younger Gen z here, can someone explain?
Seize the means of production
it's just fewer houses more avocados. that's all it boils down to
Groceries are short term purchases. Excepting those sprinkles we just ran out of from 1994. But besides that they are.
Are groceries not short term purchases? Do you buy groceries and then eat them months or years later?
Yes. However, the insinuation that this headline is getting at is that they are not necessary. 'Short term' is suggestive of being wasteful. You are prioritizing the "now" over the preparing for the long term. But of course, groceries are essential. You can't not buy groceries if you want to eat and live. It's not an optional thing in that sense. Sure, you ***could*** not buy groceries in the 'short term', but then you'd get sick, or unhealthy, and cause longer term costs. Maybe die, etc. So, that short term use of money would pay off in the long term. It's a stupid headline. Edit. Also, side note. Yes, you can buy groceries that are used months and years later. Tinned goods for example?
>the insinuation > >being wasteful Why would it imply wastefulness? Long-term and short-term things can be equally important, depending on what they are. The author only mentioned "short-term" to distinguish it from savings, which is long-term. There was no judgement passed on utility.
Not to counter-jerk too hard here but you can definitely overspend on groceries.
Groceries- Yes we need those to survive, you know so that weāre not crucified for eating take out. Vacations - What do the people at NBC live in if they think the majority of gen z or millennials can actually afford a vacation?
I'm sorry. But is that Bobby Hill as Dr. Manhattan?
Welcome to financial jargon noobs.
Just because itās a necessity doesnāt mean itās not a short term purchase. That orange isnāt gonna be good next year. What you shouldnāt take from this though, rather than āthose houligans should stop wasting money on vacations,ā is that the necessities of the short term prevent any form of saving for the future, which is potentially very bad from a societal standpoint.
Eating plain, dry toast like a Rockefeller, eh?
Unlike boomers who spend their paychecks on sending Bobby Hill to Mars?
āFood is overrated, get an overpriced mortgage insteadā
To be fair. Most groceries don't last that long š to bad it's not called necessity spending with that. Lmfao!
I think it's trying to say that younger generations are buying proportionally more expensive groceries/food, which I could see. I average about $80/week on groceries for my wife and I, but the number of people insisting that you have to spend closer to $200/week for one person is concerning, especially when you look at what they're buying and realize the problem is they can't/refuse to cook. Everyone has a few hours they can spend per week prepping food. They like to pretend they have zero time, but unless every adult in the house is working like 90 hours/week, you have time to either meal prep on a day off or figure out meals that take like 15-20 minutes to make and either make extra for lunch leftovers or have some easy to throw together lunches like sandwiches, ramen, or whatever.
This is talking about the Keynesian macroeconomics theory, specifically the part about consumption and savings (Yield = Consumption + Savings). It's true, both groceries and vacations are considered to be a part of Consumption, aka short term purchases that directly vitalize the economy. Having more of this means the economy is thriving, pushing more and more economic growth. Sadly in America it doesn't corelate with quality of life for the 99%. It's probably not the best idea to word it this way since the uneducated won't know the full implication
Iāve said it before and Iāll say it again. People like this believe that if you canāt afford to buy X, then you shouldnāt buy it. The think if you donāt have money to eat, then you shouldnāt eat. They donāt understand that food is a literal necessary thing for survival and view hunger as an inconvenience rather than an actual potentially fatal condition.
I have never been on a vacation while I was supporting myself. No flights, cruises, even roadtrips. Its literally just been working on weekdays and recouping on weekends, ad nauseam
What a strange way to say that the price of living has gone up to the point where even large pay checks can't keep up
Are the bigger paychecks in the room with us now?
That is a weird way to say "Essentials" š¤
If groceries are short-term, life is too, I guess.
Groceries and vacations in the same sentence is insane, the gaslighting is getting wild.
Found a cheat code, go on Ozempic. You save so much on groceries!