The 12 dollar Millennial avocado Toast

DdBob

DdBob

Dogue in teh desert
https://www.financialsamurai.com/millennial-avocado-toast-analysis/

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“When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each,” Tim Gurner, an Australian property mogul told 60 Minutes.

As fate would have it, I just had a $10 bowl of guacamole the other day at Tacoliscious in the Marina district, after spending time doing some ceiling patch work on my rental house. All around me sat a bunch of young and fabulous looking folks who enjoyed the 78 degree San Francisco sunshine. Oh, how I wish I didn’t have a house to do work on. I could have gone straight to brunch!

I know some of you think I’m being a bit flippant, but living in NYC and SF over the past 18 years, I’ve seen with my own eyes how so many parents are supporting their adult children.

Neighbor One: Brendan is 27 years old and lives in the basement of his parent’s house across the street from me. He’s a nice guy who loves to go snowboarding every chance he can get. He told me he went up for a total of 45 days this winter because Tahoe had the most snow in decades. Right on brother!
 
I take it you didn’t read to the end of the article. That financial blogger fellow came around to being fairly pro millennial toast...because millennials are (not incorrectly) leveraging parental wealth and freelance gig economy disruption to basically live as members of a wealthy leisure class—a kind of white collar gentry where instead of land they stand to inherit financialized wealth and various investments from Boomer parents who benefitted (in America at least) from being part of a weirdly prosperous historical moment.

It’s likely a normal outcome of 40 years of wage stagnation and growing wealth discrepancies. Wealth concentrates in the hands of the few who bequeath it to their children. And it gets harder and harder for working class types who were not indoctrinated in the rules of this game to level up out of paycheck to paycheck rental lifestyles and the pernicious wealth destroying rhetoric of consumer capitalism.

There’s a new feudalism afoot. And trying to ape the new aristocrats is likely bad news for anyone trying to get a financial leg up. But avocado toast isn’t the problem. And you can’t blame people for individually using their advantages to avoid pointless, soul sucking wage slavery. There’s no inherent nobility to work—and proposing some kind of inter generational slap fight because millennials don’t love Big Brother hard enough is dumb.

The real peril is the creation of an overclass and and an underclass and then the manipulation of cultural totems (avocado toast, activated charcoal lattes, NASCAR hats, etc.) to polarize the two groups and set them at each other’s throats.

That said, I have a number of young Xer/old millennial friends who just had their first kids and it’s shocking how hard it has been for them to learn how to meal plan/grocery shop/cook for their daily needs because time and money do not allow them to eat out like they used to. My mom was not a great cook, but I liked tasty food so I got my grandmother to teach me the basics of cooking when I was 7 or 8 and I’ve been cooking ever since. We need to bring back—and make mandatory—home economics in American high schools given that the nation is now mostly out of Depression-era grandmas.

Want to not be broke? LEARN HOW TO COOK.
 
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By the way, learning how to cook has nothing to do with slathering $0.50 freezer burritos in a can of generic Hormel-style canned chili.

#protip #tasteslikesomethingsonnydropped
 
Peen Simmons said:
I take it you didn’t read to the end of the article. That financial blogger fellow came around to being fairly pro millennial toast...because millennials are (not incorrectly) leveraging parental wealth and freelance gig economy disruption to basically live as members of a wealthy leisure class—a kind of white collar gentry where instead of land they stand to inherit financialized wealth and various investments from Boomer parents who benefitted (in America at least) from being part of a weirdly prosperous historical moment.

It’s likely a normal outcome of 40 years of wage stagnation and growing wealth discrepancies. Wealth concentrates in the hands of the few who bequeath it to their children. And it gets harder and harder for working class types who were not indoctrinated in the rules of this game to level up out of paycheck to paycheck rental lifestyles and the pernicious wealth destroying rhetoric of consumer capitalism.

There’s a new feudalism afoot. And trying to ape the new aristocrats is likely bad news for anyone trying to get a financial leg up. But avocado toast isn’t the problem. And you can’t blame people for individually using their advantages to avoid pointless, soul sucking wage slavery. There’s no inherent nobility to work—and proposing some kind of inter generational slap fight because millennials don’t love Big Brother hard enough is dumb.

The real peril is the creation of an overclass and and an underclass and then the manipulation of cultural totems (avocado toast, activated charcoal lattes, NASCAR hats, etc.) to polarize the two groups and set them at each other’s throats.

That said, I have a number of young Xer/old millennial friends who just had their first kids and it’s shocking how hard it has been for them to learn how to meal plan/grocery shop/cook for their daily needs because time and money do not allow them to eat out like they used to. My mom was not a great cook, but I liked tasty food so I got my grandmother to teach me the basics of cooking when I was 7 or 8 and I’ve been cooking ever since. We need to bring back—and make mandatory—home economics in American high schools given that the nation is now mostly out of Depression-era grandmas.

Want to not be broke? LEARN HOW TO COOK.
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I did just cherry pic what I wanted out of the article.....didn't read the whole thing :wink:

I do agree we should make cooking class a mandatory thing....home econo0mics in general. I mean if you could teach the youth that a one time purchase of 24 dollars for an aeropress pays for itse;f in two days of Starbucks visits, well......and break down how may cups one could get with a 16oz whole bean purchase....

also one could buy their own avocados, some tomatoes and whatnot and make their own avocado toast but again...Home economics would be in order to teach knife safety.
 
I actually love avocado toast. But I dropped it from the menu when avocados hit $2.00 - $2.50 each. I'll resume again when the price drops.

But i did read the article and agree with the logic. Curtail your spending start saving. Get out on your own. Generally the boomer parents are not going to have a pile of cash to give to their kids when they pass on. Half of them are credit leveraged to the max supporting their non-sustainable lifestyle.
 
Denverdave said:
But i did read the article and agree with the logic. Curtail your spending start saving. Get out on your own. Generally the boomer parents are not going to have a pile of cash to give to their kids when they pass on.
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This is the generation that watched their parents work their asses of for 30 years, only to get downsized right when the market crashed, so the parents had to burn through their retirement at $2 for the dollar. Meanwhile, banks got bailed out, and the ruling class got richer as homes were foreclosed on. As soon as they're no longer eating avocado toast, they're going to start eating there rich.
 
I got distracted there--my point was that you don't have as much to invest when wage growth has been going backwards for a generation, you need to stay liquid in case you have any medical needs, and interest rates have been effectively zero for over a decade.
 
Chicken Man said:
I got distracted there--my point was that you don't have as much to invest when wage growth has been going backwards for a generation, you need to stay liquid in case you have any medical needs, and interest rates have been effectively zero for over a decade.
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A quick Google search seems to indicate that wage growth has been fairly consistent and actually increasing over the last 3 or 4 years.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a...orkers-likely-to-keep-accelerating-2019-03-08

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...and this from https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth

Wages in the United States increased 5.48 percent in June of 2019 over the same month in the previous year. Wage Growth in the United States averaged 6.21 percent from 1960 until 2019, reaching an all time high of 13.78 percent in January of 1979 and a record low of -5.88 percent in March of 2009.​

I think the real problem is the ever-increasing cost of real estate, especially in desirable urban areas where the good paying jobs are. This is nothing new really. It took everything my wife and I had with two salaries to be able to afford to buy a place in the SF Bay area in the 80s. Even then we compromised quite a bit in what we ended up buying and really scraped by some months. Over time, it appreciated and allowed us to move up. Building wealth takes time and sacrifice. Not everyone can be a Zuckerberg and become instantly wealthy with the next big thing, although everyone would like to. My oldest got married last autumn and they recently bought a town home in N. Va, where prices are skyrocketing because of Amazon's HQ2 move there. I don't know how they're able to swing it, but I suspect they don't have a lot of money left over some months either. Same as it ever was...

Edit: Is avocado toast really $12? I mean, I can get a bag of 5 avocados for like $6 at Costco, and a loaf of bread is under $2.
 
Peen Simmons said:
Restaurants have to pay wages, overhead, etc. in addition to food costs. And they’re selling food to customers at a profit. So, yeah, it costs more than buying ingredients at Costco.
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Well, yeah, I get that. I was echoing your LEARN HOW TO COOK statement. Instead of paying $12 for a serving at a restaurant, you can make a week's worth for under $8...and the only thing you have to cook is toast.
 
Peen Simmons said:
Restaurants have to pay wages, overhead, etc. in addition to food costs. And they’re selling food to customers at a profit. So, yeah, it costs more than buying ingredients at Costco.
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you sound like THE MAN" next you'll be talking spreadsheets and taxes :puke:
 
Betting your entire future on the assumption of a large inheritance is a great idea because recessions arent a thing that ever happens!!!
 
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