The working/middle classes are getting screwed by housing, childcare, education, and healthcare costs that are a greater proportion of income than past generations. Avacado toast is not the problem.
But commercial real estate hunts out childcare providers like gold mines because you can't move your childcare to just any building. At a rough guess, $20 a day of almost every child placement is going to the landlord.
edit:brevity
What do you mean by this?
If you've ever been to a daycare centre... it pretty much is a prison. For little kids. With hopefully caring guardians and an exercise yard. :-P
And if you've ever known a 2 year old, some of them can be little sociopaths at times.
So there are standards regarding kids in daycare, including the requirement for an outdoor space for play.
Now this can't be achieved in all cases but you better have a good reason. And if your competitor has an outdoor space you know where parents are likely to take their kids first.
https://www.education.vic.gov.au/childhood/providers/regulat...
Just for the down payment, that's 73 years worth of avacado toast at a slice a day. Millennials must be eating so much avacado toast.
And that's for a house that was built in the 80s and the boomers selling it paid $75k and whose property taxes are still capped at a max growth rate of 2% a year.
"Avocado toast" is a metaphor for conspicuous consumption at the expense of savings and investment.
Ex: $20 avocado toast at a brunch restaurant is absurdly unnecessary given the available options for sustenance.
No one actually believes avocado toast alone is what prevents younger people from getting ahead. Show me a young person making over $40k per year and I PROMISE you I can find savings opportunities in their spending habits. This, coupled with long term compounding of returns, does make a real difference over the course of a life.
People need to live where the jobs are. When cities permit offices, but not housing they're screwing people over.
> "Avocado toast" is a metaphor for conspicuous consumption at the expense of savings and investment.
Here's an example from national numbers: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=FYMk
The price of a median house has gone from 3.6x the median salary to 5x. The ratios are worse in the cities that have added the most jobs. Framing this as a failure of personal behavior is missing the point. The current generation has to work harder than previous generations to achieve the same thing.
Avacado toast or not, I'm not sure the data is settled on whether millennials waste more money than boomers or gen-xers. They just waste it on different things.
Show me an older person making over $40k and I promise I'll find savings opportunities for them as well.