To late us millennials already claimed that. Pretty sure we killed restaurants around the same time we killed movie theaters, trade schools, and domestic beer.
Domestic beer?! If there is one impressive thing millennials have accomplished so far, it's putting a brewery in every neighborhood of every major city in the western world. Locally brewed beer has been having a really good couple of decades.
If you'd only bought fewer iPhones and avocados you could have bought a 5 bedroom house with 3 garages, a pool and a white picket fence and take a holiday abroad twice a year. You just need more discipline, pull yourself up by the bootstraps*!
Bad shit is already happening. How many more wars need to flare up, how many more inches does the sea need to rise, how many more acres of forest need to burn, how many more mass shootings, how many more people need to reach a point where working a full time job isn't enough to cover rent... I could easily go on. This isn't a future thing anymore. This is all happening now.
Ay that's pretty cool! Is it hard? Do you do it for fun, or cause it's cheaper? The crying emoji has be leaning toward the latter, but I thought I'd ask
Yeah, I'm doing better off than most of the people I knew growing up, but I too have been looking at buying the cheapest of everything.
Great Value brand is getting the majority of my purchases these day. Just looked at my cabinet shelf, 18 GV brand items, 2 others (maruchan, rice a roni).
Also cut back on any drinks that don't come out of my faucet (excluding coffee grounds and milk for the coffee).
Now you know why the boomers raise the rent to the point where it makes everyone but themselves miserable. They consider it financial success, where normal people consider it ruthless exploitation.
Better to talk about how they shaped zoning laws and other procedural matters to block the development of new housing for decades and decades.
Sure, the market price of housing is disgustingly high and you can say that it's exploitative to actually charge it, but a much better question is to ask why the market price of housing got so high to begin with, because the answer to that is more complicated than landlords just asking for as much as they can get. They've always done that, so why as has that ceiling price exploded so much in recent decades? That's where you can start to find actual solutions.
Cooking is expensive now too. I'm paying pre-covid eating out prices to cook food at home, and I shop cheap. $80/week if I really hit some savings to feed just myself.
Are you in Canada or the US? I moved from Canada (Toronto) to Germany, and it's night and day how much less I spend on groceries.
I went from shopping at No Frills in Canda to Lidl/Aldi in Germany, and I spend half as much as I used to. At least in Canada, it's really disappointing to see how Loblaws has managed to get away with so much price gouging.
Yep part of why I'm moving to Germany next year is the cost of living is so much more reasonable. Groceries costed me just around $25/wk when I was studying abroad. Can't beat that.
Yes please all come here and ruin the prices further /s
Prices increased over the last year or so justified by energy prices but in reality it is the profit margins of the supermarkets.
Thanks for the inflation Aldi!
With all the food bank demand I wonder when companies will try and get in on it (like walmart and thrift stores)? Maybe they will make you watch ads while waiting in line? (For you to spend your non existent money on?)
Yeah I feel like the headline is intentionally bait-y here.
Eating out adds up fast, and if you're on a limited budget, of course you're going to start cooking more. Even if we're generous with the word "cooking" to include things like cereal and sandwiches. And of course you're going to reevaluate your shopping when money is tight. Lock down to the essentials to stretch that paycheck.
The people who complain about their finances while simultaneously eating out 3x a day and buying shit they don't need are digging their own holes. Spend the money on shit you DO need and save the rest.
My boomer mother only knew how to heat up frozen foods or follow the directions on the box, so what really helped me learn to cook was Good Eats. Watch it and make the food. Many of the recipes were retooled by Alton Brown and are on his website for free (with no annoying monologues before each recipe). The rest are on Food Network’s site.
I dunno. I read it as "Gen Z is poor" and it pisses me off because its true. It seems like a trend where the rich get richer and the rest of us get just enough to scrape by so we'll show up to work.
That's obviously what they are trying to get across but they affiliate it with something that isn't bad at all and people should be doing either way, financially stable or not. It's kind of a weird argument to say that Gen Z are poor, because it might also mean that they are just consuming more consciously by cooking themselves. There's clearly ways of telling they are poor without this ambiguity.
Also Gen X and what we had was hard compared to the Boomers but what Millenials and Gen Z have is far worse. This really is apples and oranges going on here.
Another Gen X here, yes, you are right, although being a Gen-Xer in the third world is/was not at all easy, even compared to millennials and Gen Z in the first world.
In any case, the title says "financial success" where it should read "survival skills".
For many it will. Incomes are increasing in real terms and unemployment remains at historic lows. We also just came through a decade of historically low rates which allowed generations of people to buy expensive homes.
Unfortunately those low rates, the neoliberal practise of high immigration, and NIMBY zoning laws have led to historically expensive housing and rent. Instead of war, that is this generation’s biggest challenge.
Millennial living that life right now. Assuming I stay on track, I might be able to buy a house when I'm in my 40's and literally work until the day I die.
I'm not sure who the article is referring to, but pretty much every Gen Z person I know lives at home with their parents. So not really a strong point being made here. Oh, it's fortune. That explains it.
Almost all of my 26-and-under co-workers are living at home. Not everyone immediately moves out at 18, and with the sky high housing cost in this area I wouldn't even say 'most'. Even for university, some of these co-workers have degrees but still live at home.
I'm 26 and I've been living on my own for 4 or 5 years now. I'm poor as shit and can't get ahead on debt, I wish I had the opportunity to live at home because I'm going nowhere right now and I'm making what would be considered a decent amount of money for my age and position. Shit is miserable.
I grew up in a household that did not cook. It wasn’t always takeout or junk food but “cooking” was grilled cheese and Kraft dinner etc. I loathe cooking.
I often wish I had a healthier (physically and mentally) upbringing that included cooking as a fun activity. Maybe I’d feel different about it.
I don't know of many doing day-to-day cooking for "fun". Its a bother. However, if you're okay without requiring gourmet meals, its not too bad. There are shortcuts.
Learn a total of 5 or 6 meals total, thats it forever. Then repeat them. You'll always know the ingredients, and you can buy in larger quantities so it doesn't break the bank.
Choose fairly simple preparation things. Sure fancy food is nice, but a PITA to prepare. Keep it simple.
A meal is 3 things: a single serving of protein, a single serving of vegetables, a single serving of starch. A serving is a portion about the size of your closed fist. Example: pork, green beans, potatoes. Thats a meal.
Choose ingredients that are fairly cheap or easy to substitute.
Pulled pork is one of the easiest, cheapest, and tastiest meals you can make.
Ingredients:
3lbs (or 1.3Kg) Pork - any of these cuts is fine, buy what's cheap:
shoulder/butt
loin
"country ribs"
"cutlets"
Buns
Green beans (can is fine to begin/fast, frozen when you want to up your game)
Bottle of BBQ sauce
Instructions:
Plug in a crockpot (if you don't own one, they're cheap new and even cheaper second hand, expect $10 to $20 to buy one)
Set it for "slow" or "long" or "6 hours" or "low" labels vary, its all the same setting
Turn on your kitchen fauct. Put a cup under the water for 3 seconds. Pour that water in the crockpot.
Put in your pork
Put 1/2 of your bottle of BBQ sauce in the crock pot on top of the pork.
Walk away for at least 4 hours. If its 6 or 8 hours, thats fine too.
When you come back take two forks and pull the meal apart. It will be very soft. Us this time to remove any bones if your pork cuts had bones. Meat will fall off the bone easily. Use your two forks to pull the meat apart, shredding it. Do this until all the meat is shredded. If you came back at the 4 hour mark, leave again for another 2 hours or so. If you're already at the 6 or 8 hour mark, You're done!
Empty your can of green beans in a Microwave safe dish and put it on high for 2.5 minutes or until they're hot. Green beans in the can are already cooked when canned, so they're safe to eat at any temperature.
Get a bun, pull out some wonderful pulled pork on it, add some more of the BBQ sauce from your bottle. You've got a protein, a veg, and a starch.
That 3lbs will feed you for almost a week. You can freeze some on day two or three for meals for future weeks.
if it makes you feel better I was raised in a house where my mom cooked. But she was not real great about it. Actually she could make some great stuff on holidays so more limited budget combined with limited effort really. Im not sure she liked to cook really but she pretty much had to. Typical week was chili, spagehetti, chilimac, shakeNbake leg quarters, macNcheese. Anyway Im not a very good cook. I don't necessarily loathe it, but im not good. Particularly at seasoning. that is the tough part. I can bake decently. Usually that is just following the recipe exactly and can grill decently.
Or some just like cooking and don't give a damn about consumerism?
I'm not exactly struggling with finances. I cook all my food because I like to and have time. I hardly buy stuff because I unbrainwashed myself from consumerism.
Half the reason I semi-retired in my 30s is because I need little to satisfy me after de-bloating my mind.
I have a baby son and a wife and plenty of time to spend with them.
All of the people I know who have more money than me do not have any of this.
I like making homemade chicken bowls. They were originally meant to be cheaper alternatives, but KFC food quality is kinda shit sometimes, so at this point I outright prefer my own version. Mine also has shrimp since they take about the same time to cook as the chicken, so I mix throw that in.
Just frozen corn at the bottom (well, heat it up, just follow the instructions on the bag, I usually just stick frozen veggies on the microwave with a bit of water for 3 mins).
Then the breaded shrimp or some popcorn chicken pieces on the bottom with the corn.
Then mashed potatoes. Instant or ones made from actually smashing potatoes work (for real ones, just peel some potatoes and cut them up into smallish chunks and boil them for about 10 minutes, then drain the water, add some milk and butter (or dairy free alternatives). About 1 tbsp of butter, I like to do the milk by ear, starting with too little and adding more until the moisture is about right. Also add salt or it'll taste like it's missing something. Taste it for both milk (moisture level rather than flavour) and salt (flavour for this one) to get it right. You can add oregano or chives, or any green seasoning to enhance it without changing the flavour profile entirely. Or if you want to change it entirely, go with curry powder, Cajun, or some other spice blend (not sure that would work with chicken bowl, but it doesn't hurt to experiment).
Then more chicken on the top, shredded cheese, and gravy (I use envelope gravy, pretty quick and easy to make, just follow the directions). Add paprika or cayenne for colour/heat.
You'd be surprised at how well they turn out when combined with meat juices and water! Actually, I wonder if you could use ground up paper (like dust) to replace flour and make gravy.
But I meant the dried up gravy solids you mix with water and heat up that comes in envelopes at the grocery store.
I'm in a dual income houshold, in a single bed/single bath apartment that, 5 or 6 years ago, would have run for about $600/month. Now it costs us $1200 (this is in Canada where the housing market is in complete and utter shambles, only getting worse and heading for a complete fiery crash).
At this rate, I will never be able to afford a mortgage. Let alone a mortgage and car payments, let alone all that plus food, utilities, or any liesure activities to, y'know, give me and my girl any sort of quality of life. No wonder we eat Kraft mac n cheese and hot dogs instead of hitting the town on friday nights.