I am going to get up on my soapbox for a minute and hopefully I don’t sound too much like a grumpy old man.
We are living in a world where things have gotten easier to obtain and do, but they come with a cost. What I am thinking about is delivery of food and premade food. Not all that long ago there was very little delivery of food to your house. Sure you have pretty much always been able to get a pizza delivered and a handful of other places might deliver, but now it has exploded with Ubereats and Doordash. I just can’t get over how much people are willing to pay to have food delivered to their home. I just can’t do it. Partly because I don’t trust people with my food, but mainly because I can easily drive and get food and save the $$$.
Grocery shopping is the other place I shake my head. I see plenty of videos online where people are complaining at the cost of groceries, but when they show what they purchased it is mainly all snacks and premade food. People don’t buy as much ingredients and make a meal. Instead they are just looking for something they can microwave or even just open a box and start eating. That stuff is always going to be more expensive. Also it seems some people just won’t shop sales when it comes to groceries.
The other place is gas stations/convenience stores. I basically never buy anything from those places unless I am on a road trip and lately I have been bringing more stuff from home on those trips.
I find overall with a very small about of time and effort you can really save a lot of money.
I’ve never used Uber Eats or DoorDash. I drive to pick up our food any time we order takeout.
I don’t buy from gas stations, but I’ll drive the 4 minutes to our local 7-Eleven to buy a gallon of milk for $3.99 rather than pay the $5.99 - $6.49 at the grocery store.
I also feel like the online food ordering is often more time consuming that just making something easy! But it is something that I know my kids use a lot. Not where I want to spend my money.
BUT what I will say is just as the idea of paying so much for cell phones, internet, cable seemed out of line for our parents when we pay it, food splurging is the younger generations phone/cable bill. (and they dump the cable for You Tube Tv!!!)
The conveniences that people spend their hard-earned money on are the truest indicator of their “generation” IMO. Different generations prize different conveniences. My mom still thinks it’s the height of laziness to buy those boxes of pre-washed lettuce. She also refuses to get an ATM card and still goes into the bank to withdraw cash because she only trusts a live teller.
I sometimes find that I am straddling two generational mindsets when it comes to things like Doordash. On the one hand I am happy that my daughters and I don’t feel the weird tyranny of being expected to have a home cooked meal on the table every night, OTOH when I think about the mark-up on that order of $28 pasta it really chaps my hide
We don’t get food delivered but I know D does and I don’t blame her - by the time she gets home I really doubt she would want to head back out to pick dinner up. I think she has several of the services that link to credit cards as a “benefit”.
At the store, I frequently buy the prepped vegetables that can microwave in the bag. To me, a bag of mixed vegetables ready to microwave and eat is cheaper than buying a lot of vegetables that need to be prepped and may or may not be eaten.
I will say that I have to hold my tongue when my daughter tells me she’s struggling financially, but I know she gets Uber and Doordash several times each week.
I think back to when I was a kid. Dad did well, but we never thought about going to a carwash, having a cleaning service, getting our dogs groomed, etc. We did everything ourselves.
I do buy convenience foods at the grocery store, because I figure it’s cheaper than Doordash or eating out.
100% to all of this. My husband was sitting in a meeting last week and one of his coworkers mentioned that they were trying to cut back on DoorDash because they were averaging $1600 a month…for a family of 3!!
I understand that families and young people are busy but that’s ridiculous and so unhealthy.
Are you factoring in the time it takes to go to the grocery store, prepare the meal and clean up? Those are certainly costs to someone. Frequently it all falls on the woman of the household. Doordash may not be a bad thing once in a while.
Older S/GF have their groceries delivered in NOVA. They do the bulk of their shopping at Walmart, and the delivery is either free or it is less than the cost of the tolls/Easy Pass to get there. (I can’t remember what they’ve said) Saves them a ton of time and $$$, especially since Walmart is much cheaper than the grocery stores around them. They do shop at those (Whole Foods) for a few things.
We don’t do any delivery for anything, but I live in a small city with zero traffic issues. I can get anywhere commercial in 5-10 min. If you go at the right time (Sunday late morning), I’ve taken pictures in the main Walmart grocery aisle where there are ZERO people in sight.
I am all for convenience if you can afford it! What is the difference between trusting other people to deliver your pizza or any other food? Or pharmacy delivering meds? Or food workers handling your burger at fast food restaurants ? Do you know if they washed their hands after using the restroom? I in general prefer automation to humans. I would take Waymo over Uber any day but sometimes you have to deal with humans. Young people don’t want to spend their time doing chores. Good for them. Time is money. For those who can afford it.
I’m a crunchy northwesterner so the main issue here for me is health. The vast vast majority of the “food” ordered through DoorDash and UberEats is ultra-processed crap. Even so-called healthy options are often cooked in terrible oils and sauces loaded with sugar.
Taking out the financial part, which is serious, Americans just need to learn to cook their own food. Do it ahead of time, make your health a priority. If your work is leaving you so exhausted that you can’t take care of yourself, I think you need to look at your priorities.
We have our groceries delivered weekly. It costs $7-$10 in a tip to the driver. I do it for convenience and also because it’s very easy to meal plan and order just what I need for the week. I’ve actually found I save money because I don’t buy anything I don’t need.
I’m not totally crazy, I have no problem with ordering a pizza every once in a while. But a lot of people now are using DoorDash pretty regularly, not as a special treat.
I read this thread and chuckle. I agree with most of it-- I watch my young neighbors buying stuff they don’t need with daily Amazon deliveries, and daily UberEats deliveries and then understand why they say they are broke, cost of living too high, blah blah blah.
But I recall when I was raising a young family- and I know my parents (and in-laws) thought we were the most profligate people on the planet. One sister-in-law used to do a “humble brag” that they were so thrifty they’d never paid for a babysitter or childcare of any kind. “We believe in taking care of our own kids”. Well, you’re a SAHM, your in-laws live ten minutes away and will do ANYTHING to spend time with the grandchildren, and your own parents are fully retired and available 24/7 and live 15 minutes away. So yeah, you don’t need to pay for childcare. Me? I was “throwing money away” on daycare. Try holding down a fulltime job without paid childcare…
So every generation has its hacks to get through the week. I wonder at the crowds still lined up at Starbucks, Dunkin, and the cute locally owned coffee shop near me. I know most of the people in line and am pretty confident they all have running water and electricity, i.e. can brew their own coffee in their own kitchens!
One thought that has occurred to me about why men and maybe to some extent women, but more so men, are so frustrated about dating is because everything else in life is so easy. Every other basic need is easily satisfied. You have clean water at the flick of a switch. Food—you tap a couple of buttons on your phone, and someone delivers you Uber Eats. You’re warm, you’re sheltered, every other need is instantly and immediately met. But it’s just this one area of romance and sex that’s still very difficult to fulfill. You still have to work for it. You’ll see podcasters talking about sex and relationships, they’ll interview an evolutionary psychologist. And in the comments section, there are a few guys who are like, “I can’t wait for the robot GFs to arrive. Just hang on tight, boys, the robot GFs are coming.” And to me, that’s the mindset of, “I just want Door Dash to deliver me a girlfriend. Everything else in my life is so easy to obtain. I just need this one more thing to be easy.” If you want to have a relationship, if you want a girlfriend, or if you want to have sex, you are going to have to take some risks and put in the work. When it comes to intimacy and sex and those kinds of things, if you want zero risk whatsoever, then the cost is going to be you don’t get a girlfriend, you don’t get laid. There is no world where you can have a girlfriend and also not put in any serious effort.
I’ve been ordering my groceries online for at least a dozen years, pick up, $5 fee. It’s not only great for meal planning, but price comparing, and no impulse purchases (my weakness, I no longer go to Trader Joe’s and send my husband to Costco or order non perishables from Costco online. I always have grocery lists and meals lists going. I try to plan meals with overlapping ingredients to use everything up. The leftover rice from my gumbo will go well with lentil dal.
I really don’t care what people spend their money on. I am sure some of my purchases would make someone do a double-take. But I would really prefer not to hear people moan and complain about the cost of things or how they are always broke when they constantly make purchases that are not financially sound for the their current situation.
For me, (I’m a Boomer, i.e., old) the issue is not convenience but a preference for fresh, non-processed foods. I try to make healthy choices. Also, my H and I enjoy cooking and food shopping, and always have, even when we were working.
I shop at at a number of different places. There’s an organic farmstand in my area where I shop in season (usually May-November). I also shop at an independent green grocer where I buy produce, meat, spices, condiments as well as dairy products and bread/bakery items. I buy fish from a local fish monger (there are seveal in my area). I live in New England so I have access to fresh fish (I grew up in the Midwest where my family almost never had fresh fish.)
I only go to a regular grocery store once or twice a month where I buy paper products, cleaning products, detergent, etc. I rarely buy canned foods or frozen foods. There’s a local supermarket chain that has prices which are very reasonable for this stuff, about the same as Costco and Sam’s or BJs.
We do order out – there’s a good Korean, Chinese, Thai, and sushi near us and I’m not opposed to getting a pizza. Usually though, if we’re not cooking, I’d rather go out to eat. I find that a lot of take out/prepared foods or those that get delivered to your door need to be warmed up and seem to lose some something when you sit down to eat.
There is a lot of variation. If you only care about lowest cost way to eat your daily requirement of x calories per day, you can find pre-made foods that are both high and low on that measure. You can also find natural ingredient foods that are both high on that measure.
For example, among foods I eat, the ones with the highest cost per calorie are all natural foods – broccoli, salmon, strawberries, etc. All of these are triple any pre-packaged foods I eat. However, the lowest cost per calorie foods are also mostly natural foods – brown rice, peanuts, oatmeal, etc. Across all foods I eat, on average pre-packaged foods are lower cost per calorie than natural foods.
Rather than pre-packaged vs natural ingredients, in my opinion the far bigger opportunity for savings is getting groceries vs eating at a restaurant. There was a thread on this forum about what you can buy at a restaurant with a budget of $12, with $12 being treated as an abnormally low price for a meal. If instead of a restaurant, you prepare a meal from groceries, I’d expect typical meals would average a small fraction of that. I average ~$8 per day on food and eat 6 meals per day.
