A flight from LA to Boston for $120?? Tell me what airline!!
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I stopped Door Dashing when I saw how much the markup was on menu items for some restaurants. If we want food from a certain restaurant, we just go there or order take out and pick it up ourselves.
I did Instacart twice during Covid. It was fine but I’m not a list person. I need to roam the aisles for visual cues (I just make sure I never grocery shop when I am hungry!)
I’m a huge Amazon user. I price compare with local stores and 98% of the time Amazon comes in at the same or many times, less. I also live in an Amazon warehouse city and can get thousands of items same or next day.
I see no problem with taking advantage of conveniences like these as long as finances support it. They’ve also created many niche jobs for people.
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Well, to my mom’s generation a boxed cake mix was a new convenience (and she loved it!). Now it’s kind of a staple for many, myself included.
We don’t do delivery, but our daughters sometimes do (the older one more than the younger one). For me, it’s the fact that I can go get the food faster than waiting for DD. I’m retired and enjoy grocery shopping, but even when I was actively raising children (two toddlers) they would come with me and get to ride the penny pony if they were good, lol. We rarely go out to eat because we don’t find it a good value. And we pack food for road trips, like our parents did.
I do like my Amazon deliveries, though 
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I am generally pretty thrifty and don’t eat a lot of packaged foods but I do Door Dash, especially if I’m home alone for the night, don’t want to cook or go out. It is pricy but I order from nicer restaurants so I justify the fees with figuring I’d have spent more on a glass of wine & the tip if I went out. I probably do it once or twice a month.
The other easy convenience that I fight against is Amazon. It’s so easy to just get another or immediately replace some item and have it tomorrow. Do I need a new Good Grops pot scourer? Yes. But it’s just a constant drip of buying little items that add up.
To me, this is more about living within your means. And we all make different choices about where we spend our money.
Where I think it’s problematic is when you have young people who don’t realize that they may experience a standard of living drop between being in their parents’ home and just starting out. Many young people don’t know how or where they can cut costs, aren’t getting appropriate guidance, and are being unnecessarily subsidized by their parents so they can maintain the luxuries of dining out, home delivery, vacations, etc…
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Very important points!!!
Yes I think we have to be careful to not lump people in a category and assume their splurges are unreasonable or not ok. I mean sometimes it’s true but as mentioned, we all have to pay the bills at the end of the month and hopefully they all get paid!
A for instance. I would say all of my 3 kids order delivery more than I can imagine. They do a fair share of cooking, it’s not a nightly thing but yeah, it adds up! On the other hand they often prefer to clothing or furniture shop at thrift/second hand stores. They find shoes they like on Poshmark and get their stash of expensive running shoes there - just a couple models old. So, balance!!
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Yes, as long as you can pay the bills, we all love our conveniences, it’s great we all get to make our own decisions, etc. However, the downside to DoorDash and similar services is definitely paying so much to get food you could obviously get faster yourself. It’s notoriously slow. Food is often cold. A lot of young people use it not because they’re busy, but because they’re lazy. My nephew uses it all the time for places that are less than a 1/2 mile from his house. Obviously, it’s great for many, but I see it as detrimental for some.
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Seems like it would faster and cheaper just to walk there.
But then such laziness is not limited to young people.
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In our house we have an agreement while the boys are at school, their Uber account is linked to my credit card so they can always use it if they’ve been drinking. I don’t care how far the ride is.
I saw an Uber charge in the $40+ range about a month ago. That was out of the norm. I asked my son where he was coming from. He told me it was Uber Eats for Popeye’s. That won’t be happening again…
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I haven’t read every reply, so apologies is this has been mentioned. When I was working at a medical clinic, several of the nurses would order lunch to be delivered regularly, or even just a Starbucks coffee. I am aware of 2 of them that are living paycheck to paycheck, and then not making ends meet. Why spend money on the mark up of the item, plus delivery, and tip, if they actually left a tip? I never understood how they could spend all the extra money when they couldn’t afford it.
I brought my lunch everyday, and I was the one that could afford to pay for the delivery, but not where I want to throw money away. I have used Door Dash when my husband was sick and I couldn’t leave the house; I was shocked at the upcharge on the food items. Add in delivery fee and tip, and I could easily be paying over $10 more for the same item that I could go pick up myself after calling in a takeout order.
Yes, to each their own, and I waste money other ways, but watching these younger nurses blowing money they don’t have made me shake my head. I have a friend that seems to be sick a lot. She will get food delivery so she has something to eat; that I understand.
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I don’t have answers for you- but I do know people IRL who regularly complain that food prices “keep skyrocketing” (which doesn’t seem to be true in my area- prices of some things have stabilized and others have gone down). But they don’t buy flour and chickpeas and lentils or eggs… they buy prepared foods/restaurant food. Which indeed seems to keep going up (I live in a high cost of living area so I don’t begrudge restaurants which are providing a living wage/health insurance to their employees…)
It is a conundrum. Pay 9$ plus tax, tip, delivery for a bowl of soup-- every single workday? Or $8 for a bagel with a shmear from the local deli when you can buy that same bagel for $2 and an entire tub of cream cheese for $4 and just keep it in the office fridge and it will feed you for two weeks?
But I get it- the deli needs to pay the guy who shmears the cream cheese, and people would rather eat a “sandwich” rather than shmear their own!
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Instacart was my COVID go to, but I can no longer justify the cost (it was pretty annoying trying to get a grocery pick up slot with so many jumping on the online bandwagon, especially since I needed to place online orders for my IL’s an hour away to keep FIL out of the store). The only time I use it now is for our beach vacation week. It’s easy to justify the $5 fee for online shopping at my local store since the cost of groceries is the same as shopping in person. However before COVID the shopper would call to discuss substitutions, and would let me know if the produce I ordered was not in good shape. Now I just get a text with a possible substitution, and I can no longer add items.
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DH is really DIY. After he found out all the chimney sweeps in the area were booked up, this week he got up on the roof and cleaned out the chimney himself. He’s very good about safety, but he IS 70!!
(I’m amazed he can bring himself to do it. When he was in his early 20s, before I met him, he fell off an icy roof in Alaska and almost died.)
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This has been what my kids have been reporting. They know lots of other college students who don’t really understand how to budget, grocery shop, cook and many other skills my kids complained like heck about when learning but now realize those skills helpful are in the ‘real world’ .
As my mom always said, you can teach them young (and it will be a pain at times) or you can try to teach them later (no guarantees except that the pain will be quadrupled).
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Agree. Budgeting is the worst. Going to the grocery store with a list and a budget of $50 is such drudgery… especially when you know you can just put $90 on your debit card without feeling the pinch.
But sending a kid off into the world without any financial guardrails- or the tools to make a life that’s affordable- is so unfair.
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Since the grocery store is a few minutes away, I see no need for delivery. Being in store I can compare prices and pick my produce. The apples on sale look bad? Pivot to another option. Find the milk or meat with the latest expiration date. To me, it would take just as much, if not more time, to review the circular, pick out the items I want, and send in the order, and have to be home to receive it.
When I was a kid, it was incredibly rare to get “to go” food. Very rarely we would go to the local Jewish deli and get pastrami on rye or similar. Maybe a pizza or chinese once I was a teen. Eating out was for my parent’s anniversary or ice cream for a good report card. Now, we mostly cook at home, but at least once a week we either go out or order in. However, I always pick up the food if we order. It supports the local restaurants since they don’t have to pay the fee and is much more affordable. Sorry to the doordash and uber delivery drivers, but I prefer to support the restaurant.
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It should be required learning in school.
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We have never been a food delivery household. We lived in an area that for years before the delivery companies no one delivered to. If I’m not cooking we will order and pick up.
My youngest used to spend a lot each month on UberEats. She has now moved to a rural area with no restaurants nearby so no delivery. She said it’s forcing her to plan better and make a meal even when she thinks she doesn’t have anything to work with. My other daughter does eat out a few times a week but they don’t get it delivered. They both work and have young kids and it makes life easier.She is her father’s daughter and would not want to pay a fee. My third does do grocery pickup from Whole Foods. They have some circumstances that make it helpful.
I also think it’s not just young people who haven’t learned to budget. Two of mine work in fields where they see how many older people don’t know about saving, credit card debt.
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It was! I took Home Ec (a three year curriculum if you can believe it) which included everything having to do with household management- cooking, meal planning, budgeting, sewing and mending, etc. In the 9th grade, the boys swapped with the girls for one semester, and the girls learned how to change a tire (we were all too young to drive but it’s still a valuable skill), use a drill safely, basic home repairs while the boys learned the budgeting and simple meal prep.
Simpler times. No health classes, sex ed, substance abuse/drugs, (which would have been useful but the school board was in deep denial). But we all learned how to replace a broken zipper and how to unclog a drain!
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