I don't think it's actually a case of "spend less and you can save for some goal, like a home" but more like "why spend less now when no matter how much I save, even my whole paycheck, houses aren't going to be affordable to me EVER". I have a really good salary, but where my family lives we absolutely cannot afford to ever buy a house, based on what inflation looks like. I could save everything we had except for rent and grocery costs and we still couldn't save at a rate to match home inflation for the past 10 years. Don't say to "just move", because our roots are here and that's absurd to suggest that we cut ties with everyone we know just to have a chance at the old "american dream".

It's not about the extremes. Some people are barely getting to the end of the month and some of those will be buying expensive toast on the way there and will be better off if they stop that. Lots of people get to the end of the month easily, however much they eat out, and still have zero chance at getting on the housing ladder.

If the cost of housing increases faster each year than your annual salary, it doesn't matter a damn what fraction of your salary you manage to hoard in a year, you still aren't buying a house. But that salary can handle vacations and coffee just fine.

My coworker complains that even though he has received raises every year since graduation their effective spend has decreased because of inflation. So much so that he was making more money as a student than as an FTE.

I believe it. I've gone from paying zero attention to the cost of things... to cutting extras/budgeting in the last five years; with just as many raises!

It really feels like my career leaps have been nullified. Unless I find a similar joint income, I don't know if I'll own a home. There's no family windfall to expect

I know, woe is me. I feel for everyone that doesn't have this padding.

Aside: The down payment stories I hear have been absurd. What's reasonable, on the low end?

> I've worked with young people barely making any money out of school, who still religiously went to the pub with their mates for the proverbial pint, and never skipped on Costa del Sol holidays.

This is different from coffee and toast. Going to the pub with the mates can be a social obligation, whereas coffee on your own is not.

If you are asking your collegues to skip hanging out and vacation with their friends, you may be asking them to stop having those friends. Sure, maybe they are the wrong friends. Just noting this is a much bigger ask than not having coffee and toast by yourself.

How to solve somebody's financial problems:

Step 1. Assume they're spending $20k a year on Starbucks.

Step 2. Tell them not to do that.

Step 3. Pat yourself on the back and award yourself the nobel peace prize for solving poverty.

There's a reason it's unpopular. It's too obvious to be useful and it's almost always used as a strawman counter-arguement to any actual solutions regarding any real economic problem.

You're not telling it to somebody holding an avacodo toast in their hand complaining about how poor they are. You're telling it to people who can't even afford that. It's extremely condescending and arrogant of you.

I think you're half right, but missing a big piece of the puzzle.

I agree with you that people's spending habits don't make sense. I see young people complaining about having to live with their parents when near their 30s who still think a two week vacation with a nice rental and eating out ever night is a basic human right. I'm constantly horrified how many people simply cannot cook their own food. The wouldn't know how to make a good rice and beans dish if they had to.

But the part you're missing is that our current system cannot survive without this spending. That FAANG job that paid you so well, where do you think all that cash came from? My friends making money for insta are basically making that money selling avocado toast.

If people started living like their great depression era relatives they wouldn't be able to afford houses because our entire economic system would break down.

That piece of the puzzle is systemic, but it has a personal side as well, overlooked by people who claim things like the avocado toast guy is right. Humans need an escape valve to relieve stress without going crazy. In today's society, these escape valves cost money; so people do need to spend some money on a little affordable luxury, whether it's going to the movies, playing video games or indulging in a tasty food.

Perhaps in the past the destitute poor could find some free escape valves to this end, but modern urban society limits access to the social interactions and natural resources that made them possible.

It is a fallacy to suppose that living a monastic life would save enough money to get out of this extreme situation. Even discounting the mental imbalance it would cause, if your income is so limited, the meager savings of suppressing these small luxuries would not radically change your financial situation.

It depends how much flow the escape valve controls.

Anecdotally, I used to have neighbours who would order food delivery religiously, multiple times per day, every day. It must have costed a small fortune. Not enough for buying a home, but enough to do something better with.

I think the idea that the economy needs "momentum" to work is a really interesting topic. Wealth and value is generated as a result of people spending money on things they don't strictly need. That if everybody were to buy exactly only what they need and nothing else, the whole economy grinds to a halt, and we have mass unemployment, and suddenly you can't even buy those few needs that everybody has.

In my opinion this type of argument is built to stop lower classes from complaining more than a cut and dry example of how overspending on ill-perceived necessities can cost you wealth in the long run.

More importantly, there are tons of people who do live fiscally responsible and still can't afford basic necessities (let alone avocado toast).

The avocado toast example is annoyingly ambiguous and inflammatory. I think this exactly why it went viral.

People have drastically different interpretations of what it means, and end up arguing over that instead.

Nobody disputes you can save $X/day by not purchasing avocado toast and coffee. Everything else is people shadowboxing with themselves.

>the point is that people who are barely making ends meet having avocado toast at a coffee shop have the wrong mindset.

Are there a lot of people (or even any) doing that? Are there a lot of people who don't have bread to eat refraining from having their cake?

> It does seem like young people these days have an incredibly distorted sense of what they "deserve" or what they can afford or what's "normal".

I, being fairly young, think that fulltime jobs paying a living wage ought to be normal. Many don't - https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2020/home.htm

Some people are going to overspend and be careless with their money, but that's not the core problem in the US. The core problem is unfairly low wages for many workers.

Why bother making all that money if you're not going to do anything with it? When all's said and done you're going to be just as dead.

People who know how to save money on the big stuff and spend money in the places where it gives a high return in joy are the ones doing it right. "It's your duty to be miserable because you're poor" is the most backwards attitude imaginable.

If the math doesn't add up then the math doesn't add up. If it's not possible to save for a house with or without avocado toast then talking about avocado toast is really beside the point, isn't it? No amount of "mindset" is going to get you out of the hole.

The problem with "don't buy things you can't afford" is that society really says "you don't deserve things you can't afford". Why is it that some brat that never worked a day in their lives can enjoy Avocado toast every day? Is it just because they won the socio economic lottery? Then on the other side a mother of two abandoned by her partner, working two jobs has to make their own toast and plan trips to the park. Sucks to suck I guess. There has to be a better way than this. This form of raw Capitalism is not fair. Generational wealth gets to criticize from a perspective of having wealth and cast judgement on those who make not have it for reasons outside their control.

Now take a look at incomes and wealth globally. Fair is you getting a lot poorer.

OK so when what I have to pay for housing is several times more than my parents' generation did even when adjusted for inflation, where is that money going? Hint: not the global poor.

That money is going to your parents generation, and you eventually through inheritance. The global poor still need their check, unless you don't acutally care about fairness.

> That money is going to your parents generation, and you eventually through inheritance.

The owners of UK property may be members of my parents' generation, but they have very little in common with my parents; that money is not coming to me. (And while you could blame them for not jumping through the right hoops to have been eligible for Thatcher's right to buy, I don't think it's fair to say that working-class people should have known to bet a multiple of their net worth on decades of incredibly stupid housing policy).

> The global poor still need their check, unless you don't acutally care about fairness.

Sure, and I'm all for measures to help with that - I've voted for increased aid and will continue to do so. Using the global poor as a reason I can't criticize those with massive unearned wealth is pure whataboutism.

It's a bit sad that you're afraid of expressing your opinion because you might lose some fake internet points.

So what?

My life experience has been similar, and I thought the same thing. Shame you're downvoted in to grey for just eloquently stating an opinion and the reasoning.