“It’s the danged avocado toast!” boomers say, blaming that little delectable treat as the reason today’s young people can’t become homeowners.

But that $9 avocado toast that a millennial can have delivered to his apartment (a parent-financed apartment, of course) for $5 in delivery fees plus a $2 tip? That’s only part of the story. In fact, it’s more a symptom of the problem than the problem itself.

A more common refrain from the older generations decrying the irresponsibility of young people is in how they drink their coffee. Millennials and Gen Z don’t drink free coffee in Styrofoam cups from a stained drip maker at the office. Now, young people pay $6 for a sugary drink on the way to their office every morning, boomers say, and that’s why they can’t afford a house.

But the proverbial latte-drinking, “avocado toast millennial” is really only a small subsection of people in their 20s and 30s. These people are actually quite affluent, if only through their parents. And contrary to what many in older generations seem to believe, this millennial affluence is one that comes in a society that won’t necessarily treat you better even if you live a responsible lifestyle.

Why? Because unlike the world of several decades ago, today’s necessities have become luxuries, and the luxuries are necessities.

Consider that in West Virginia, the cheapest state in which to buy the average home, you would have to skip 4,230 $6 lattes just to pay the down payment alone. If you hypothetically skipped a latte every day, choosing to put aside that daily $6 towards a home instead, you would have to save for more than 11 years just to pay a 20% down payment. A worthy endeavor, but hardly the easy fix that many boomers claim it is to solve the financial distress of millennials.

Unlike their parents, young people are spending their early adulthood in a society where luxuries are cheaper but necessities are more expensive. Today, everyone owns an iPhone, but no one owns a home. A rotary dial phone in the 1990s cost $50 in today’s money. An iPhone 14, however, which is an older model, would cost between $800 and $1,000.

“Don’t buy the iPhone,” a boomer might say, looking up from the iPhone that he can afford brand new because he grew up in a society that allowed him to live cheaply and comfortably when he was starting out. Yet the mass societal conversion to app-based life makes not having at least some sort of “smartphone” an impossibility. You even must download an app to park at the beach now!

Yes, necessities have become luxuries, and the luxuries have become necessities.

Another example of this is Klarna, a financing service, which allows an individual to, in one simple click, set up four monthly payments to purchase a pizza. Klarna’s entire business venture is contingent on the fact that people will buy more if they can procrastinate on the financial repercussions for their spending, with customers spending about 30% more when Klarna is an option. In other words, people are impoverished spendthrifts. But if we’re in a position that we must finance our pizzas, then we aren’t in a position where we should eat pizza, or anything else besides rice and beans. Yet financing our pizzas is the kind of ludicrous thing that occurs in a society that is both poor and decadent.

Today’s young people aren’t amassing the kind of wealth that is passed down through generations – “old money” is perhaps the biggest indicator of a wealthy society. But it is only fair to acknowledge that young people are living better than their parents at this age in other ways: regularly eating out, food delivery services, grocery delivery services, smartphones, and massive TVs weren’t luxuries your parents and grandparents could afford.

What the young people of past generations could afford, however, with just a little hard work and bootstraps pulling, were homes, cars, and, eventually, their adult children’s apartment rent in 20-or-so years. That’s a difference we all need to consider before we react and quickly condemn the younger generation for their financial instability.

And while the boomers are considering these struggles, those of us in the younger generation should take their financial advice as well. Despite the difficulty of buying necessities, buying a decades-old car with cash saved from avoiding all eating out and clothes shopping for a year is still the best path for young people. Cooking from scratch, buying as cheap a phone as you can live with in the modern world, canceling the gym membership, avoiding the trendy decor Target offers each year – all these cost-saving measures can contribute to the long-term financial success of millennials and Gen Z. No, we don’t have it as good as the boomers – and it’s helpful if older generations acknowledge that – but it’s also helpful if those of us in the younger demographics acknowledge that they still have some pretty sound advice for how to better our personal financial positions.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

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