People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
I literally had avocado toast today. You know what made me start? I did the math, and avocado toast costs about as much as a bowl of cereal. They've been gradually hiking the price of all the essential items like cereal and milk, but the luxury goods haven't gone up as much. There's no such thing as "cutting corners and saving up" anymore.
...well there's always rice-and-beans but with the way finance, insurance, and real estate are going these days you'll need rice-and-beans just to survive, not to save up...
What a rich guy mindset, have you tried skipping meals and save up for rent? Tip your landlords.
Costs and nutrition estimates
The internet tells me that 125ml milk to 30g cereal is the proper ratio. In freedom units, that's ~30 servings per gallon or $0.10 of milk per bowl, and 30g is a little over an ounce, so $0.10-0.20 cereal per serving, leading to about $0.20-0.30 per serving. For avocado toast, a slice is about $0.11-0.12, so avocado toast is about $0.61-0.87.
Looking at nutrition (taken from MyFitnessPal and Walmart websites):
In total for my area, for an average serving:
Normalizing for cost per calorie in my area, I get:
In other words, avocado toast is something like 2-5x more expensive than cereal, depending on where in that range your meal falls. If you're buying regularly priced cereal (more like $0.20-0.25) and if milk is more expensive in your area, then it's a lot more competitive, but still cheaper than avocado toast (something like half the price).
That said, neither is a particularly expensive meal, and you're not poor because you're eating avocado toast. However, if everything you do is 2-5x more expensive than alternatives, then we have an issue.
Avocados are $3 each here and half the time they're bad. Must be nice living somewhere with affordable avocados.
Do you use an entire avocado for your toast?
Where I live it's $5 a gallon for milk (let's assume 1/10 gallon for breakfast cereal so $0.50 per bowl)
Then it's like $1.00 /100g of cereal, so you're probably looking at $1.50 for a bowl of cheerios.
Where I live I can get avocados for $1.20 each and a loaf of bread for $4.50 (14 slices?) so if I use half an avocado for my slice of toast that's less than $1.
We need the Rent Is Too Damn High guy to be in high political office to get this shit under control.
Eh, McMillan is a republican who endorsed Trump. We don’t need him.
We want the legend, rather than the man, it would seem
good luck angering the rich real estate-owning people without a backup plan
At this point we need somebody who will just come out and say it: it's everyone else versus landlords.
Fuck them. You cant outsource an apartment building to China. Make their lives hell and if they decide being a landlord isn't worth it and sell their property at a loss then everyone is better off for it
It's funny, my father-in-law repeats all the lazy and spoiled talking points about this weak younger generation. The one thing I've never heard him complain about?
Avocado toast.
Bro eats that shit every morning.
Ha, my boss gives me this one. "But I'm different," he says when I tell him about side project stuff like working on my house. I try to tell him.. everyone my age I know is like that. They fix their own car/house/electronics and also do some kind of side work. You know how much a contractor costs? Between friends and family, I could be a contractor tomorrow, but not because I want to be. It's out of necessity. I would love to pay someone else to install floors or do plumbing.
But yeah.. all the evidence in front of his face doesn't hold a candle to whatever Fox News tells him.
650$ to replace a 20$ shower handle cartridge. 500$ to spray down your AC 400$ to replace a 30$ capacitor in your AC 150$ to turn off your sprinkler system valve and blow air through it for a few minutes.
Yeah... I basically do 100% of our home maintenance myself. It's literally cents on the dollar compared to hiring it out.
Ah, but Real Income is up 0.6% over the last fiscal cycle, so why are you complaining?
the same people bribing the supreme court are behind this very bullshit.
Wait fucking wait wait fucking wait... That piece of shit owns real page?? I'm like 99.999% I had be reading about him giving gifts to supreme fuckbag Thomas but I don't think realpage was ever mentioned...
Ffs...
Yarp, been fucking every working class person in America for years. Yayyyy
And when Bill Shorten proposed to change the tax system to slow down speculative capital gains that are driving house prices, the people voted for Robodebt Scotty Morrison.
Say it with me: Line. Must. Go. Up! - millionaires who don't give a fuck.
When do we eat ^the rich^?
My rent has gone up 3.4x in the last 14 years. 2010 I was paying roughly $800/mo for a three bedroom house, now I'm paying roughly $2700 for a smaller 3 bedroom apartment.
Let's do the math. At a nice brunch place, avocado toast costs $14.
To make up for the $1,500 increase in rent, you would need to eat 3-4 fancy avocado toasts per day, for an average of 107 avocado toasts per month.
Given these numbers we can assume that you exclusively eat avocado toasts at restaurants for all sustenance. This would negate the need for a grocery budget, which usually trends at about $300/month, giving you the budget for an additional 21 avocado toasts per month, for a guaranteed minimum of 4 toasts per day (128 per month).
So as long as you're consuming avocado toast below this level, it's probably not the cause of your financial issues.
You forgot to account for lattes, which are a critical part of the equation.
Have you seen the price of a decent piece of avocado toast though?
1990: "We don't do that, do that yourself at home. GTFO"
I can get 4 avocados for $5, a loaf of good sourdough for $5, and a dozen aggs for $8. $18/week ($3/day) and I can eat a healthy breakfast of avocado toast with 2 eggs every day.
That $72/month is what's breaking the bank, not my $2500/month rent.
...in `98 i was paying $500 to rent a 650sf one-bedroom apartment at $30k salary; in 2008 i was paying $750 to rent a 650sf one-bedroom apartment at $45k salary; in 2018 i was paying $1250 mortgage on a 1500sf house at $85k salary: today i pay that same $1250 mortage at $105k salary and thank god i managed to save that down payment within twenty years, before the real estate speculators completely overran my local market...
...not sure what that illustrates other than 2024 is brutally expensive relative to pay: we bought three nectarines last night for six dollars at the local discount grocer, which would have cost less than a dollar thirty years ago...
Where I live 2K is at the low end for a 400sf studio (I am in a big city where rent is particularly high though).
...i don't doubt it: when i left the bay area for cheaper lands twenty years ago, 650sf apartments were going for $1600 and i'm sure prices have only inflated since...my data points are all the cheap minima on my housing curve over the past ~~three~~ four decades...
edit: ...f*ck, i forgot how old i am; it happens on the north end of the century mark...
First moved out in the early 00s, rent was anywhere 75-150/w depending. Friends had 2 room units in complex for 95/w. Not even 2 or 3 years later rents were at 200-250/w. Now those same units wont be under 400.
I know airbnb and such arent the sole reason, but when they can rent out their house where nightly prices 350+ where rents are at least 400/w they can rent the place for not even 2 months a year and get the same as if they were renting it out the traditional way. So, naturually there are less longer term rentals available, pushing prices up. We have whole towns which are tourist areas where people cant get a house to live in because of airbnb shit. I'll liikely never own my own home because im paying at least 65% of my income on rent, how the fuck can i save. Fuel, food, energy. Everything going up except wages.
The answer is simple, but not easy. We need to get rid of the greedy capitalist fuckers who are ruining it for the whole world. By ANY means necessary.
Where I live, rent has almost quadrupled since 2010 while wages for many jobs have stayed pretty much the same.
Yeah 10 years ago a qualified tradesmen in my industry was paid average 45 an hour, now that same level of experience is about 48 an hour.
In that time the cheap bread went from 50 cents to 3 dollars.
I told my boss I would need a raise years ago when bread went to 85 cents he laughed.
I struggled like fuck as an apprentice then thought I was doing well, now days I couldn't imagine being an apprentice living on your own etc.
Median income for a single worker in the USA in 2024 is so far $59,228 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In large cities it's significantly higher. Rent and property values are definitely out control though. There wasn't nearly enough housing built after '08. I feel even worse for our neighbors to the north.
Then you have these financially obese oligarchs skirting their social responsibilities to fund the system however they legally can. Who's the freeloader now?
I mean... yeah? Kinda late to the party though - this has been true for a minute now...
My rent has doubled since the last time we met
It's DEFINITELY the toast. Have you seen how expensive those fucking avocados have become? Holy shit, man.