Houses are expensive, especially if you live in a major metropolitan area. So is avocado toast, especially if you live in a major metropolitan area. Millennials — a generation that *should* be growing in earning power — are increasingly uninterested in home ownership. According to a millionaire Melbourne property mogul Tim Gurner, the reason for this is simple: Millennials are spending their money on luxuries like avocado toast instead of saving for home ownership.
via Time:
“When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each,” Gurner told the Australian news show 60 Minutes.
Only 32% of home owners were first-time buyers in 2016, the lowest point since 1987, according to a study by NerdWallet. A recent study by HSBC found that American millennials have a homeownership rate of 35%, and in Australia only about 28% of millennials own their homes. Cost is often a major factor in millennials’ decisions to buy — the study found that a lot of young homeowners got a financial boost from their parents when making their purchase.“We’re at a point now where the expectations of younger people are very, very high,” Gruner said. “They want to eat out every day, they want to travel to Europe every year. The people that own homes today worked very, very hard for it, saved every dollar, did everything they could to get up the property investment ladder.”
Gurner’s logic was immediately ripped apart on Twitter, with many chiming in about how silly the comparison is. You aren’t going to suddenly have a $100,000 in the bank for the down payment on a house just by giving up avocado toast.
https://twitter.com/amyhesays/status/864209068151517184
https://twitter.com/grgdwyr/status/864176581069111296
Alright, I did the math. If I stopped eating avocado toast every day, I would be able to afford a bad house in Los Angeles in 642 years. pic.twitter.com/nqhiqnQ07E
— Kaleb Horton (@kalebhorton) May 15, 2017
When you can't pay the bills because you maxed out your capital one card on avocado toast pic.twitter.com/udiEdxeLIV
— Chris Gaines fan (@trillballins) May 15, 2017
https://twitter.com/MazMHussain/status/864201688101658627
https://twitter.com/biettetimmons/status/864193361389006848
*two weeks after millennials stop eating avocado toast*
"Millennials Are Killing The Avocado Industy" – all boomer piece of shit columnists
— Jane (@JaneOst_) May 15, 2017
Avocado toast is for when your soul has evacuated your body and Instagram likes take precedence over eating good food
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) May 15, 2017
https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/864192842817839104
https://twitter.com/conorsen/status/864192065948745728
I'm a millennial homeowner and my realtor was a piece of Avacado Toast.
My response column to @time:
— Garrett Green (@garrettgreen) May 15, 2017
https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/864201929186062336
look, buddy, if you go 100k days without eating avocado toast (a mere 2857 years) then you could buy the house
— matt (@MattsBestTweets) May 15, 2017
All you have to do is not order $10 avocado toast 4000 times and you'll save enough for a down payment on a $400k house! pic.twitter.com/sIFvmMiDCQ
— Jerrick White (@BostonJerry) May 15, 2017
https://twitter.com/thecultureofme/status/864172724494766081
https://twitter.com/jlucbouchard/status/864180107593830400
https://twitter.com/albrightjc/status/864178329657655296
Finally, this is the best take:
Speaking of avocado toast, here’s a good recipe for it:
1. toast bread
2. put avocado on toast
3. throw it in the garbage where it belongs— FuzzBeedEli (@FuzzBeedEli) May 15, 2017