Millennials. We love eating meals out. Whether it's the proliferation of great, cheap food that's also decent for you, the pervasiveness of restaurant culture, or just the fact that after working our job and our freelance job and the other job that doesn't pay us but we just love, you know, we don't feel like making dinner.
A new Food Institute report using 2014 food expenditure data, the most recently available, from the United States Department of Agriculture shows that millennials spend more than previous generations on dining out, Forbes writes. We spend 44% of our food dollars, about $2,921 per year, on eating out. That's up 10.7% from 2010 data, and more than baby boomers. That generation spent 40%, or $2,629 annually.
There are a couple of reasons for the difference. First, younger people are more likely to dine socially. An older generation means more children which means less disposable income and a higher likelihood of spending nights at home with family. Second, the rise of apps like Seamless and Uber Eats make spending money on restaurant food easy and detached from actually handing over cash. Pressing two buttons on your smartphone is considerably less effort than cooking a meal, after all. Third, boomers are married at a higher rate than millennials. More spouses means more likelihood that one spouse or the other can cook while the other works. Millennials face a much more uncertain financial future than prior generations, meaning longer work hours and a higher likelihood of dual-earner households. Practically, that means your husband won't have a meal ready for you when you get home from work.
If you're looking to spend less on eating out, check out our month of packed lunches or our weeknight dinner hacks.
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