Naphtali
1.1K posts
Caleb didn't say to do that, though. He glibly said, "pack a sandwich," because he's an asshole who exists to pass off austerity onto people so they don't question how capitalism is fucking them out of basic comforts that's previous generations enjoyed.
BB100@BB1001236514
You can roast some potatoes, cook some chicken breast, make a little salad? The truth is Caleb is disgusting, but if you're looking to save money, cutting out fast food/eating out is a great way to do it. Take it from me, a man who saved enough to own an apartment in Vancouver BC
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@FrankLopezGhost Ahem, that’s exactly what I did. I was already set once I become a top wage earner.
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I know many rich people, not a one of them got rich skipping lunch and/or buying store brand peas & corn, they maximized their earning potential.
YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE A MILLIONAIRE BY EATING CHEESE SANDWICHES FOR LUNCH.
PassiveAggressiveIncome@indexnforgetit
The "packing your lunch" debate is a financial literacy test It's the marshmallow test for adults... and 70% on this app fail If you pass, you're almost guaranteed financial success at some point in your life If you fail, I am 100% certain you will never achieve any sort of financial success and will struggle with things like "payments" and rent prices your entire life
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@HakureiRyan @JimiMcDoubles Sorry to break the news to you, but this is reality regardless of it being unfair. You’re going to have to buy whole foods in bulk and meal prep if you want to save.
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@JimiMcDoubles These are the same people that are telling us to eat a mono-diet of PB&J and a bag of chips every day.
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"Buying lunch out every day was never affordable"
Bitch just 15 years ago $5 worth of fast food could feed you for an entire workweek. That's less than 1 hour of minimum wage pay by the way! Boomers are desperate for us to forget that at one point fast food was price competitive with cooking at home. In fact this strat right here likely came in under the per-meal cost of anything you could make at home for the same amount of calories and fillingness. Remember, these used to be bigger, they have shrinkflated in addition to becoming more expensive.
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@UtahFlatRanger @MediBalls @mdwfmom Great, now you understand that’s no longer a reality. There’s no reason to burn calories on complaining- on to plan B. You 1000% can do it. It will just take longer. You’re on the right track.
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@MediBalls @mdwfmom I am also a Machinist, and most of my coworkers 40-50 bought good starter homes at 21-24.
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I cook and pack almost all my food.
I almost never go out to eat.
I worked overtime for years until my boots were worn flat.
I drive a car from 2005.
I save and invest almost all of my money.
I have never used Doordash.
I still can't afford a home.
Cernovich@Cernovich
Boomers and Gen X packed lunches. Not sure why this stuff enrages zoomers. Boomers lived frugally. Going out to lunch was a big deal. Most didn't have long lunch breaks, especially blue collar. You didn't DoorDash, dinners were made at home. I don't even DoorDash in 2026.
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@Uncatfishable Yes, and if that’s all you can afford that’s your station in life. The lions share of us all starter there.
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Do people realize that peanut butter and jelly and chips is what they give kids at school who can’t afford school lunch? That’s what they give prisoners in holding cells if you get to jail after food time. And you want working adults to eat that everyday willingly.
Ben Klayer@the_satellite23
Loaf of bread = $5 Peanut butter = $4 Jelly = $4 18 pack of chips = $12 Bag of apples = $5 Total = $30 And you'll have lunch for an entire week or two. $2-4 average per day. Inflation isn't the problem. Your spending habits are.
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@NoNameGirl8686 Bike, run, paddle board, hike, swim, host a cookout, play basketball, leverage a library card. You can make an awesome fulfilling life with lots of friends and sunlight for next to nothing.
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What else is there to do? They can’t afford concerts, movies, bowling, amusement parks, sports games, clubs, etc. Is the American dream now to sit in your house eating PB&J except for when you are at work?
Jeremiah Johnson 🌐@JeremiahDJohns
The biggest thing happening behind the scenes in the "expensive lunch" discourse is that Zoomers are eating out at ridiculously high rates. It's a silent assumption for a ton of young people that restaurants are a basic necessity, not an occasional treat.
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@SaveMinnesota_ @bumbadum14 What? You can visit our magnificent national parks for so cheap. Just drove my family to Smokey National Park. Stayed at a KOA for $80/night. Gas was $200. A grocery haul at Ingles was $125.
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@bumbadum14 Correct. This point is not made often enough.
I spend less on annual trips to Europe (often 2+ weeks) than it would cost me to do a week anywhere worthwhile in the US. Domestic travel is shockingly expensive now in a way that it wasn’t even as recently as pre-Covid.
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Boomer travel in the 80s was driving with your friends to Breckenridge Colorado and paying 4 bucks and a shoelace for a 4 day ski trip.
Now Breckenridge charges 300 dollars a day for a ski pass and the run down motel 6 is 250 a night.
Zoomers are "more traveled" because it's literally cheaper to go out of the country than it is to do what boomers did back then.
LBS@NY_LBSS
@MostlyMonkey The other big one is cars and travel. Zoomers all have 500-700 a month car payments because they won’t get crappy cars. And they’ve already all travelled more than their grandparents.
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@bumbadum14 Great, Gen Z can’t afford to go the Breckenridge. You’ve solved the dilemma.
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@PaulAllenTheVP @JeffNadu Jeff, do you need any assistance in your prep?
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@kim_siever @Theoriginalpopp You’re 50 and haven’t saved any money?
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@Theoriginalpopp It has been over 50 years. When is the payout?
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I do not buy coffee, and I make my own lunches.
Where is this extra $15,000 I am supposed to have?
dank@cptdankkk
Kevin O'Leary says most people waste $15,000 a year on stupid stuff like $5 coffees "Stop buying coffee for five dollars and fifty cents" "You go to work and you spend $15 bucks on a sandwich, what are you an idiot. It costs you 99 cents to make a sandwich at home and bring it with you" "Bring your own water, your own drink or your own coffee mug. You start to add that up every day it's a ton of money" "Most people starting on their job making their first $60,000 piss away about $15,000 a year"
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@HououinTyouma @JeremiahDJohns @GayBearRes Because they brought their lunch to work during their working years and saved the money. The money snowballed and now they eat out all the time. This magic is available to you too!
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@JeremiahDJohns @GayBearRes then how is every restaraunt filled to the brim with boomers only
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The biggest thing happening behind the scenes in the "expensive lunch" discourse is that Zoomers are eating out at ridiculously high rates.
It's a silent assumption for a ton of young people that restaurants are a basic necessity, not an occasional treat.
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@blythesylph @JeremiahDJohns @MostlyMonkey LOL. Spent my entire 20s cooking a 5 lbs package of chicken on Sunday for the week. Takes 45 minutes while you do laundry.
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@JeremiahDJohns @MostlyMonkey The larger the family, the more economical it is to eat at home. For a single person, there is so much waste, it’s not worth it.
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😂😂😂😂
I did something about it. But you will be a loser foever
Rebel Viewpoint@Rebel_Viewpoint
@AYSSPORTS Are you a McDonald’s or Wendy’s fan? Or both?
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@insertname_12 @OldWest1453 Middle school math was tough for you, huh? ((1.03)^36) x $3.00
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@OldWest1453 Your math is wrong. $3 in 1990 was equivalent to $7.64. So even accounting for inflation, the price has gone up by at least $1.65. So, you know, you fucked us on both ends. Very "boomerish" of you to act arrogant and get it wrong anyways, indeed.
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@SwipeWright @JoelWBerry @buttonslives Let me present $110 at Aldi: this haul includes six lbs of meat, 2 lbs cheese.
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For dinner tonight, @buttonslives and I are having pork chops, rice, and asparagus. We make this probably 2-3 times a week. It's delicious, and extremely affordable.
Food and Cost:
- 1.37lbs of pork chops @ $2.99/lb = $4.10
- 1* serving of yellow Minute Rice = $1.10
- 1/3 bag of Costco asparagus = $2.16
TOTAL COST FOR 2 PEOPLE: $7.36
*Christina didn't want rice tonight
This took less than 30 minutes to cook. Asparagus goes in the oven. Pork is seared on a cast iron pan, and finished in the oven. Rice is cooked in the microwave.
We eat a lot of pork because we like it and beef is really expensive right now. Some nights we have steamed broccoli instead of asparagus. Some nights we have mashed potatoes instead of rice. I cooked Indian last night. We cook a lot of stir fries too. Unless we're treating ourselves to a ribeye, our dinners don't cost more than $5 per person.
People who say food is too expensive are just too lazy to shop smart and cook at home.
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When that infrastructure falters, the system isn’t teaching thrift, it's failing. An aspirational economy doesn't make workers choose between their lunch and their mortgage. Economists and financial wizards should be ringing alarm bells, not lionizing $2.05 lunches.
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I suppose I'll be accused of being a leftist for saying this, but working professionals shouldn’t have to brown‑bag it to succeed in a modern society. I don't mean that in the “everyone deserves a pony” sense. I mean it in the “my car doesn’t sound right” sense.
Joel Berry@JoelWBerry
A little-known hack: 2 slices of Aldi wheat bread: $0.17 3 oz of Aldi deli turkey: $0.86 1 slices Aldi cheddar: $0.15 1 condiment of your choice: $0.02 1 apple: $0.53 1 hard boiled egg: $0.14 5 carrot sticks: $0.17 Cold water from the tap: $0.01 Total: $2.05 You can do this.
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@herosnvrdie69 Have you never been to Costco? You can feed a family Whole Foods on $150 per week, easy. And not rice and beans—chicken, eggs, cheese, milk, fruit, vegetables, nuts, olive oil, quinoa, oats.
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If my whole family ate sandwiches for every meal 3 times a day only our grocery bill would still be 800 dollars a month. To follow budgeting guidelines, I would need to make 64,000 dollars a year…to afford to only eat sandwiches. You can’t budget your way out of poverty.
Joel Berry@JoelWBerry
A little-known hack: 2 slices of Aldi wheat bread: $0.17 3 oz of Aldi deli turkey: $0.86 1 slices Aldi cheddar: $0.15 1 condiment of your choice: $0.02 1 apple: $0.53 1 hard boiled egg: $0.14 5 carrot sticks: $0.17 Cold water from the tap: $0.01 Total: $2.05 You can do this.
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I call bullshit. We lose our shit because we already ARE packing $5 or less lunches, but y'all accuse us of doing shit we ain't. You lost the argument before you began because you don't acknowledge the cold, hard reality we're living with.
EducatëdHillbilly™@RobProvince
This is where Millennials and Zoomers lose their argument and the compassion some might feel for them being in a poor economy goes out the window. I as a 52 year old man & make my lunches every weekend for around $3-$5 each. And when you suggest they do the same it’s like you just pissed on their shoes. So it’s ok for me to sacrifice and do all the little things to save money at 52. But you at 30 consider it an insult. Ok then…. fuck off.
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@mrworldwide949 @nazbowling102 “I’d like to report an internet murder! The gay anime guy is no longer alive!”
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@nazbowling102 "I reject actual measured reality and substitute personal vibes instead". Fantastic non-argument, very insightful.
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Notice how Joel's response to rising food prices is to give personal financial advice? This is because conservatives are are incapable of conceptualizing a society, they can only conceive problems on a personal level.
Joel Berry@JoelWBerry
A little-known hack: 2 slices of Aldi wheat bread: $0.17 3 oz of Aldi deli turkey: $0.86 1 slices Aldi cheddar: $0.15 1 condiment of your choice: $0.02 1 apple: $0.53 1 hard boiled egg: $0.14 5 carrot sticks: $0.17 Cold water from the tap: $0.01 Total: $2.05 You can do this.
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@molecule_trader @Cernovich Nice to grill vegetables, add to quinoa, buckwheat, etc., and dress with olive oil.
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@Cernovich Just as well that you don’t do Ramen noodles, because that’s just junk food. Same as McDonalds Burger..
And how about doing buckwheat or quinoa instead of rice (and its empty calories)?
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We rarely eat out. We eat nice food at home, not going to act like it's Ramen noodles, but we cook. One pan chicken with potatoes. The rice cooker is going 5 days out of 7. Lots of yogurt. That really is how OLD PEOPLE like me live. You cook your own food and don't eat out much.
Cernovich@Cernovich
Boomers and Gen X packed lunches. Not sure why this stuff enrages zoomers. Boomers lived frugally. Going out to lunch was a big deal. Most didn't have long lunch breaks, especially blue collar. You didn't DoorDash, dinners were made at home. I don't even DoorDash in 2026.
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