None of those things get you even close to $50/day. The "meal box kit"s are hundreds of dollars a month, yeah, but they also come with hundreds of dollars worth of food. Blue Apron comes out to about $10 per meal and they're considered the expensive choice.
TV packages get you up to $60 per month, or $2 per day. Wow, so wasteful, almost the price of a one-way commute and all you get in return is broad and unlimited 24/7 entertainment.
So we're up to $20 per day: $8 for food delivered to your house (which shouldn't even count because you need to eat anyway), $10 for two nice coffees, and $2 for television. Tell me about all the other outrageous luxury spending that gets us up to $50 per day.
$50/day is $1500/month. nobody spends that much on little luxuries. 46% of Americans can't afford to spend that much on rent.
I don’t think you live in NYC hannasarion. A cab here and there instead of the subway etc...
Also, the numbers jump by multiples if you have kids and include them in the little luxury buys. Again, my point isn’t to deprive yourself unnecessarily of joy. It’s just to be conscious of purchases which do add up and yet don’t actually make you much happier.
Meal boxes are more than twice as much/meal than buying your own ingredients. I calculate the average cost per serving when I duplicated Hello Fresh recipes at roughly $3/serving. Add in a few hundred dollars a month for eating out as well, the occasional dinner, lots of lunches, all a luxury compared to cooking/preparing your own.
I have no idea where you're getting $60 for cable, that may be the promotional cost but where I am, it's $75 for the cable, $11 for the cable box, and about $25 in other non-optional fees too, bringing it to $110 for the base package, and using that price is still a straw man: My comment specifically referenced the high-end even more expensive packages that can top $200 per month. Add in internet to that cable bill with upgraded data speeds and that can easily be another $100/month. Then Add in another $30 per month for a few streaming services, maybe another $30 for content rentals/purchases, $20 to see a movie in theaters once a month
Then there are costs the significantly pad essential things like housing and auto costs:
Plenty of people lease a new car every 3 years instead of buying one and keeping for a long time, and at the same time spend more than necessary, getting a top model when a base model for $10k less will work just as well.
Plenty of people buy much larger houses/apartments than necessary, opting for more rooms or more square footage than is needed, fancy appliances, counter tops, etc.
It's possible to do all of the above in single-person household. Now consider a married couple, or a couple with kids.
None of the above is all that abnormal. It's also a straw man to say people can't afford this: You attribute to me an argument I never made. I never claimed every person could or did spend this much money or luxuries. Nor was I referring just to luxury items. I was referring to non-essential expenses in general, with some reference to luxury. And it is absolutely true that lots of people spend $18,000/year in non-essential expenses, while at the same time they have little savings, retirement, etc.
TV packages get you up to $60 per month, or $2 per day. Wow, so wasteful, almost the price of a one-way commute and all you get in return is broad and unlimited 24/7 entertainment.
So we're up to $20 per day: $8 for food delivered to your house (which shouldn't even count because you need to eat anyway), $10 for two nice coffees, and $2 for television. Tell me about all the other outrageous luxury spending that gets us up to $50 per day.
$50/day is $1500/month. nobody spends that much on little luxuries. 46% of Americans can't afford to spend that much on rent.