Just How Much Do I Have To Reduce My Avocado Budget To Buy A House?
How many avocados does this millennial need to eliminate from his diet in order to budget for a home? I did the math.
By Kaleb Horton (MTV.com|Twitter)
You know what I don’t get enough of, as a millennial? That’s right, you guessed it. Advice. While I may be spoiled by creature comforts and the calming sensation of stability, I often find myself feeling deprived of the sage counsel of my elders.
Luckily, one rich guy has taken it upon himself to give the first advice ever given to any millennial: We can all become homeowners if we’d stop eating so many damn avocados. Specifically, avocado toast. Because avocado toast, you see, like a home, is expensive.
Boy, was that a splash of cold water in my face. I’ve been living all wrong. My greed for avocado toast is what’s been preventing me from buying a house, and I didn’t even notice. So I took a deep breath, got out the old notebook, and did some math. I had to reduce my avocado budget so I could go buy a house, but I needed to know exactly by how much.
Now, I’ll be straight with you. I eat avocado toast every single day. I can’t help it. I’m from California. This hedonistic lifestyle sets me back 15 dollars a week, thanks to my dad’s Costco membership. I also live in Los Angeles for work, and I grant that it’s a competitive city, but it’s a fairly livable one, and homeownership is within reach.
Since I’m about to get conservative with my avocado spending, I’m also going to be conservative about where I buy a home in Los Angeles. So I’ll go ahead and start saving for a house in exurban Sunland, a cozy two-bedroom behind a hollowed-out auto-body shop where many murders have definitely been committed. This will set me back a modest $500,000.
If I save that $15 every week, I’m saving $780 a year. Now, if we divide $500,000 by $780, we can deduce how long it will take to buy that house: 641 years. Unfortunately, that just won’t do. I’m already 28 years old. I can’t wait until I’m 669 years old to own a home! Sure, if you’re a biblical literalist, men have lived this long and even longer — Methuselah, son of Enoch, lived to the age of 969, a full 300 years more — but my odds are slim. I should probably quit smoking.
I guess the rich guy’s excellent advice just isn’t for me. But who is it for? How many avocados do you have to cut from your budget for homeownership to be viable on a more reasonable timeline?
Let’s change the scenario. Sure, I like to eat at home, but lots of millennials don’t. Maybe they need to eat their avocado toast at a restaurant. If I were to do that every day, I’d be spending $140 a week, or $7,280 a year, on breakfast. If I were to stop consuming avocados in that scenario, I could buy a house in 68.68 years. That’s a better timeline, but I just don’t want to wait until I’m 96 to be a homeowner.
So the rich guy’s excellent advice isn’t for those millennials either. But we’re getting closer. Let’s say you’re one of those millennials who’s just sick for avocado toast. You’re desperate for the healthy fat you can spread on crunchy bread. People can’t even mention avocados around you because you start foaming at the mouth. It’s a psychosexual disease for you. Let’s try that math.
Let’s say I bathe in avocado toast. I have to bathe in it. I have to roll around in it, fully nude, every single day. My wife will mash the avocados in a giant vat with her feet like a traditional wine maker and pour them onto my body as slowly as she can. I need to do this. You don’t understand.
It costs $9 for a bag of five avocados at my local Costco. And let’s say I need 100 avocados for my bath, no more, no less. That’s $180 a day, or $65,700 a year.
Bingo.
If I were to bathe in avocados every single night, and then reluctantly and permanently cease to do so, I could be a Los Angeles homeowner in a mere 7.6 years. I could own a bona fide starter home at the age of 35. Now, that’s a late start, but it’s better than no start at all if you ask me.
Wait, I just realized the cost of real estate isn’t static. I’m gonna go walk into the fucking ocean.
Originally published at www.mtv.com.