A recent interview with Australian millionaire Tim Gurner has gained traction – particularly on social media – after TIME reported his comments that millennials cannot afford to buy homes because they insist on buying “smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each”. Obviously this is hyperbole and the point he is using food spending to make an argument that millennials are spending too much money on frivolous purchases. I don’t know about you, but I’m bored with inflammatory rhetoric – I want data. I went looking to see how much validity is behind his argument. After an evening on the Statistics Canada website I’ve crunched the numbers. Full disclosure, I am a millennial; I can’t afford to buy a house; I don’t like avocado; and I believe that – perhaps – the discrepancy between millennial budgets and housing prices results from a combination of complex economic factors – not avocado toast spending. Food Spending [i] [ii] We should start w...
Living, Working and Leading in London, Ontario