The Crazy Money We Spend On Food And Drink Is Sadly Out of Control

After some days of going out to eat and drink extra than we commonly do, we have been dismayed. Not most effective via the value of going out however on the fee, revel in, and immediately health ramifications.

It’s one factor to drop $50-to-$one hundred (or more) on a meal; it’s entirely any other to —

Feel like the food wasn’t all that exact.
Have digestive issues after the meal.
Receive subpar service and non-existent hospitality.
Each time we exit and splurge, we sense like we’re getting much less and less price for our money. It’s as if we’re pigs set out in front of a trough to feed on subpar substances prepared with out idea, care or authenticity.

Even the locations that claim to make your meals with love hardly ever stay up to their self-proclaimed, boilerplate hype.

And then, the places that score excessive on some detail of the price scale are disappearing separately.

Source: Google

The modern day in Los Angeles. A Hollywood restaurant called Wood & Vine (it’s near the nook of Hollywood and Vine!) in which you may rating a solid burger, fries, and beer for $18. I can best hope “quickly closed” (apparently for maintenance) isn’t a precursor to we just can’t do that any longer.

Because I recognize the truth.

Between the price of leases and exertions on this town, even busy eating places have problem making ends meet. So they haven’t any desire however to do such things as —

Charge $20-plus for a pizza
Not have one beer below $10 on their menu
Slip an automated 20% provider charge onto your invoice
There’s a now not-so-fine line among understanding and expertise the truth of some thing and determining you’re going to helplessly live underneath it.

Yet another trouble that goes lower back to the overarching tale of having to go away America to stay a life that doesn’t consist of massive overhead requiring an insane sum of money and/or work to provider now and into and past relative old age.

Specifically on going out.

We truly can not preserve to spend $25, $30, $50, $a hundred or more a pop each time we go out to consume or drink some thing extra than espresso. We simply can’t keep to spend $5-plus on a cappuccino. And so on.

I mean, I guess technically we will. We simply don’t need to or experience as though we want or should must in the context of ways lots we’d must work and earn to do so, especially with our eyes on a sustainable future.

Disappointment at some point of and after the meal is insult to injury. Salt inside the private economic wound.

And, on existence in popular —

I heard about a relative of mine — a couple — who drops $2,500 a month on daycare alone. And they don’t stay in a notoriously steeply-priced place. This comes earlier than the loan charge, utility payments, vehicle payments and no longer having a good deal down time at all to do matters apart from work.

One one hand, I can say, I spend way, manner much less than $2,500 a month on housing and transportation — my two largest costs. And, quickly, manner, way, way, way much less than that.

This gives me the luxury of working much less now so I can paintings much less longer.

Amazing.

But, at the same time, my companion and I definitely do now not need to and can’t walk into relative vintage age with a $1,four hundred rent charge every month and a $50 for lunch or liquids and $one hundred-plus for dinner habit. It’s not sustainable except you’re made from cash or inclined to work an excessive amount of and too difficult now and as you grow older.

This leaves only one choice — to transport.

To find that area you may flee to no longer to live much less, however to stay greater. To find that area that’s now not best less high-priced, however has the cultural element of setting work in its proper place. Of organizing money and paintings across the life you want (and deserve), now not the other (all too American) manner round.

For us, that area is probably a huge metropolis in Spain or Italy.

For you, it might be some other place entirely —

Another American region in which you could stay for meaningfully much less.
Mexico, South America, someplace in Asia.
I also recognize the truth inherent on this idea trajectory.

Am I A Douchebag For Wanting To Move To Europe?
I’m now not inside the enterprise of gentrifying everyone’s city. I’m just seeking to get by means of till the day I die.
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Call it clarification, but we’re now not the Americans headed to a Southern European town (or, for that matter, a gentrifying U.S. Metropolis) on the backs of large salaries or cashed out inventory options, seeking to purchase a $500,000 or $one million-plus home over asking fee.

Quite the contrary.

We’re the Americans looking to lease for beneath $1,000 a month or purchase for $300,000 or less. Because that’s all we want to/can spend. Because that’s how we have toggled the two switches among how an awful lot we’re willing to work and earn to service our way of life.

My lady friend speaks Spanish. And I’m gaining knowledge of it as quickly as I can. Because I will not be the American who goes to Spain and expects to be able to speak English because all of us does.

¡Estoy aprendiendo tan rápido como puedo!

The culture resonates with us. It’s simply convenient icing on the cake that the fee of residing does as nicely.

So it’s a story about taking the easy (however amusing and pleasant) life we lead in America and maintaining that easy, a laugh and fulfilling lifestyles in an area wherein it’s going to price exponentially less to achieve this. It’s approximately sustainability.

It’s no longer about upgrading our fabric way of life because we will get extra for our money someplace else. The equal of creating a domestic flow due to the fact you can get greater residence for your cash there. I don’t want extra residence for my money. That’s at the foundation of the hassle that got us into this fucking mess within the first region. Wanting greater for your cash.

It’s about being able to maintain our modern modest material life-style till the day our our bodies name it quits at similar to integrating ourselves right into a lifestyle that aligns greater with the way we assume, live and love and want to assume, live and love going forward.

Which goes back to the food.

The photograph that anchors this article is one small “surprise” pizza of some we had at a restaurant in Valencia, Spain.

This vicinity makes you pizzas with the components they have handy that day.

Our complete bill for all you notice (and don’t see) here become about 30 euros.

And the high-quality part of all of it, none of this made us sense bloated, oiled from stern to bow with acid or in any other case digestively uncomfortable after the meal.

The wine turned into kind of eight euros.

The environment and hospitality — both outstanding.

We’re now not hoping and planning to leave America to go somewhere else to live lifestyles truly precariously on a budget and devour the same shitty meals just as it’s less luxurious. It’s approximately leaving to do both matters higher and for much less money, which equates to putting your self beneath plenty much less strain and pressure in the course of act of your life.

It’s approximately locating, acquiring, and retaining a sense of financial and life-style protection. Something that, regrettably, keeps to vanish as a actual possibility for an increasing number of Americans.