CAN millennials really afford a deposit just by ditching the mochachinos and avocado toast? We asked one to keep a spending diary, but it wasn’t one who lives in London and works in the media so the entire thing was a waste of time.
Still, since we did it, here’s the spending diary of 26-year-old Tom Logan who lives in Preston and works as a mechanic and is therefore representative of absolutely nobody.
DAY 1
I have a couple of slices of toast and margarine then walk to work. Sorry, I’m already doing this wrong. I should have bought breakfast and got the tube and then bought a coffee. Sorry.
I packed sandwiches for lunch too, because there isn’t anywhere you can buy them near the garage. I know, I’m completely fucking this up.
I should have a gym membership or something, but I just keep fit by walking to work.
Total spend: negligible
DAY 4
Me and my mates meet in Wetherspoons and then go on to a pub near the station. But nowhere does fancy gins, so I’m coming home pissed with change from £20. Even the kebab’s only a few quid. Sorry. We just haven’t got the street food ‘pop-ups’.
Total spend: £25 or so, which I know should be paying for one round
DAY 9
Big shop at Morrison’s, so that was £70, and I paid my rent which is £425 a month. For a moment I feel like a proper millennial until I realise that I should be spending at least twice that on a room in a shared house in Croydon or something. Then I make it even worse by having tea at my mum’s. That’s just not representative at all. Well it is round here, but not of real people, like in the Guardian.
Total spend: £495 which still isn’t close to enough
DAY 16
At lunchtime I go to Starbucks for a coffee, just to pretend to be an actual millennial for an hour. But I still don’t feel any different. I’m ashamed to be born in the 90s. I’m letting everyone down.
Total spend: £4.65 for an ‘Americano’ and a copy of the Lancashire Evening Post.
OVERALL TOTAL
Not remotely enough
EXPERT’S VERDICT
Doesn’t count as a millennial. Ignore.
