How Convenience Spending is Diminishing Your Financial Stability

This five-course meal in Mallorca cost less than the average American spends on convenience spending each month, and I still remember every detail of the meal two years later.

Every Sunday morning that I go down to the lobby of my building for a slow morning walk, I see at least one pizza or fast food meal, usually delivered after midnight the night before, left forgotten by one of my neighbors who ordered takeout and then fell asleep before it arrived.  One of my neighbors spent $20 or more to order food directly to our building and then did not even eat it, leaving it to waste away on the delivery table in the lobby.

While this is extremely wasteful because they did not even enjoy the food, I am of the opinion that ordering DoorDash, Uber Eats, or whatever to my building is almost always completely unjustified because we live in a nice building in an expensive neighborhood that has more than thirty food options within two blocks.  Many of them allow you to order ahead so you can leave your home, pick up your food, and return back home to eat it in less than ten minutes.  Unless you are sick with the flu or caring for someone who is, there should always be time for the 5–10 minutes it takes to acquire food from the thirty options within two blocks.

Instead, I see orders from the local bagel shop (a three-minute walk) on most weekday mornings.  Imagine paying extra to get delivery rather than walking outside for six minutes.  Anyone feeling that short on time almost certainly needs the refreshing walk.

This is convenience spending, and it is happening more frequently and among individuals in more economic situations.  I realize it happens more in my building because most people earn high salaries and spend the majority of them because they have not considered leading the workforce before age 59.5.  I would argue that they have less of an excuse for the convenience spending because of all the restaurants nearby, but that is why we see convenience spending similarly popular in areas with fewer food options nearby.  Less wealthy individuals are more likely to live in food deserts with less access to quick options, making delivery services even more valuable.  Many individuals would not pay $10 to save six minutes, but they would to save one hour.

The wealthy will spend to avoid the six-minute walk, and those with less wealth will spend to avoid the hour roundtrip and the hassle of making food after long workdays.  Individuals in vastly different economic situations both find convenience spending worth the value, even though their thresholds for value are different.  But convenience spending is hurting the financial stability of those making $300,000 each year and $30,000 each year because it has become unquestionably normalized in our society.

Egypt: My First Exposure to Convenience Culture

When I was in college, pizza was the only food that was delivered.  Like any other college student, I ordered pizza delivery from time to time because it was convenient, I had a lot of competing priorities, and pizza is delicious.  However, I could not eat pizza for three meals a day, seven days a week, so I accepted that I had to either make or acquire other food for other meals.

I studied abroad in Egypt in 2012 and learned that Cairo was far ahead of Boston in terms of convenient food.  You could order any food to your apartment, not just pizza.  KFC would deliver to your door for no additional cost because they wanted your money badly enough that they would send a guy on a motorbike to deliver your chicken tenders to your doorstep.  Storefronts and signs on motorbikes zig-zagging through the city all advertised their willingness to bring the meals they prepared directly to you.

This was one of the best ideas I had ever seen.  That is probably why DoorDash ran with it in 2013, and Uber Eats followed in 2014.  Within a couple years, the piece of Egyptian culture I admired became a routine staple of American life.  But it had an American twist: Delivery was not free and did not just require a tip for the deliverer.  There were extra service fees for the middlemen that seemed to increase in cost each month until deliveries cost significantly more than meals picked up at a store.

Impact on Financial Stability

Paying for convenience has become a staple of everyday life over the past decade.  Most individuals are willing to pay for convenience so they can work longer hours and make more money.  While this may help individuals earn more over time, it also means their lifestyle costs more, requiring them to continue making a high salary and eventually preparing for a more expensive retirement.

Expensive lifestyles have many Americans stuck working and consistently seeking ways to make more money.  Many justify convenience spending because their quests to make more money leave them no energy to make or retrieve food, run errands when something could be delivered, or take their dog on a walk during their lunch break.  They are too tired for anything but work and willing to spend money to make everything outside of work easier.  But that makes them more reliant on work.

The more our lifestyles cost, the more difficult it is to become financially stable.  If you only spend $30k annually, a $15k high-yield savings account gives you a six-month emergency fund.  If you spend $200k annually, you need a $100k high-yield savings account for the same financial stability.  You would also need $5 million to retire early instead of $750,000, assuming a 4% withdrawal rate.  Keeping your life affordable makes financial stability easier to achieve and gives you more choices in life.

The average American spends $1,800 in convenience spending each year.  While that does not sound like much, that means needing an extra $45,000 to retire—a year’s salary for many, and a significant sum for anyone.  That convenience spending metric is also generally limited to home deliveries, prepared meal services, and other obvious convenience costs.  It does not capture convenience costs that could be categorized differently, like paying a dog walker for an extra walk each day, not because you must be at the office but because you are too exhausted or want to work a little more from home.  It also misses clothing subscriptions that individuals pay for monthly to increase shopping and styling convenience since these fall under clothing purchases.  These small costs add up and make our lives much more expensive than they need to be.

Accepting Inconvenience

Accepting inconvenience will make you wealthy.  It will probably also make you happier.  Forcing yourself to go pick up takeout rather than ordering DoorDash may result in a few outcomes.  You may go on a nice outdoor walk that improves your health, pick up your food, save a couple dollars, and enjoy your food even more because a few minutes outside will boost your mood.  You may decide it is not worth the walk, so you will eat the food you already have in the fridge rather than letting it spoil.  You may not have food prepared but decide it is not worth a walk in the rain, so you will think creatively on what you can make with the ingredients you have in your kitchen.  All of these save a couple dollars, some save more, some have health benefits, and some get you thinking creatively in an area other than work.

I personally decided that I would rather eat a full dinner in Italy than pay for meal delivery of some food that I would not enjoy as much as food I cooked myself.  That dinner in Italy will be better than my own cooking, so it passes my value test.  I remember those dinners I paid for years after I experienced them.  The five-course brunch at Arrels by Marga Coll made using local ingredients from across the Balearic Islands and enjoyed with a view of the water in Mallorca cost less for two people than the average American spends on convenience in one month.  Unlike the burgers my neighbors ordered at 2 a.m. and forgot until morning last weekend, I still remember that meal from 2024 today.