Ask HN: How does one affordably eat without cooking or cleaning?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809129I've found myself in this weird position in which I'm spending more than the median US income on just eating and was wondering if there's any way out.
As far as I can tell it's the most economically rational thing for me to do, as my income is well into the six-figures and so as I don't particularly enjoy grocery shopping, cooking or cleaning it's a better use of my time to work and pay as much as I currently am ($2700 /month) to meet my daily nutritional needs. And yet, the situation seems insane to me from a common sense perspective and I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing something really obvious or doing something terribly stupid.
The market for food delivery, both at the facilitator and provider level, is so fragmented I don't really see there being much room for prices to be lower. Restaurants struggle, workers aren't paid very well, and the apps don't even make money. So maybe it's just as simple as that, the cost of living a cooking and cleaning free life in a high cost of living area is more than the median national income. But I have to wonder, as surely I'm not the only one in this conundrum [1], is there another way?
Cafeterias? Partner up with someone that likes cooking? Some sort of community meal thing? I'm open to any ideas or experiences people have navigating early adult life in this domain.
[1] I understand that this isn't a real problem, in the sense that many people struggle to cover the basic costs of food and other necessities, and that this could very well come off as elitist and out-of-touch privilege. But I'd love to live in a world where those that don't like to cook and clean dishes don't have to be rich, and the only way [2] to make that a reality is to raise people's income or make it more affordable—the focus of this question being on the latter.
[2] The only capitalistic way. There may be creative solutions involving the reorganization of people outside of the economic system to solve this, but the only one I've heard about that happens at scale is to partner up with someone willing to take on that role.