Millennial Avocado Toast

2017Catchphrase / inside jokeclassic

Also known as: Avocado Toast Meme · Smashed Avo Meme

Millennial Avocado Toast is a sarcastic inside joke born from Australian property developer Tim Gurner's May 2017 claim that millennials can't afford homes because they waste money on avocado toast and $4 coffees. Twitter users immediately shredded the logic, and "avocado toast" became the go-to punchline for any out-of-touch explanation of why young people are broke.

millennial memeshousing crisis memesfood trend memeseconomic anxiety memesaustralian memes

Overview

The meme centers on the absurd idea that millennials are poor because they buy too much avocado toast. After Gurner's comments aired on Australian television and got picked up by international news, "avocado toast" turned into shorthand for any condescending, oversimplified explanation of why young people can't hit financial milestones like homeownership. The joke operates on two levels: mocking the specific advice (skip the $19 toast, buy a house) and the broader pattern of wealthy older people blaming millennial poverty on brunch habits rather than systemic problems like stagnant wages, student debt, and runaway housing costs.

The avocado-versus-housing debate actually started in late 2016, when Australian columnist Bernard Salt wrote a piece in *The Australian* criticizing young people who "order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop," arguing they should save for homes instead5. Salt later said his column was meant as satire of conservative boomer attitudes, but it made international headlines5.

The meme truly detonated on May 15, 2017. Australian website 9news ran an article recapping a *60 Minutes Australia* segment featuring Tim Gurner, a 35-year-old real estate developer worth nearly half a billion dollars1. Gurner told the show: "When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn't buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each"3. He suggested millennials spend too lavishly, influenced by shows like *Keeping Up with the Kardashians*, and need to "get realistic" about their expectations3.

Twitter responded with furious, hilarious precision. Kaleb Horton did the math: "If I stopped eating avocado toast every day, I would be able to afford a bad house in Los Angeles in 642 years"2. Murtaza Hussain posted a mock budget listing "Transportation: $120, Food: $500, Clothing: $200, Avocado toast: $35,000" and asked for help from "someone good at the economy"2. The jokes intensified after users discovered Gurner launched his real estate career with a $34,000 loan from his grandfather2.

Origin & Background

Platform
60 Minutes Australia (source quote), Twitter (meme spread)
Key People
Tim Gurner
Date
2017

The avocado-versus-housing debate actually started in late 2016, when Australian columnist Bernard Salt wrote a piece in *The Australian* criticizing young people who "order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop," arguing they should save for homes instead. Salt later said his column was meant as satire of conservative boomer attitudes, but it made international headlines.

The meme truly detonated on May 15, 2017. Australian website 9news ran an article recapping a *60 Minutes Australia* segment featuring Tim Gurner, a 35-year-old real estate developer worth nearly half a billion dollars. Gurner told the show: "When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn't buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each". He suggested millennials spend too lavishly, influenced by shows like *Keeping Up with the Kardashians*, and need to "get realistic" about their expectations.

Twitter responded with furious, hilarious precision. Kaleb Horton did the math: "If I stopped eating avocado toast every day, I would be able to afford a bad house in Los Angeles in 642 years". Murtaza Hussain posted a mock budget listing "Transportation: $120, Food: $500, Clothing: $200, Avocado toast: $35,000" and asked for help from "someone good at the economy". The jokes intensified after users discovered Gurner launched his real estate career with a $34,000 loan from his grandfather.

How It Spread

News outlets including Mediaite, TIME, and NBC's *Today* show covered the Twitter pile-on within hours of the story breaking. The coverage itself fed the fire. TIME tweeted an article framing Gurner's position as "Stop buying avocado toast if you want to buy a home," which users treated as further proof that mainstream media didn't get it.

By July 2017, avocado toast had fully cemented itself as millennial shorthand. Instagram user badtastebb posted an image of someone covered in avocado and toast, styled to look like Shrek, as a sarcastic response to the homeownership debate. Artist @drewtoothpaste of *Toothpaste for Dinner* created a satirical comic that the CAFE account tweeted, pulling over 360 retweets.

On August 8, 2017, amid rising tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, Twitter user @kennethn posted a scenario featuring the phrase "Hold my avocado," a millennial spin on the "Hold My Beer" format. The tweet racked up over 72,000 retweets and 203,000 likes. TIME covered the moment and got roasted again for being out of touch, sparking a dedicated Twitter Moment mocking the outlet.

Economic analysts backed up the jokes with real numbers. The *Sydney Morning Herald* calculated that saving $66 a week on brunch while property prices kept rising would only cover a 10% deposit in Hobart, Australia's cheapest capital city. In Ireland, skipping avocado toast would save roughly €500 per year, meaning it would take over 500 years to afford a house at market prices.

Platforms

TwitterTwitterReddit

Timeline

2023-01-15

First appears

2023-06-01

Goes viral

2024-01-01

Continues in use

2025-01-01

Millennial Avocado Toast is still actively used and shared across platforms

View on Google Trends

How to Use This Meme

Avocado toast memes typically follow one of a few patterns:

1

Mock budgeting: List normal expenses, then include an absurd avocado toast line item (e.g., "$35,000/month"). The punchline is that someone "bad at the economy" can't identify the problem.

2

Sarcastic financial advice: Frame quitting avocado toast as the one simple trick for affording a house, usually contrasted with something actually expensive like student loans or medical bills.

3

Generational comeback: When an older or wealthier person gives tone-deaf financial advice, respond with some variation of "I'll just stop buying avocado toast then."

4

"Hold my avocado": A millennial twist on "Hold my beer," used before doing something dramatic or ill-advised.

Create Your Own

Cultural Impact

The meme tapped into real economic frustration. As one viral response put it: "Millennial to millionaire: $2 avocados aren't the reason I can't afford a home. Student loans are". A GOBankingRates survey around the same time found 69% of Americans had less than $1,000 in savings, not because of brunch habits but because of structural financial pressures.

The avocado toast debate paralleled the "Latte Factor," a personal finance concept from David Bach suggesting small daily expenses compound into missed wealth. Critics have long called this framing misleading when applied to systemic issues like stagnant wages and exploding housing costs.

The actual avocado market felt the ripple effects too. By 2017, demand driven partly by the toast trend pushed avocado prices higher. Some environmentally conscious cafés pulled avocado toast from their menus by 2018, citing the carbon footprint of shipping subtropical fruit globally.

Fun Facts

Tim Gurner was 35 when he made the comments, making him a millennial himself.

Gurner's career started with a $34,000 gift from his grandfather, a detail that became the single most-mocked element of the entire controversy.

The concept predates Gurner by several months. Bernard Salt's 2016 column in *The Australian* made similar arguments, though he later claimed it was satire.

Avocado on bread is not remotely new. People in Chile have eaten "pan con palta" since at least 1926, and San Francisco residents were eating avocado toast as early as 1885.

Celebrity Gwyneth Paltrow helped popularize avocado toast as a food trend through her cookbook *It's All Good*, years before it became a meme.

Derivatives & Variations

"Hold my avocado":

A millennial take on "Hold My Beer," popularized by @kennethn's August 2017 tweet that earned 72,000 retweets and 203,000 likes[4].

Mock budget format:

Murtaza Hussain's "$35,000 avocado toast" budget became a copypasta template applied to other spending debates[2].

"Millennials are killing the avocado industry":

A predictive joke format where users imagined boomer columnists blaming millennials for quitting avocado toast after being told to stop buying it[2].

Shrek avocado cosplay:

Instagram user badtastebb's image of someone covered in avocado styled as Shrek became a reaction image for the housing affordability debate[4].

Frequently Asked Questions

Millennial Avocado Toast

2017Catchphrase / inside jokeclassic

Also known as: Avocado Toast Meme · Smashed Avo Meme

Millennial Avocado Toast is a sarcastic inside joke born from Australian property developer Tim Gurner's May 2017 claim that millennials can't afford homes because they waste money on avocado toast and $4 coffees. Twitter users immediately shredded the logic, and "avocado toast" became the go-to punchline for any out-of-touch explanation of why young people are broke.

millennial memes housing crisis memes food trend memes economic anxiety memes australian memes

Overview

The meme centers on the absurd idea that millennials are poor because they buy too much avocado toast. After Gurner's comments aired on Australian television and got picked up by international news, "avocado toast" turned into shorthand for any condescending, oversimplified explanation of why young people can't hit financial milestones like homeownership. The joke operates on two levels: mocking the specific advice (skip the $19 toast, buy a house) and the broader pattern of wealthy older people blaming millennial poverty on brunch habits rather than systemic problems like stagnant wages, student debt, and runaway housing costs.

The avocado-versus-housing debate actually started in late 2016, when Australian columnist Bernard Salt wrote a piece in *The Australian* criticizing young people who "order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop," arguing they should save for homes instead. Salt later said his column was meant as satire of conservative boomer attitudes, but it made international headlines.

The meme truly detonated on May 15, 2017. Australian website 9news ran an article recapping a *60 Minutes Australia* segment featuring Tim Gurner, a 35-year-old real estate developer worth nearly half a billion dollars. Gurner told the show: "When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn't buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each". He suggested millennials spend too lavishly, influenced by shows like *Keeping Up with the Kardashians*, and need to "get realistic" about their expectations.

Twitter responded with furious, hilarious precision. Kaleb Horton did the math: "If I stopped eating avocado toast every day, I would be able to afford a bad house in Los Angeles in 642 years". Murtaza Hussain posted a mock budget listing "Transportation: $120, Food: $500, Clothing: $200, Avocado toast: $35,000" and asked for help from "someone good at the economy". The jokes intensified after users discovered Gurner launched his real estate career with a $34,000 loan from his grandfather.

Origin & Background

Platform
60 Minutes Australia (source quote), Twitter (meme spread)
Key People
Tim Gurner
Date
2017

The avocado-versus-housing debate actually started in late 2016, when Australian columnist Bernard Salt wrote a piece in *The Australian* criticizing young people who "order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop," arguing they should save for homes instead. Salt later said his column was meant as satire of conservative boomer attitudes, but it made international headlines.

The meme truly detonated on May 15, 2017. Australian website 9news ran an article recapping a *60 Minutes Australia* segment featuring Tim Gurner, a 35-year-old real estate developer worth nearly half a billion dollars. Gurner told the show: "When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn't buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each". He suggested millennials spend too lavishly, influenced by shows like *Keeping Up with the Kardashians*, and need to "get realistic" about their expectations.

Twitter responded with furious, hilarious precision. Kaleb Horton did the math: "If I stopped eating avocado toast every day, I would be able to afford a bad house in Los Angeles in 642 years". Murtaza Hussain posted a mock budget listing "Transportation: $120, Food: $500, Clothing: $200, Avocado toast: $35,000" and asked for help from "someone good at the economy". The jokes intensified after users discovered Gurner launched his real estate career with a $34,000 loan from his grandfather.

How It Spread

News outlets including Mediaite, TIME, and NBC's *Today* show covered the Twitter pile-on within hours of the story breaking. The coverage itself fed the fire. TIME tweeted an article framing Gurner's position as "Stop buying avocado toast if you want to buy a home," which users treated as further proof that mainstream media didn't get it.

By July 2017, avocado toast had fully cemented itself as millennial shorthand. Instagram user badtastebb posted an image of someone covered in avocado and toast, styled to look like Shrek, as a sarcastic response to the homeownership debate. Artist @drewtoothpaste of *Toothpaste for Dinner* created a satirical comic that the CAFE account tweeted, pulling over 360 retweets.

On August 8, 2017, amid rising tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, Twitter user @kennethn posted a scenario featuring the phrase "Hold my avocado," a millennial spin on the "Hold My Beer" format. The tweet racked up over 72,000 retweets and 203,000 likes. TIME covered the moment and got roasted again for being out of touch, sparking a dedicated Twitter Moment mocking the outlet.

Economic analysts backed up the jokes with real numbers. The *Sydney Morning Herald* calculated that saving $66 a week on brunch while property prices kept rising would only cover a 10% deposit in Hobart, Australia's cheapest capital city. In Ireland, skipping avocado toast would save roughly €500 per year, meaning it would take over 500 years to afford a house at market prices.

Platforms

TwitterTwitterReddit

Timeline

2023-01-15

First appears

2023-06-01

Goes viral

2024-01-01

Continues in use

2025-01-01

Millennial Avocado Toast is still actively used and shared across platforms

View on Google Trends

How to Use This Meme

Avocado toast memes typically follow one of a few patterns:

1

Mock budgeting: List normal expenses, then include an absurd avocado toast line item (e.g., "$35,000/month"). The punchline is that someone "bad at the economy" can't identify the problem.

2

Sarcastic financial advice: Frame quitting avocado toast as the one simple trick for affording a house, usually contrasted with something actually expensive like student loans or medical bills.

3

Generational comeback: When an older or wealthier person gives tone-deaf financial advice, respond with some variation of "I'll just stop buying avocado toast then."

4

"Hold my avocado": A millennial twist on "Hold my beer," used before doing something dramatic or ill-advised.

Create Your Own

Cultural Impact

The meme tapped into real economic frustration. As one viral response put it: "Millennial to millionaire: $2 avocados aren't the reason I can't afford a home. Student loans are". A GOBankingRates survey around the same time found 69% of Americans had less than $1,000 in savings, not because of brunch habits but because of structural financial pressures.

The avocado toast debate paralleled the "Latte Factor," a personal finance concept from David Bach suggesting small daily expenses compound into missed wealth. Critics have long called this framing misleading when applied to systemic issues like stagnant wages and exploding housing costs.

The actual avocado market felt the ripple effects too. By 2017, demand driven partly by the toast trend pushed avocado prices higher. Some environmentally conscious cafés pulled avocado toast from their menus by 2018, citing the carbon footprint of shipping subtropical fruit globally.

Fun Facts

Tim Gurner was 35 when he made the comments, making him a millennial himself.

Gurner's career started with a $34,000 gift from his grandfather, a detail that became the single most-mocked element of the entire controversy.

The concept predates Gurner by several months. Bernard Salt's 2016 column in *The Australian* made similar arguments, though he later claimed it was satire.

Avocado on bread is not remotely new. People in Chile have eaten "pan con palta" since at least 1926, and San Francisco residents were eating avocado toast as early as 1885.

Celebrity Gwyneth Paltrow helped popularize avocado toast as a food trend through her cookbook *It's All Good*, years before it became a meme.

Derivatives & Variations

"Hold my avocado":

A millennial take on "Hold My Beer," popularized by @kennethn's August 2017 tweet that earned 72,000 retweets and 203,000 likes[4].

Mock budget format:

Murtaza Hussain's "$35,000 avocado toast" budget became a copypasta template applied to other spending debates[2].

"Millennials are killing the avocado industry":

A predictive joke format where users imagined boomer columnists blaming millennials for quitting avocado toast after being told to stop buying it[2].

Shrek avocado cosplay:

Instagram user badtastebb's image of someone covered in avocado styled as Shrek became a reaction image for the housing affordability debate[4].

Frequently Asked Questions