9 Ways Convenience Culture Is Costing the Middle-Class Thousands in 2025
Written by
G. Brian Davis
Edited by
Zuri Anderson
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Companies earn billions encouraging consumers to buy in haste — and repent at leisure. Everyone loves instant gratification. Then, they wonder why they carry credit card balances they can’t pay off each month, why they have such a low savings rate, why they don’t have enough saved for retirement.
Watch out for the following ways retailers squeeze extra money out of the middle class, by peddling convenience.
Subscription Services
Companies love the subscription business model, because they only have to make the sale once, but they keep collecting revenue indefinitely.
Holden Andrews, founder of the Helpful Home Group, sees it all the time.
“It feels like everything has become a monthly subscription from home goods to streaming services, meal kits, even car manufacturers wanting a subscription for some features. All these subscriptions easily add up to $200 to 300 per month, a budget-busting $3,600 a year.”
Retailers make it easy to sign up for a subscription, but not so easy to cancel it. Run a subscription audit of every monthly and annual subscription you pay for, then cancel every single one that you can possibly live without.
One-Click Online Purchases
Many consumers even pay a subscription to retailers like Amazon to make it easier for them to — wait for it — buy things from Amazon.
Online retailers and digital wallets store your credit card information “for your convenience,” and let you buy any item you want with the click of a button. That makes it all too easy to make impulse purchases.
It’s less easy to return those items though, falling to you to ship them back and fill out return and refund forms. That frictionless purchase and friction-filled return process is all part of the business model.
Ease of Debt and Interest
Credit card and buy now, pay later (BNPL) companies make it easy and convenient to buy anything your heart desires now and pay for it, well, later.
So easy, in fact, that the average American carries a credit card balance of $6,380, according to Transunion.
Gianluca Ferruggia, lead financial and general manager at Design Rush, puts it succinctly: “Credit cards and BNPL services like Klarna and Afterpay make it feel painless to stretch spending, but they also keep consumers in a cycle of debt, normalizing purchasing things they can’t afford upfront.”
That can lead to thousands of dollars in interest payments every year, on top of all the unnecessary spending.
Convenience Groceries
Grocery stores have always been masters of pushing purchases that shoppers don’t actually need. Think candies in the checkout line, buy-one-get-one-half-off, coupons encouraging you to try new products you don’t need, and so forth.
Today, they’ve brought that selling savvy into the modern era with grocery delivery on demand, in-app shopping suggestions and more. They even offer pre-prepared foods for absurd markups.
“The middle class is paying heavily for the illusion of saved time,” continues Ferruggia. “Pre-cut fruits and meal kits are often double or triple the cost of their raw ingredients. Meanwhile, grocery delivery fees turn a $100 grocery bill into $130 without a second thought.”
Meal Delivery
It gets even worse when consumers pay someone else to cook the food for them, because they’re too lazy to cook for themselves.
“Uber Eats, Grubhub, Postmates, and the like turn a $15 lunch into a $30 meal,” noted Andrews. “This mindset of ‘It’s just a little treat, I’ll get it delivered,’ adds up over time and ultimately results in the middle class being drained of thousands of dollars — all due to the convenience of someone dropping it off.”
Complacency Over Denied Benefits
Many insurance companies build an entire business model around denying most claims the first time around, knowing that many clients won’t bother to appeal them.
Neal Shah, co-founder of Counterforce Health, sees it on a daily basis: “Insurance companies rely on people paying invoices or setting up payment plans out of sheer convenience, rather than taking the time to appeal claims that have been denied wrongly. A large medical bill arrives after the client’s coverage is denied. They could appeal — about 50% of appealed claims get approved — but that seems like too much of a hassle.
“We have the data. The average family pays more than $1,200 annually for this ‘convenience.'”
Luxury ‘Personal Care’
Massages, manicures, spa days, and other luxury conveniences? They’re costing middle-class Americans a fortune they can’t afford.
“I see it over and over: People making good money but not making progress,” observed Gary Gray, personal finance advisor and founder of CouponChief. “In most cases, it’s the convenience culture of self-indulgence, of instant gratification, of ‘I deserve it.’ An occasional face mask, a weekly trip to the spa and specialty products all feel like a treat, but over time, those invisible expenses can add up to thousands each year.”
Simple Maintenance
A terrifying survey reported by Sky News found that nearly a quarter of Gen Z doesn’t know how to change a light bulb. Just a third feel confident cleaning their car. Not maintaining the car — just washing it. Forget about oil changes, or other basic car or home maintenance.
These simple tasks could cost you a few dollars — or they could cost you dozens, hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Companies capitalize on our endless appetite for convenience by charging us for the simple, routine tasks that our parents did themselves in just a few minutes.
Lost Skills
The upshot of paying someone else to do, well, everything for us is that many of us have lost basic life skills that our parents and grandparents took for granted.
“Too many Americans today just unthinkingly replace items instead of repairing them,” explained Gray. “Whether it’s throwing away a broken appliance or clothes that still have life in them, people are quick to spend on replacements instead of maintenance. That fridge you want to get rid of can last another five years with a quick fix and save you a thousand bucks.”
Do you know how to sew and mend? How to spackle? How to fix a leaky faucet?
Your parents probably did. But too many Americans have lost these skills as the generations turn over — and it can cost us thousands every year.
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