Inflation adjusted housing costs have not risen much over time [1].
If you don't account that housing now is vastly bigger than before you lose this fact.
Here's [2, Figure 5] a shorter timespan, showing that the ratio of income to housing payment has remained essentially flat 1985-2005.
Nothing in any of this data supports skyrocketing costs. If you're going to claim it's skyrocketed in small pockets, then yes, it has, but over that same window it's crashed in some pockets.
[1] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/pdf/Trends_hsg_c...
[2] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/pdf/Trends_hsg_c...
Here is inflation adjusted housing price per square foot over time [2]. It is not much different for anytime in the past 100ish years as far as I can find from various datasets.
[1] http://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes-...
[2] http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...
We recently started using one of those ingredient/recipe delivery services and it has drastically reduced the stress. The meals are quite good and my kitchen skills are improving quite a bit. The downside is the cost is greater than shopping for your own meals.
Portions in restaurants are way too big. After a while this totally skews your perception of appropriate amounts of food.
Pay-by-the-weight buffets (as opposed to all-you-can-eat) seem to offer me the best way to control portions and get a variety of healthy things to eat without the prep hassle, but it still costs a good deal more than it does for me to make my own meals.
"Government data shows that in 2017 American spent more than $3,300 a year on dining out"
Can spending 3300$ yearly result in being broke?
Being broke requires spending the other 75-80% of discretionary income too, and that is a much larger pool of money.
With Americans marrying later and often times dual income even then this has left most individuals doing 1.5 jobs (house work and their actual job)
Additionally the time required to access to the basics has also gone up. Super markets are more crowded. Traffic is much worse.
This has left Americans with a drastic reduction in time and created large amounts of time pressure stress.
The major advantage of eating out is a massive reduction in stress related to food prep, particularly around time savings and mental energy expenditure.
Now eating out is not on average healthy, but not all meals that are prepared at home are either. When faced with equivalently unhealthy meals, dining out has the advantage of automatic portion control.
The REAL reason American's are broke is cost of living. Rent and housing costs have skyrocketed and wages have stagnated.
Coupled with a reduction in time and increased time-stress taking care of every day chores, health goes out the window.
In short, there is a direct correlation between health and wealth. Specifically, if one partner earns enough to support a relatively unstressed house mom/dad, the family unit is healthy.
Otherwise if an individual earns a large sum of money with sufficient few hours, they have compound time benefits in other aspects of their lives allow for health considerations.