A study recently released by Zillow, an online real estate database, and The Knot, a wedding-planning website, suggests that the expenses associated with attending bachelor and bachelorette parties are preventing millennial males and females from being able to afford home mortgages.
On average, millennials — the cohort of young people born in the last 20 years or so of the 20th century, if you are not up on your demographic jargon — can spend up to 35 percent of the down payment on a median-priced home if they attend several bachelor or bachelorette parties within a period of a few years.
The issue, according to the study’s conclusions, is that future newlyweds and their friends don’t want to celebrate symbolic “last nights of freedom” locally. The best men and maids of honor who typically organize the parties often decide to schedule weekend-long bashes in far-flung locales such as Las Vegas and New Orleans.
The costs of travel and lodging associated with the trips can be steep. And then there’s the boozing and “other things,” as Zillow so tactfully describes.
Such trips cost a little more than $1,532 on average for bachelor party attendees, the study says.
Thus, a man who attends nine such destination trips over a few years of friends’ marriages would spend $13,788.
Bachelorette party attendees manage to drop somewhat less cash on weekend-long revelry. The average destination bachelorette party costs $1,106.
Thus, a woman who attends nine such destination trips over a few years of seeing their friends off to domestic life would spend $9,954.
A married couple who attends nine bachelor and bachelorette parties separately over the course of a few years would spend close to $24,000 collectively. (RELATED: Their Unrealistic Expectations Crushed At Last, Wealthy Millennials Now Shop At Dollar Stores)
Obviously, Zillow notes, expenditures on bachelor and bachelorette parties subtract from the amount of cash millennials can spend on other purchases including home mortgage down payments.
“In some metro areas, like Cleveland and Pittsburgh, millennials can spend up to half (51 and 50 percent, respectively) of their future home’s down payment on bachelor parties and well over a third of a down payment on bachelorette parties,” Zillow says.
The Zillow study does not factor in the costs of attending weddings or buying wedding gifts.
Wedding guests who are not involved in the wedding itself spend an average of $888 per wedding, the study asserts. Bridesmaids and groomsmen spend even more.
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