As many as two-thirds of all Dutch millennials are spending less money on Christmas dinner and gifts this year. This is according to international research carried out by the Dutch fintech company bunq among nine hundred millennials and Gen-Z’ers, three hundred of whom are from the Netherlands.
People are also cutting back on the number of guests this holiday season. For example, two in five millennials are planning to invite fewer people over for Christmas dinner this year. In total, 89 percent of all respondents are not willing to spend more than two hundred euros on the Christmas holidays. Nearly two-thirds of all respondents also mention that they would like to send their dinner guests a payment request for the cost of hosting dinner. Interestingly, 75 percent of Dutch Gen-Z’ers and millennials are prepared to oblige.
With these tips from the editorial staff of Innovation Origins, you can still have a great time!
1. Gift tip: a voucher for the repair shop
Those who are worried there won’t be a present under the Christmas tree because of their tiny budgets have nothing to fear. Millennials and Gen-Z’ers have no intention of celebrating Christmas any less lavishly. In fact, 45 percent of these generations intend to make their own gifts or shop for second-hand ones, according to research conducted by Bunq. This is also a more sustainable option than buying new items. However, things can be done even more sustainably. We tend to throw stuff away en masse, but we can also have it repaired. Instead of a piece of new equipment, give someone a repair voucher as a gift instead.
With the help of the online platform Jafix.com, it is becoming very easy to fix broken things. The company helps users by creating and sharing repair manuals. It also links customers to professional and skilled amateur repairers. “How often does it happen that something breaks down and the repair costs are actually too high, but the repair does make sense?” asks founder Sieds Wijnja. “In fact, in some cases the repair amounts to nothing more than a thorough cleaning.”
2. Dinner tip: online drinks in the metaverse
Because of high rents, millennials and Gen-Z’ers naturally do not have much room for a lot of visitors. A large dining room is beginning to resemble more of a utopia than a real dream of the future for this generation. Fortunately, Christmas dinner can also be done just as nicely online. According to futurologists, we will soon spend even more time in the digital world than in physical reality. Our offline and online lives are already merging seamlessly.
The metaverse will speed up this merging of our digital and physical worlds. The technology offers a solution for a digital Christmas drink or dinner. This will enable you to still be together remotely during the holiday season. That’s quite different from staring at the face of your drunk uncle during a Zoom gathering. And that is how a white Christmas can come a wee bit closer.
Christmas dinner is, of course, also the perfect opportunity to go all out and put on your best clothes. If you think that a Christmas dinner in the metaverse will do away with all that, you are sorely mistaken. You can also look fab and festive online. Not in sweatpants, but in a real designer outfit. Start-up The Fabricant is a fashion company that offers a unique clothing line. They do not produce anything physical and have no intention of ever doing that. All clothing is designed digitally. By real fashion designers, with a passion for technology. Just take your cocktail dress out of the digital closet.
3. Outfit tip: quickly swap a nice Christmas dress with someone else
And for those who still prefer to celebrate Christmas in person, but do not want to turn up in the same outfit as previous years, there is also a handy solution. A peer-to-peer marketplace where people can swap clothes or other items. It is an initiative run by start-up Swap-Studio. On the platform, people can upload their items so that someone else can reuse them. Businesses can also offer their unsold items here.
The platform assesses the environmental impact of each transaction and links a token to it. Clothing brands can use this to map out the environmental impact of their second-hand marketplace. “We know that our target group is eager to do good and to live more consciously. They support the initiative and the platform. We also want to try to narrow the gap between rich and poor with swap-studio. Everyone deserves to have beautiful things, regardless of how much is in your wallet.”
4. Payment tip: Split the bill, it is the future
We wouldn’t be true Dutch people if everyone didn’t pay for their own snacks and drinks. Going Dutch is not a global concept for nothing. It can also be a great solution for Christmas dinner if one has to watch their pennies. After all, sending a tikkie is a piece of cake these days. Splitting the bill is also popular among millennials and Gen-Z’ers. This will become even easier in the future.
For one thing, you can have a chip placed under your skin that allows you to easily pay from a distance. Perhaps this is the unique gift that you’ve been looking for so long to give to your hostess and/or host. British start-up Walletmor is offering this payment implant. CEO Wojtek Paprota: “For a fee of €350, you get a complete treatment that involves the chip implant, activation and implantation. The chip is about half a millimeter thick and, including the flexible bio-casing, is about the size of a paper clip.
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