Is DoorDash draining your bank account? How to plug the leak

Don’t try to change your habits through brute force or sudden self-control

I recently talked with someone who’d unwittingly spent through thousands of dollars in savings by ordering around $1,000 per month in DoorDash food deliveries. I can’t stop thinking about this financial minefield that didn’t even exist when I was starting out as an adult.¹

This person is in their early 20s and recently moved out on their own for the first time. They’ve been working since high school and had saved several thousand dollars, and they were finally ready to take the leap into their own apartment with a solid financial cushion. But that cushion was deceiving. Intimidated by a new city and seeking comfort in convenience, they ordered through DoorDash most days for months and avoided looking at their bank account balance.

This isn’t unique. In 2024, almost 75% of restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant, the New York Times reported earlier this year. When the Times polled its readers about delivery apps, they said, “They prized the extra time and freedom it gives them, but expressed misgivings about … their own wallets at a time when affordable living feels increasingly out of reach.”

And the trend has a greater hold on young people, who are apparently vulnerable to nihilism about the state of the world and to doomspending to numb it. A 2024 Credit Karma survey said 37% of Gen Z and 39% of millennials doomspend to deal with stress.

The person I talked to was no exception.

When they finally peeked at their bank account, the balance was less than $100.

With rent due every month and just enough money in their paychecks to cover it, they suddenly have to manage money in a way they’ve never had to worry about before.

Here’s the advice I offered to help them keep paying the bills without turning to total self-deprivation.

1. Delete the app

I’m always here to defend your right to spend money however you want. I won’t stand for a culture that shames you for feeding yourself through DoorDash. I’ll even say you can choose to order DoorDash instead of paying your rent.

But if you do want to pay rent and you’re in financial triage, make the highest-impact moves first to give yourself breathing room. If you want to spend less on DoorDash, but you’ve always chosen the app when given the option, eliminate the option.

Don’t try to change your habits through brute force or sudden self-control.

This isn’t about cold-turkey restriction. It’s about helping you make a difficult change you want to make. Eliminate the convenience of having an app on your phone connected to your credit card, and you eliminate a lot of the appeal of ordering food.

2. Look at your money

Delivery and online shopping apps sneakily eat away at your money because they make it easy to forget you’re spending at all.

To combat this risk, you have to look at your money. This basic step is one of the hardest for a lot of people, because knowing your balance can precipitate all kinds of feelings and obligations you might not want to deal with. But I promise you, having this information is better than not.

In my experience and for many folks I’ve talked with, checking in on your finances is usually a relief. The situation is usually not as dire as you’re afraid it’ll be, and once you know your reality, you can take steps forward instead of being paralyzed by fear and ignorance.

There are lots of ways to keep tabs on your money without a strict budget. Try a few of these and keep what works for you:

• Set a daily reminder to check your bank account balance online or in an app.

• Opt into transaction notifications from your bank and credit cards.

• Use an intelligent money management app like Charlie or Cleo to send you notifications about your account balance and spending based on your goals.

• Opt into a daily balance update from your banking app.

• Maintain a manual money map to balance your spending, commitments and goals.

3. Name what you need

For most people, breaking a habit requires more than just stopping cold turkey. Lifting that habit out of your life leaves a hole it used to fill. If you leave the hole empty, you’ll be tempted to reach for the habit again soon (or something equally or more detrimental).

What need has food delivery been fulfilling?

It’s unreasonable to expect yourself to delete the DoorDash app and immediately become a prolific home chef. Don’t think you’ll suddenly find the motivation to gather fruits and vegetables from the grocery store and make fresh meals every day. It’s fine if that’s a goal you want to work toward; for many people, it’s not. The person who inspired this post told me they ordered through DoorDash because they got home from working in food service all day, hungry and tired, and didn’t feel like leaving the house to get groceries or take time to cook food. DoorDash, they said, was “convenient.”

Admonishing them to learn how to cook or start enjoying raw carrots would completely ignore the reason they were ordering food delivery in the first place.

So how do you change your spending habits and address the needs they fulfill?

💡 My friends Jen and Jill share great exercises for answering this question in their book Buy What You Love Without Going Broke.

To fulfill this person’s need for convenience, I suggested they try:

• Building a grocery store stop into their walk home from work (it’s on their route), so they don’t have to motivate themselves to go out again.

• Buying frozen meals at the store so they can eat at home anytime without effort.

• Taking advantage of free food they get from work to enjoy the variety and decadence of restaurant fare.

• Occasionally picking up food from other restaurants on their walk home from work to avoid the higher prices and added fees from the app.

It’s really easy to look at one habit you want to eliminate and turn it into an appraisal of every way you don’t measure up to societal expectations. When budget culture admonishes you to spend less money eating out or ordering in, diet culture isn’t far behind to judge the food you’re eating. But your eating habits aren’t a problem — and fruits and vegetables aren’t the answer you need. You have a financial challenge to address. Focus your effort there, and eat what you want.

4. Get help managing your money

When everything that gives you joy and comfort in life costs money, it’s stressful to keep tabs and make sure there’s enough in the bank account when bills come due. Good money management, to me, is eliminating this chore as much as you can.

I like banking apps with built-in “envelope budgeting”² that lets you automatically set aside money for bills and spend freely from a safe-to-spend bucket (your yes fund). The market for financial apps changes frequently, but here are some options to look into right now:

• Envelope, a banking app with envelopes built in.

• Qube Money, a money management app that links to your bank account and organizes your money into “qubes.”

• YNAB — use the app, but skip the cult of discipline.

5. Earn more money

This is classic personal finance advice, but I know it’s not feasible for everyone for any of a bajillion reasons. If earning more money isn’t feasible for you, skip this one. I’m including it because it’s a good fit for the person who inspired this post and because it was the best tool at my disposal when I was their age.

If you’re young, healthy, able-bodied, single, child-free and living in a city, your potential for earning more money might be way higher than your ability to cut your spending. You might not be able to find reasonably priced housing or reduce the cost of groceries or gas. But you can ask for more hours at work, take on a second job, do odd jobs, take up gig work or start freelancing.

6. Recognize your resources

Beyond what you can earn working, there might be resources all around you that you’re not taking advantage of. Especially when you’re just getting started as an adult, you might not know everything that’s available — and we’re not great as a culture at making you aware of them.

Depending on your state, you could have access to:

• Health insurance subsidies through HealthCare.gov.

• Your state’s Medicaid program for free health insurance.

• Your state’s SNAP program to get a debit card to help pay for groceries.

• CHIP (health insurance) and WIC (food stipend) if you have young children.

Being broke in your 20s might feel like a rite of passage, but you don’t have to struggle alone. These programs offer the kind of breathing room that can make a huge difference at that stage in your life. And I know someone will want to point out that our governments are systematically gutting these programs, and that’s true — but we have them for now, and the more people who use them, the harder they are to eliminate. So please take full advantage!

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Buy it for yourself or gift a subscription to a friend who’s new to adulting!

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1. My financial minefield was drinks at the bar. But with $2 specials available any night of the week, I wouldn't have been able to get close to this kind of spending on that vice.

2. These apps often encourage you to set up "envelopes" for categories like eating out or shopping, but you don't have to budget with that kind of restriction. Use envelopes to cover your big rocks (rent, bills), and let the rest ride in your yes fund.