'$200 a date': High prices are keeping New York's Gen Z from falling in love

What if a single first date cost you nearly $212?

In New York, that is increasingly the reality. A first date in the city now runs an average of $200, and when dating app subscriptions and new outfits are factored in alongside dinner, drinks and a movie, more and more members of Generation Z are putting romance on hold.

According to The New York Times, young Americans are dating noticeably less amid high inflation and a tough job market. In New York — one of the most expensive cities in the world — the idea that love requires money has become less a cliché than a lived reality.

A survey by BMO Financial Group found that a single date costs the average American Gen Z member more than $200, including transportation and preparation expenses. In New York, a dinner for two routinely runs $130, a cocktail costs around $20, and a movie ticket can reach $28. A night out covering just dinner, drinks and a film can quickly run to several hundred dollars.

In practice, financial pressure ranks as the single biggest obstacle to dating among young Americans.

A nationwide survey conducted jointly by the Wheatley Institution and the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University found that more than half of unmarried adults between the ages of 22 and 35 identified financial hardship as their greatest barrier to dating. The issue, researchers said, is not a lack of desire — it is a lack of breathing room.

The cost of dating does not end with the restaurant bill.

Brian J. Willoughby, a professor at Brigham Young University, said young people today must pay dating app subscription fees just to find a potential partner, on top of spending on going-out clothes and grooming. "There are significant costs before a date even begins," he said.

Online, debates over what counts as an acceptable date have grown heated. On TikTok, arguments over whether a coffee date signals insufficient effort have gone viral, and one Instagram influencer drew wide attention by claiming that anyone with a net worth below $100,000 should not be dating at all.

New York does offer free museums, parks and relatively affordable public transit — but expectations shaped by social media set the bar far higher. Young people interviewed said they feel pressure to book expensive restaurants or arrange special experiences.

Grace Sakelariou, 27, who lives in Queens, said she wants to get married and have children but that the future feels impossibly distant. "Even affording a wedding feels out of reach," she said. She added that more men have recently started asking to split the bill even on second and third dates.

High prices have also produced a paradox: the longer young people delay relationships, the heavier their cost of living becomes. It is what some are calling a "singles tax."

According to real estate data firm StreetEasy, sharing an apartment in Manhattan with a partner rather than renting alone can save more than $25,000 a year in rent. Splitting monthly rent also makes it far easier to pay down student loans or save for a home.

Yet the very cost of starting a relationship has become so prohibitive that many give up on dating altogether — and find themselves trapped in a cycle of high solo living expenses with no way out.

Benjamin Goldman, a labor and public economics researcher at Cornell University, said the decline in dating and marriage could deepen the financial anxiety already gripping young people in New York and other major cities. "This is a problem that has not received nearly enough attention," he said.

Cost, of course, is not the only factor. The COVID-19 pandemic severed social ties that would normally have formed during college years, and dating app fatigue and social isolation are also widely cited as forces working against romance among the young.