Inflation’s still sticky. Most consumers live paycheck to paycheck.
And yet, despite the pressures of daily life — meeting the essentials while eyeing what’s left over to pay for a myriad of other choices, including how we get those essentials — convenience services, which bring goods to the doorstop, still have a share of the proverbial wallet.
In a recent Paycheck-to-Paycheck report, titled “The Price of Time: When Consumers Opt for Convenience,” a few trends stand out. As has been seen in our continued tracking of spending vs. income, the majority of us — 67% in the most recent reading — live paycheck to paycheck at the beginning of 2025. That’s up from 65% in just the month prior.
The continued impact of inflation, where prices are still climbing for groceries and clothing (and for shelter too), is keenly felt by lower-income consumers, who earn less than $50,000 annually — 74% of households at or below that threshold live paycheck to paycheck.
And yet the data show that about 59% of consumers in those income brackets use convenience services — getting groceries delivered, for example, or restaurant deliveries. About a third of them opt to have home maintenance services or repair work done by providers rather than going the do-it-yourself route.
Overall, 67% of the more than 2,870 consumers surveyed said they’d used at least one convenience service in the past 12 months, a percentage that surges to 75.3% for households earning more than $100,000 annually. Younger consumers — most attuned to using apps to get what they want — are the highest “users” of convenience services, at more than 85%, but baby boomers, at the other edge of the age spectrum, are also using them, at 49.5% of those older consumers.
As to the categories with the most appeal: The data show grocery and restaurant delivery are the most popular convenience services, each with 55% adoption overall across the general population. Consumers living paycheck to paycheck without issues paying their bills are the most likely to have used grocery delivery or pickup at least once in the last year, at 59%. Half of consumers not living paycheck to paycheck likely used grocery delivery.
There’s some variance in how much consumers spend — while most of us use the services, there’s a divide in spending levels. Consumers not living paycheck to paycheck spend an average of $237 per month on these services, compared to paycheck-to-paycheck consumers with issues paying bills, who spend $171 monthly on such services.
But there are tradeoffs in the data, as spending, on, say, grocery delivery means there’s less to spend around the house, so to speak. PYMNTS Intelligence found that having disposable income makes the difference in additional convenience service use. Consumers not living paycheck to paycheck are the most likely to have used home maintenance services, at 34%; lawn care services, at 32%; and house cleaning services, at 28%. In contrast, paycheck-to-paycheck consumers with issues paying their bills represent lower adoption — 25% for home maintenance, 18% for lawn care and 14% for house cleaning.
None of this is to say individuals and households are not making concessions where they have to. Among paycheck-to-paycheck consumers with issues paying bills — which encompasses 23% of the population — 80% cite financial pressure as their reason for cutting back. Among those not living paycheck to paycheck, 40% cite the same reason.
There’s some price elasticity at work: The cheaper the services are, the more likely they are to be used. PYMNTS Intelligence found that 51% of consumers cite lower prices as an important factor governing whether they use convenience services, with 36% ranking it as their most important reason for using the services.
