Buy Yourself a Latte • Hacker News Board

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#71

Post by threwawasy1228 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #64

hannasanarion wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who in the world buys ten fancy coffees or equivalent every day?

Plenty of people by 2, or 3. Then think of streaming services and other subscription services, gold-plated cable TV packages, etc. That meal box kit that costs you $240/month. It's pretty easy to get non-essential luxury spending up in to a few hundreds of dollars a month. Not to say you ditch it all, but judicious pruning of it down to the essentials/most used/biggest time savers etc isn't impractical. Obviously if…

At the same time, I feel like we are talking in a bubble here about a lot of unreal examples. When people make these coffee arguments it is often to people like several of my friends who are making a low income to begin with. Where are they supposed to get this 'saving 10%' when they don't actually have any luxuries beyond their 5$ of coffee a day? Where are they supposed to take that from if they are already barely making ends meet? And then older generations tell them to take their coffee away.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#72

Post by Raphmedia » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

It's not about not buying things for yourself. It's about not paying $5 for something that is the equivalent of $1 of coffee and $0.50 of milk.

You can spoil yourself and spend money on yourself but do it for things that will actually last and be of use to you. You shouldn't be buying $5 coffees twice a day if you are sleeping on an old mattress, wear old boots, etc.

Do buy yourself expensive coffees, cupcakes or quality aged beer and wine... but make it a special occasion. You will enjoy it more that way anyway.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#73

Post by compiler-guy » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

cafogleman wrote: post #61

This is closely related to the idea of being "penny wise and pound foolish." For instance, you are actively depriving yourself a $5 coffee per day (or substitute your vice of choice) but you're leasing a new car every 2 years. In this case, you are not only cutting the wrong indulgences in the name of savings, you are giving yourself a false sense of accomplishment when there are much more beneficial steps that could…

Getting your car and house right makes up for many, many latte-level mistakes. And this is what Suze Orman misses.

It's like Ahmdal's law for finance: Don't sweat the small stuff until you have optimized the big stuff, and even then, the work to fix the small stuff might not be worth it.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#74

Post by fermentation » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

Raphmedia wrote: post #72

It's not about not buying things for yourself. It's about not paying $5 for something that is the equivalent of $1 of coffee and $0.50 of milk. You can spoil yourself and spend money on yourself but do it for things that will actually last and be of use to you. You shouldn't be buying $5 coffees twice a day if you are sleeping on an old mattress, wear old boots, etc. Do buy yourself expensive coffees, cupcakes or qua…

There's other factors at play as well. If I had the coffee beans and milk, I may not necessarily be motivated to make myself a cup. I also probably wouldn't have an espresso machine or know how to make the coffee taste like I want.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#75

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #71

ineedasername wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people by 2, or 3. Then think of streaming services and other subscription services, gold-plated cable TV packages, etc. That meal box kit that costs you $240/month. It's pretty easy to get non-essential luxury spending up in to a few hundreds of dollars a month. Not to say you ditch it all, but judicious pruning of it down to the essentials/most used/biggest time savers etc isn't impractical. Obviously if…

At the same time, I feel like we are talking in a bubble here about a lot of unreal examples. When people make these coffee arguments it is often to people like several of my friends who are making a low income to begin with. Where are they supposed to get this 'saving 10%' when they don't actually have any luxuries beyond their 5$ of coffee a day? Where are they supposed to take that from if they are already barely…

Make your own coffee. Its a strawman to suggest anybody needs a $5 latte else they got nothing. Its just self-indulgence, and nobody 'needs' that. Its a first-world notion.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#76

Post by Moodles » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 5:00 PM UTC

I think the "don't buy the daily latte" advice maybe is not meant to be taken literally but is instead meant as a way to demonstrate the affect of compound interest and encourage people to start saving. We have the realize the audience is usually people who have no idea whatsoever about saving or investing. We're trying to encourage them to get in the mindset; if they cut back the latte, what else can they cut back on?

The article is a bit rant-y for my taste, but I do agree people need to consider more the big expenses: if you live in New York/San Francisco, saving just $200 on rent seems pretty negligible when rent is like 1.5k-3.5k, but it's way more of an important decision than a half price toothpaste or something. I have a friend I went on vacation with recently. She has an amazing apartment which she barely ever lives in due to being a consultant, yet she was worried about saving a few bucks on her flight. Our brains tend to focus on relative rather than absolute values.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#77

Post by deadmetheny » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

DrSayre wrote: post #35

I wonder if the author would be ok if people spend $1 on a coffee a day from McDonalds or a gas station and save the other $4? I always hate how people always jump to "but inflation..." or "12% is not realistic...". Ok, maybe 12% isn't reasonable and $1M won't be as much decades from now. But having $500k or $750k or however much you end up saving by saving a few bucks each day could still be a pretty good chunk of c…

>millennials better start thinking about how they can retire as soon as possible

Most millennials have been blackpilled to the point of just accepting that the way things are currently going means we'll never be able to afford to retire.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#78

Post by adamisom » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #65

ineedasername wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how much time you save. Standing on line and waiting for that latte would take a comparable amount of time to what it takes me to make my own cup at work.

Getting one during the work hours does seem a bit odd to me. Before work or over lunch, however, seems much more reasonable.

Ok, but even then, surely it takes about as much time?

The time component of having to go somewhere + get your order + get back is mysteriously ignored all. the. time. Not just with coffee, but with making your own food. Like, you don't want to meal prep it takes too much time--but then you probably spend more time overall getting lunch every day instead! Especially if you have the luxury 'need' for variety every. single. meal.

It drives me a little bit crazy.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#79

Post by winkelwagen » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

Just to get my 5 cents in (as an ex-barista), you can get the best (single origin) coffee's in the world for between 8-12 euro's for 250 grams.(there are more expensive Geisha coffee's, but that's really hi-end) Lets assume you use 18 grams of coffee for a cup. That yields you at least 13 cups of coffee (from the 250 grams. Raw resources would cost you between 0.62 to 0.92 euro a cup.

Manual ceramic grinder between 30 - 45 euro's Aeropress about 35 euro.

Both of them last at least 5 years.

That is quite a bit less than the 5 dollars. Yes it takes you about 5 min to brew a cup. But from having worked in a espresso bar for many years, during morning rush hour, you would be happy to get your coffee in less than that.

I think the article is interesting, because it deals with culture. First is the, go buy a cup of coffee at starbucks culture, and pay premium for the coffee. What I've noticed from working it's that people have their rituals when it comes to coffee. It's about getting fuel to get to work. It's about taking a break from the environment they were in 5 min before. It's about comfort.

That is what you get for the 5 dollars in the article. It's not only about the coffee, it's about taking a break, rewarding yourself.

If you can find a way to get the above pleasures from home-brewed coffee, or stop drinking take-out coffee. Great! But I agree that only seeing it "5 dollars not used for your retirement" is really short-sighted. There is a deeper problem if that is the difference between you able to retire when you're 65.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#80

Post by biesnecker » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #46

If part of your audience consists of people living without much a safety net, that $5 a day adds up. Also, the author's point that saving that much isn't going to be $1 million, but "only" as much as $500,000 then that point rather falls flat. Sure, inflation may decrease the utility of that amount of money, but it will also increase the cost of that latte, so you'll be saving more than just the $5 over time. Finally…

I read this very differently -- if $5/day makes up a significant portion of your safety net spending, then you have much larger problems than the $5 delta your latte is causing. It's not that $5/day doesn't matter to anyone, it's that the people for whom it matters are facing much larger systemic issues that we're ignoring while shaming people for the smallest of luxuries.

edit: missing word