Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Buy Yourself a Latte
81–90 of 351 posts
Re: Buy Yourself a Latte
#82If 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…
Even though my wife and I do quite well financially (and save plenty for ourselves, our kids college, etc), I noticed we were spending "too much" on espressos and lattes. Not too much for our financial situation, but too much for my comfort level at least. So, we bought a $600 espresso machine, which basically paid for itself in less than a year. Not to mention the time savings from going to get coffee.
I was fully offering to make my wife's Latte every morning, although no pressure if she still preferred to pick one up. I figured if I stopped buying them it would still be decent savings. She wasn't all that keen on me making them for her... at least at first.
The most surprising part though is that the lattes are actually better. I started out just trying to save a bit of money and naively assumed that somebody making hundreds of lattes per day would be far better at it than me, and maybe they can be, but perhaps due to the speed demand they cut corners. The consistency is off too, sometimes when I buy a latte it's very good and other times it's not. At home, I can (now) make it perfect every single time and it only takes 5 minutes including cleanup.
Of course, I've discovered some other great things along the way like "steamed in" cinnamon and/or tumeric or adding baileys to lattes on the weekend or eggnog to lattes during the holidays.
There is a bit of a ritual/experience to picking up coffee, and you lose that, but you gain a whole new ritual of making your perfect coffee for yourself... and even if you still pickup once in a while, you're still saving in the long run.
Re: Buy Yourself a Latte
#83Counterpoint: The debate is framed as "$5 a day is a waste--put it into your piggy bank every day and drink office sludge instead". I instead say that yes, the office coffee still tastes like fertilizer, but I still think $5 a day for a latte is waste because I can make some excellent coffee at my desk for about a dollar a day using an inexpensive French Press, a hand-grinder (or grinding the beans that morning at ho…
You're exchanging time for money. It's a highly common tradeoff. Prep, brewing, and cleanup amounts can work up to around $3-4 of opportunity cost for a tech professional. Not to mention, french press coffee is not quite equivalent to a latte. Also, I recommend 5 minutes steeping, personally. ;)
Not that I think it has anything to do with the point of the article.
Re: Buy Yourself a Latte
#84Just 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 3…
Re: Buy Yourself a Latte
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Prep, brewing, and cleanup amounts can work up to around $3-4 of opportunity cost for a tech professional. I disagree. The average tech professional is salaried, not billing hourly. It takes about the same amount of time to fill and plug in the percolator or operate a kurig as it does to stand in line and get coffee made for you. Likewise the opportunity cost is nearly $0 There is no economic rationalization for the…
Salaried vs hourly doesn't matter that much when looking at opportunity costs. Most salaried folks stick to a fixed set of working hours. > It is a pure luxury expense. Practically speaking, purchasing coffee at all is a luxury line item. There's no actual need for it for anything other than the caffeine hit and flavor. At least with a Latte, there's the protein, calcium and calories from the milk.
True, but that's a very deep rabbit hole. We could sit here all day debating what's luxury and what's not.
My counterargument would be that if with automation the way it is, if a regular person can't afford a self-made cup of coffee (or an equivalently cheap luxury) for the flavor alone, then what's the point? Should we all be eating vegan bean paste and popping B12 supplements and caffeine pills instead of consuming nutrients through regular food?
Is that the endgame for peak civilization?
Re: Buy Yourself a Latte
#86If 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…
Re: Buy Yourself a Latte
#87Earlier 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…
TV packages get you up to $60 per month, or $2 per day. Wow, so wasteful, almost the price of a one-way commute and all you get in return is broad and unlimited 24/7 entertainment.
So we're up to $20 per day: $8 for food delivered to your house (which shouldn't even count because you need to eat anyway), $10 for two nice coffees, and $2 for television. Tell me about all the other outrageous luxury spending that gets us up to $50 per day.
$50/day is $1500/month. nobody spends that much on little luxuries. 46% of Americans can't afford to spend that much on rent.
Re: Buy Yourself a Latte
#88Substitute the "latte" for any consumable which costs $3-10 a day. These costs really do add up.
I still hit up Starbucks or my local coffee shop about once a week for the experience, since I work from home it's nice to get out.
My coffee from how on my $99 Delongi espresso machine tastes as good as the machines at the shop.
Re: Buy Yourself a Latte
#89That article is nothing more than a spineless Straw Man fallacy.