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Buy Yourself a Latte

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Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#171

Post by paulcole »

falcolas wrote: post #43
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #27

Counterpoint: 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. ;)

If you make your coffee at work you save money and waste your employer's time, not yours. Win win.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#172

Post by spenczar5 »

puranjay wrote: post #155
twblalock wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to focus on the big wins. Save $1000 next time your buy a car and that covers almost a year of $5 lattes every weekday morning. If you overpay on your next car, or negotiate badly on your next job offer, the money you saved by not buying lattes was all for nothing. In other words, major financial decisions vastly outweigh the impact of a daily $5 purchase, so why focus on the small stuff? Yet much financ…

Why not do both? Save $1000 in coffee and another $2000 in car purchases. It's not like having an expensive cup of coffee has been an intrinsic part of human life forever. It's not even a 50 year old phenomenon. There are certain things you should treat yourself on, but a cup of coffee is too insignificant a hill to die on. Especially since I'm not sure how many people buy lattes everyday because they truly love latt…

You are getting caught in the specific, and losing perspective on the argument. It's not that coffee is specifically valuable. It's that large fixed costs are more important than small, frequent discretionary spending.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#173

Post by asdff »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #27

Counterpoint: 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…

And you can cut the fat out of your caffeine consumption too, both in time and money. I take caffeine pills now over coffee (mostly to combat coffee breath and the guaranteed poop 20 minutes after drinking). 200mg, equal to a grande I figure, 5 cents a pill, and maybe 20 seconds to plop one into my hand then my mouth.

The speed and price is a boon for me, but also how compact the dose becomes. I can take it anywhere whenever I need it with just my palm; no need to plan for a coffee break. If coworkers are going out after work, I'll take one at 5, then stick a couple in my back pocket to keep the night fueled 4 hours at a time. When I wake up early for a morning run, I'll take one and hit snooze and fall back asleep, then by the time the alarm finishes snoozing I awake already caffeinated and eager to run at the crack of dawn. In college I would take one in the middle of lecture if I started to nod off. Really changed my life.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#174

Post by knicholes »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #112
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…

that $5 a day adds up The article isn't advocating that you buy a coffee every single day. It's saying a. focus on larger issues and b. it's okay to do a little self care and a little self indulgence. I sometimes bought myself a fucking coffee of some sort at Starbuck's back when I was homeless. I needed the caffeine to help treat health issues. It let me plug in for an hour and get some electricity for my tablet, pl…

Which health issue does coffee treat?

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#176

Post by asdff »

nytesky wrote: post #9
ChrisRR wrote: post #3

I think this article misses the point. The daily coffee isn't the only problem with people's spending, but is representative of all the small daily spends that add up without people realising. It's the petrol in your car when you could've walked, it's the extra bar of chocolate that you add to your lunch, it's the daily newspaper you buy. Everything adds up very quickly and the coffee is just one example

That’s the authors point. Unless you are an extreme outlier and buying a LOT of small purchase (like to the point you don’t have time to work), they really are meaningless. The big fixed items in your budget really drive everything, housing, medical, education, which have all far outstripped inflation. And the income has remained flat for most people (save tech workers who get great coffee for free).

Most people can't do nearly so much about the big fixed costs vs. small daily indulgences.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#177

Post by DoreenMichele »

knicholes wrote: post #174
DoreenMichele wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that $5 a day adds up The article isn't advocating that you buy a coffee every single day. It's saying a. focus on larger issues and b. it's okay to do a little self care and a little self indulgence. I sometimes bought myself a fucking coffee of some sort at Starbuck's back when I was homeless. I needed the caffeine to help treat health issues. It let me plug in for an hour and get some electricity for my tablet, pl…

Which health issue does coffee treat?

Coffee (caffeine) is a stimulant. It's helpful for a lot of things that are routinely treated with stimulants.

In my case, that generally means respiratory issues and allergies.

People who drink a lot of coffee are probably self-medicating for something or other, possibly without realizing it. My coffee consumption always goes up when I'm exposed to more allergens. When it goes down, it's because I'm feeling better, not because I have self discipline.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#179

Post by jfengel »

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…

That's why the quote is there up front: "If spending $5 a day on fancy coffee puts your retirement at risk, you’ve got bigger problems." If you don't have a safety net, then indeed that $5 adds up. But if that $5 is critical to your safety net, then you're still not saving for retirement; you're saving up for the inevitable crises.

This was originally in Bloomberg, and what's really going on there is an implicit critique of everything Bloomberg stands for. Bloomberg's target market does not include that significant minority for whom $5 a day is a big deal. Bloomberg tends to advocate policies that make life easier for its target market, and if it acknowledges that significant minority at all, it's with a tacit assumption that those policies will somehow trickle down money on them.

The lesson is really "You have plenty of money. Spend it, and while you're at it, think about what we can do for those for whom $5 a day is a big deal." He's challenging the assumption that everybody is so poor that we need to scrimp every dollar and maximize our retirement funds. Maybe we should be more generous, starting with ourselves, including enjoying a latte now rather than decades from now.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#180

Post by jshaqaw »

hannasanarion wrote: post #87
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…

None of those things get you even close to $50/day. The "meal box kit"s are hundreds of dollars a month, yeah, but they also come with hundreds of dollars worth of food. Blue Apron comes out to about $10 per meal and they're considered the expensive choice. 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 2…

I don’t think you live in NYC hannasarion. A cab here and there instead of the subway etc...

Also, the numbers jump by multiples if you have kids and include them in the little luxury buys. Again, my point isn’t to deprive yourself unnecessarily of joy. It’s just to be conscious of purchases which do add up and yet don’t actually make you much happier.

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