191–200 of 351 posts
I grew up in a poor family, could never afford anything unless miracles happened, never went on any trips etc. I later scaled all the way up to much more than I needed as a software developer and lately I'm pretty much down to nothing. The main thing I learned over 42 years of going back and forth is that a warm place to sleep, good health, good food (and coffee) and nice, caring people are priceless. Money is the ul…
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…
There was an illustrative article on this topic a few years ago [1]: "It’s not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn’t that I blow five bucks at Wendy’s. It’s that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be. It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purcha…
As ineedausername said. It isn't meant literally, its about a mindset.
Its about pointing out that mindlessly spending $5 everyday adds up to $xxx,xxx. If its still worth it for you then great, but make that decision consciously.
I'm not even sure the advice is aimed at poor people, rather middle income people that spend their entire wage (plus) each month.
The article seems a bit all over the place WRT inflation. If you're inflation adjusting, then you're not socking $100 a month away, because towards the end of that 40 years coffee will cost way more than that. As others have said though, it's not really about the $5 coffee. It's about whether you save or not. If you have $50K a year after expenses, then yeah, a $5 coffee probably is irrelevant. If you have $5K or $10…
$5 coffee for 300 days is $1500/y, which, IMO, is not insignificant even compared to $50K
But if there are things aside from investments that you do want to spend your money on while you have such a significant (compared to the rest of the world) amount of disposable income, why deprive yourself just so you can retire with 25% more money? Your life would not be much different retiring with $2mm vs. $2.5mm, or really any two numbers over $1mm or so.
The budgeting habit stayed with me. I do like to buy my coffee out regularly enough but I'm conscious of what I spend.
It's not always about fighting financial difficulties though. I know some very well-off people who wouldn't spend on anything other than instant coffee at home. Choose your vice/luxury, basically.
To give this conversation a more concrete example, here is (linked below) a calculation of saving $5 a day over 40 years, in real (inflation adjusted) dollars, assuming returns on invested assets are 7% per year. This is a realistic number based on >100 years of U.S. real (inflation adjusted) stock performance. You end up with $377k after 40 years. In my opinion, a lot of Americans and people around the first world l…
To give this conversation a more concrete example, here is (linked below) a calculation of saving $5 a day over 40 years, in real (inflation adjusted) dollars, assuming returns on invested assets are 7% per year. This is a realistic number based on >100 years of U.S. real (inflation adjusted) stock performance. You end up with $377k after 40 years. In my opinion, a lot of Americans and people around the first world l…
> However, many poorer folks need to learn self-control and the power of saving. Counterpoint: the many ways that our economic system can wipe out whatever savings you might have (medical costs, unemployment, legal costs that fall heaviest upon the poor) make spending money on pure luxury - or even the lottery for that matter - a perfectly rational action. If you don't believe your savings will be there tomorrow, why…
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what would it take to make that happen? what would it take to make this happen? it's funny people are happy to let creditors tax everyone at 20% (like a shitty credit card with a 2k limit is what's used to buy lattes), but bring up generating real wealth for a huge percentage of the population that has nothing, and oh noes this is against everything we stand for. this is why we can't have nice things. minimum income,…
> What would it take to make that happen? Dismantling the capitalist system and giving workers control of the means of production? Or at least taxing capital at the same rate as income? I'm not entirely sure in which direction your sarcasm is running, but if that's what you're proposing, count me in. Edit: nevermind, your edit makes it clear that we disagree here.
I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but what empirical evidence have we ever had that shows "you'd have millions in the bank AND you'd have a latte every day" is the result of dismantling capitalism?
I grew up in a poor family, could never afford anything unless miracles happened, never went on any trips etc. I later scaled all the way up to much more than I needed as a software developer and lately I'm pretty much down to nothing. The main thing I learned over 42 years of going back and forth is that a warm place to sleep, good health, good food (and coffee) and nice, caring people are priceless. Money is the ul…
Surely it depends on motivation?
I wouldn't say money has power over me, but I want to be a responsible member of society, pay my own way etc, so I make sure I have money to buy coffee now and in the future. Whereas if you're buying overprice coffee with money you don't have, just to impress your mates, that think you're rich and successful, and you want to impress them...
Further, if you're spending $5 you don't have (assuming it isn't stolen), its borrowed, which means someone else has power over you.
I grew up in a poor family, could never afford anything unless miracles happened, never went on any trips etc. I later scaled all the way up to much more than I needed as a software developer and lately I'm pretty much down to nothing. The main thing I learned over 42 years of going back and forth is that a warm place to sleep, good health, good food (and coffee) and nice, caring people are priceless. Money is the ul…
what
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are 20 years old and you start putting away $5/day and have 500k in the bank at 60. Who can argue with that. In fact they should pass a law to make this mandatory on everyone. It would greatly improve the lives of literally everyone.
What do you think Social Security is?