Buy Yourself a Latte

Agree. It's just basic micro vs macro. If you've played any video game competitively you would know the difference.

I think the point of the Latte factor, isn't that you shouldn't buy expensive coffee drink. The bigger problem is mindless spending racks up the expense column without adding much value.

Once you get into the habit of getting a coffee from an artisan coffee shop everyday, the value of that great cup of coffee diminishes, and you start to spend money out of habit, not because it adds any more joy, pleasure, or value to you. This is the same as eating out everyday for lunch.

And if mindless consumption seeps into every other aspect of your life, then that's going to cost you dearly.

Most poor people are poor because they have special needs and/or are responsible for others with such. They can't reliably work a full time job or doing so comes at a real cost and they are constantly working at just being able to show up at all.

From what I have read, most rich people are business people. They got there by growing a thing of value. They own the local gas station or, these days, they got into YC and got VC money plus assistance figuring out how to grow a business. There is also the standard trope of "He got rich the old fashioned way: He inherited it."

As a teen, I expected to be part of a two-career couple. I didn't know I had an undiagnosed genetic disorder. I didn't expect to have two special-needs children. I didn't expect my husband's career to be antithetical to me developing a career of my own.

An awful lot of things have to go right for two people to both work consistently for decades while living below their means, including marrying someone who is on the same page with you in that regard. My ex and I not being on the same page about money was a major bone of contention in the marriage.

Money is usually one of the top two issues in bad marriages. Then divorce tends to do an excellent job of seriously damaging one's finances, even if they were in good shape beforehand.

I have two adult sons that still live with me. I keep saying "If we each earned X amount per month, our financial problems would be solved! We could sock away money like crazy, buy a house, etc!"

So far, we haven't figured out how to get all three of us working full time and hitting X amount per month.

Not everyone is able bodied. Not everyone has marketable skills. Sexism, racism and so forth are alive and well and have very real impacts on the lives of a lot of poor people. Etc.

It's really rather insulting to probably most of the world to act like all you have to do is marry the right person and both of you have long and successful careers and both of you be on the same page about money and live below your means. It's not that hard!

While the divorce rate in the US hovers around 50 percent.

Historically, yes, if you got a job and kept your nose clean and yadda, your job provided you with retirement and medical coverage, etc. A lot of people these days are working for the gig economy with no benefits and making pathetic amounts of money.

I'm always interested in learning what actually works and how things actually get done. But most of the arguments here amount to victim blaming, and don't confuse me with the facts.

So it might be time for me step away from this discussion. I'm really finding the subtext of a lot of it quite infuriating.

I do too, just not as often as I used to, and I think about other places now too.

I don't want to live anywhere other than London.