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Buy Yourself a Latte

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Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#221

Post by yellow_postit »

GuB-42 wrote: post #60
nytesky wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Sure, the big fixed items drive everything, but they are the baseline. Saving on housing is hard, and saving on medical and education is more or less impossible. If you have, say, a $3000/month income, resulting in a $2000/month budget and you need $1000/month expense just to survive, that's $1000/month expendable. A $5/day latte ends up as 15% of that budget, that it is 5% of your income is irrelevant because you do…

Not sure savings on those fixed costs are as impossible as you make them out to be, rather they may take substantially more effort than the "skip a coffee" line.

Housing -- do more with less. How many people buy houses (or cars) beyond their means or bigger in size than needed?

Health -- daily movement is a life long commitment (as is finding time for sleep) and has outsized long term health benefits. No this doesn't address the "hit by a bus" scenario, but in terms of some of the most prevalent chronic health conditions it's amazing ROI.

Education -- while there is an undeniable tyranny of geographical circumstances, being able to evaluate using community colleges for prereqs, considering alternatives like trade schools, and taking into account expected lifetime earnings for career path all can play into this fixed expense.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#222

Post by _bxg1 »

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…

He's also hooking into a larger narrative battle, where lattes and avocado toasts are stand-ins for social-darwinist poverty-victim-blaming. "You're not poor because we've screwed up the economy, you're poor because of your character flaws."

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#223

Post by pdpi »

codr7 wrote: post #186

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…

> Dropping $5 you don't have on overpriced coffee is proving that it has no power over you.

Surely spending money you don't have on overpriced things you don't need is _precisely_ the sort of consumerism that proves you're fully bought into the rat race?

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#224

Post by jimbokun »

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…

"Sure, inflation may decrease the utility of that amount of money, but it will also increase the cost of that latte"

That is a very important point I missed the first time through.

The author was only looking at the decreased utility of the saved and earned dollars, but not the increasing prices of the consumed good over time.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#225

Post by ZeroFries »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #149
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…

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…

It's infuriating in the same way that "move more, eat less" is infuriating to obese people. It's infuriating because it doesn't pan out in practice for a lot of people trying. However, the advice is still sound to some degree, because it does work for the people who are actually able to follow it.

Now, to blame it on the economic system is going too far IMO. Can you point to an economic system in practice with lower poverty rates than capitalism? Also, a well balanced capitalist system doesn't "slurp" wealth away, it increases it. Someone invents an axe, gets massively rich, and wealth inequality grows a bit. However, everyone who bought that axe is now better off for it. The total amount of wealth has increased in a non-zero-sum fashion.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#226

Post by hinkley »

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. ;)

See, I think this misses the point.

Going for a coffee or going out to lunch aren't just about labor, it's about a bunch of things. It's getting out of the office, even if it's just down to a storefront on the first floor. It's five minutes when the odds of someone bugging you are much lower. It's a ritual, and maybe a little exercise. It's not about a purchase. That's just the cost of the experience, and it's worth $5 to people.

I often wonder how much the incidence of smoking was influenced by this. I worked at a place where there was a lot of pressure from the bosses for ass-in-seat time and they'd make petty little comments about people going for a walk or getting coffee or Heaven forbid, leaving at 5 pm! But we had 2 or 3 smokers and they never once complained about them going outside for a cigarette. Which took just as long as getting a coffee. And because nobody wanted to stand in a cloud of smoke it was even more effective as a break than going for coffee, where you might run into a coworker or worse, a customer.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#227

Post by jimbokun »

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…

"The article isn't advocating that you buy a coffee every single day."

That is EXACTLY what the article is advocating, very explicitly.

Your case sounds very different than the "$5 latte a day habit", which is probably just someone standing in line in the morning, grabbing their coffee and absent-mindedly sipping it as they walk to the office.

You got an hour of shelter and a comfortable place to sit in a nice environment, plus power and wifi, in addition to the caffeine and enjoyment of a nice beverage. It sounds like you made an efficient use of the limited resources you had available to you.

And I think the $5 latte is meant to be a symbol of how to get your expenses under control, not a complete retirement plan. Add to cutting out the lattes cooking more meals at home, cutting your cable bill to the most basic Internet only plan, looking for a cheaper cell phone bill, buy a beater instead of a new car next time you need to purchase one...

Once you have your emergency fund, most debts payed off, and are starting to save a reasonable amount for retirement, then the $5 lattes maybe aren't going to kill you, as long as you keep your overall spending within your means.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#228

Post by bubblewrap »

I guess at least by the "it costs you 1 million dollars" logic, you could afford a latte per day if you can also afford to save 10$ a day. Then by the same calculation, you would accumulate 2 Million $ for retirement.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#229

Post by jimbokun »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #205
nugget wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is not how most rich people got rich by any stretch of the imagination. Have you read the Millionaire Next Door? I suppose it depends how you define "rich" these days, but the data in that book seems to indicate that most US dollar millionaire households are dual middle income workers who live below their means for decades and actively save and invest the difference.

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…

I hear you, but I think the $5 latte advice is aimed at the two middle income earning households, who have stable jobs but still think they are poor because they have poor impulse control when it comes to spending. I don't think that advice is generally meant for the actually poor.

Re: Buy Yourself a Latte

#230

Post by bubblewrap »

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…

In my office, I don't have pretty Baristas making the coffee for me, and I also can't bask in the sunshine watching the passersbys.
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