Buy Yourself a Latte

The US is, as a rule, for better or worse, pretty opposed to"compulsory" in most situations

We started budgeting, finally, around the time we had kids. We got tired of doing it all based on feeling, and wanted to actually know where our money was going, so we could make more accurate plans. A lot of people look at budgeting as a chore, but I’ve found it to be liberating. When you sock away some money for “personal spending”, you can get a coffee and not think twice about it. You’re not wondering whether your rent or mortgage is funded. You can start funding future costs (like an annual car registration renewal) instead of being surprised by them. And if it seems like a ton of effort, it’s pretty nice when tax season comes around and all your expenses are already categorized.

At the end of the day you have X expenses and Y income, with some unknowns and variations thrown in the mix. There’s no reason it has to be a mystery. You can actually make an informed choice about that latte, and balance it with your desire to save for the future, live a little now, etc.

The article misses the point of the proverb competely. It erects a strawman by taking the advice at face value.

The coffee stands for any and all small, regular and avoidable expenses, where minor lifestyle adjustments add up to major savings.

Using a family plan on subscriptions and phone plans, cooking your own meals, weighing the actual cost of owning a certain car / carpooling...... All of these are things are very small, yet regular expenses in a person's life. These things add up.

The lack of mindfulness of such expenses leads to fast and untracked lifestyle creep. The proven also warns against that.

My peers living expenses went up 5 fold, and each of them claims that nothing has changed.

Whereas I live in the US, where it is common to have to do a back of the envelope calculation whether to drive or take an ambulance. Pro tip: if you are conscious, you'll never take the ambulance.

> Would they work fast food for as many hours?

You don't fully understand how these "next door millionaire" types operate. They don't look at something and say "that's fast food work". They work at what is necessary for however long it takes. My girlfriend is building her two businesses, she spends nights in the basement sewing piece after piece by the dozens and the days churning out t-shirt design after t-shirt design. If you break down her "working conditions" and "hourly wage" I am pretty sure a fast food job would look better on paper. But she is on a growth path while the average worker (it's not like this is foreign to me) is just looking to get off of work and get spending which is is a path to nothing.

> you know don't have to deal with the crap poor folks do.

The infuriating part about it is exactly that a lot of the "crap" that happens to them is self-inflicted. I know this "poor" woman who had a child in order to get a guy who wasn't even the father into a relationship with her (yes, you read that right), then while pregnant smoked and ate only garbage. Now the child has birth defects, likely from the smoking, and at three is already one year developmentally delayed because even though she is on the generous German welfare she didn't see fit to spend any time playing or going outside with him. She has a car that she "needs" because she is so skinny fat that she literally can't walk to the next bus stop. So what does she do when she get's any kind of money? Spends it on new rims, trims and whatever crap people put on their cars to "soup" them up. All of the ideas she has about life are false and destructive and everything she does is wrong. There is no helping her. We really tried but she is literally too dumb to make connections between actions and consequences. Instead all of here brain power seems to go to thinking up stories to feel better about herself. It's impossible. She is a bottomless pit and resources keep pouring into it. She had years on welfare even though she could work. She got gifted three cars by friends. She get's "free" healthcare that will sort out the consequences of her very bad habits. Now the state is paying extra for a special needs kindergarden for her son. It's never enough, it can't ever be enough. What she needs are some of the existential problems you mentioned so that she has to get her shit together.

> Poor people don't have this luxury. Everyone would rather have comfortable shoes, but if you only have $15 for shoes and can't save up for 6 months for something better, you have to buy the $15 shoes. Even with good maintenance, $15 shoes aren't going to last like $100 shoes.

To the larger point : this is the Sam Vimes theory of social economic justice and yeah, it's truly hard to break a vicious cycle. That's why it's absolutely imperative to start a virtuous cycle no matter how tiny because it can make a huge difference over time. Start making your own coffee, save $5 here and there now you have $50. Oh what's that, a WIDGETGARGBLASTER at half price? Well, I'm pretty sure my car will need one soon, I am going to use my nest egg to buy that for cheap. Thank god I had this WIDGETGAGBLASTER because wouldn't you know it, my car broke down just as I was about to go for my job interview. I mean it's contrived sure but in three steps saving $5 a day already could've made a difference in 10000s of dollars in lifetime earnings.

To the concrete example: under capitalism what's actually true is that you can get garbage for tiny prices, very decent quality at low prices, super value at medium prices and luxury for high prices. The kind of poverty where hard-working people want for basic material things is abolished and it's really weird that people keep arguing as if it still existed. What's a lot closer reality is that the next door millionaire type has $50 leather shoes from ten years ago while the 'poor' person has a $500 dollar sneaker 'collection' financed by credit card debt.

> poverty deprives you of chances to practice long-term financial planning

Clearly this is putting the cart before the horse.

> I'm going to guess if lotteries paid out monthly for as many years as jobs do, things would look different

No, it would be worse. You have a steady, guaranteed income like that you can borrow against it and the instant gratification crowd is going to do just that.

Here is some food for though about the scope of poverty: http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/MiddleClass_20...

And the causes of poverty: https://thefederalist.com/2018/05/24/study-no-1-reason-ameri...

"Americans who graduate high school, work full time (even at minimum wage), and marry before having kids are essentially guaranteed to not live in poverty. These are all choices, not happenstance."