I can't afford it is a choice

Didn't really understand the title, should it be:

"I can't afford it" is a choice

Wealth is not revenue, it is income that comes about in abundance. To increase income either increase revenue or decrease expenses. It turns out that decreasing expenses is nearly risk free and is easier. Hence the Millionaires Next Door are good at that strategy. Not sure why this book is having a resurgence, but the other big point it made was the value of owning your own business versus working for someone else.

A close corrollary of the expense thing is to evaluate debt as an investment with a guaranteed return equal to the interest you're paying. Once you see it like that, it's very hard to argue against paying off all of your debt as quickly as possible. Those returns are hard to come by on the revenue side.

I started tracking my finances much better about 3/4 months ago, it was fairly eye opening, I found I was spending: £40 a month on a cup of coffee each morning, £48 buying lunch rather than taking it in, £25ish on magazines to read on the train, and a whole host of random little buys that I never needed adding up to £300 a month. I decided I couldn't afford it anymore, dropped them, don't miss them.

I've also gone down the route of Netflix & Spotify, we have no TV subscription (cut-the-cord of that particular beast). It makes life much easier, and my house has never been less cluttered.

(I do like a lottery ticket though, I've won some trivial amount off them ~£30-40, mostly because it's £2 a week and it's a bit of fun)

> Movie at the theater: $12 (average)

> Popcorn and a drink: $13

> Or, Netflix/Amazon Prime, RedBox and spend $3 or $4 on the experience, plus whatever’s in the fridge.

Sure, if you have a room that is functionally a movie theater. And if the movie you want is on one of those services.

> People tell me all the time that they can’t afford something. But then I’ll watch their Twitter feed, or Facebook, or Instagram, and I’ll see the reason why not.

What they're saying is that they can't afford both thing A and thing B at the same time, and that they would rather have thing A.

Maybe they would rather have Starbucks in the morning than whatever thing they were discussing with you.

Pardon my french, but the linked blog post is just a pile of santimonious bullplop. There are many, many people in the U.S. and outside of it for whom "I can't afford it" is not a choice.

There are plenty of people who cannot afford to live in a safe, or even reasonably safe neighborhood. There are people who cannot afford life-saving medicine or medical care. There are people who cannot afford to send their children to college, or even before that to buy them the iDevices and computers that would give them an edge in their education. There are plenty of families who have not bought new clothes in years because they simply can't afford it after the necessities have been paid for.

This is happening in the U.S.: in the East Bay, just a few miles from SV; in south-central LA, in most of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, in Detroit, in Cleveland, in south-west Chicago, in New York, in New Orleans...

Blog posts like this just reinforce the common perception outside of SV that Silicon Valley is now populated by a bunch of wealthy, out-of-touch individuals who have no understanding of how hard life is for people who didn't hit the jackpot in terms of family, upbringing, or education.