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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

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, plus spend an hour on the internet because I was wi-fi dependent. It helped me feel like a human being and not just go fucking kill myself.

I was working on my larger problems, like getting healthier, paying down debt and developing a better earned income. I eventually got off the street.

I still don't have a lot of money. I still have to make judicious purchasing decisions. I still sometimes find that the best answer is splurging on taking care of myself.

Sometimes, taking care of yourself in some way is the best investment you can make. Sometimes, that means buying an overpriced coffee.

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"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.

From the article:

Let’s consider five reasons why you should occasionally treat yourself to a cup of Joe.

It's arguing against the people saying "Your daily coffee habit is costing you a million dollars!" It's saying that is nonsense.

That isn't the same thing as issuing the opposite edict that you, yes you, need to rush out and drink coffee every. single. day.

Defending your right to make such purchases as you see fit isn't actually the same thing as insisting you spend $5 a day on coffee.

But I imagine this comment will fall on deaf ears. Like the time someone asked how to foster independence in their toddler and I told the story about locking up the breakables when my toddler began hurling his dishes into the kitchen sink like it was a basketball hoop so as to let him do his thing without it going bad places.

The eager young parent replied "I like that! I'm going to promptly start making my toddler put their dishes in the sink!!!!"

(facepalm)

I think he confused his whole point when he slipped the word “occasionally” in there. The rest of his argument is about a five dollar daily expense.

> It's arguing against the people saying "Your daily coffee habit is costing you a million dollars!" It's saying that is nonsense.

Hopefully nobody is saying that. A $5 daily habit costs $20-30k per decade, after you factor in reasonably anticipated investment gains. No more no less. Viewpoints about what an ideal world would look like, or one's right to make such purchases, or whatever else, have zero impact on the cost. It is what it is. Each person has to make their own judgment about whether that cost makes sense for them.

The better way of looking at it is that a coffee will cost about $5/per (I dunno, I don't drink coffee) and the median male full time weekly earnings are somewhere around $900/wk in America.

So 5 coffees a week is ~2.7% of a full time wage. That is huge, anyone arguing otherwise isn't all over how percentages work. Only something like 10-15% of your average weekly wage needs to be saved to have a comfortable retirement. Reducing consumption is a double-whammy, you spend less on lifestyle so you need to save less to maintain that lifestyle. $5/day is a huge expense from that perspective.

I don't know how prevalent stupid decisions like a daily coffee are for poor people, but the costs are so high I expect not many of them do it. Having a stranger prepare your food and drink is a luxury for the wealthy.

From the article:

It’s a cliché that refuses to die: personal finance guru Suzy Orman warned investors last week that if you “waste money on coffee, it’s like ‘peeing $1 million down the drain.’”

That's apparently the reason the article was written -- to rebut that claim in specific.

Fair enough. It looks like Suze really believes a latte will add up to $1M. She's a blowhard, and wrong -- although I think it's fair to say it'll cost well over $100k over that period, which is not insignificant.

Most people who say to skip the $5 a day latte understand that that alone isn't going to make you rich. Instead, the point is to engage in good spending habits, the sum of which will make you at least substantially wealthier than you would be otherwise. The fact that Suze took it literally does not mean the advice needs dismantling. Quite the opposite.

That being said, I do think it's kind of interesting that this guy is writing about don't buy a latte. Buy as many lattes as you want, as long as you don't hire his firm. They'll hit you up for 1% of your AUM under $2M, which is going to hurt a lot more than lattes for anybody who still gives any thought to the price of one.

This article is terribly misleading and, honestly, makes me wonder if it's just some BS starbucks guerilla marketing. I agree that having an occasional treat is great - the latte a day habit is an addiction it stops being a treat.

The article fails because it uses terminology to positively frame it as a treat while using terminology to include the negative framing when describing what you can do... it is terribly written.

I estimate the chance infinitesimal that it's marketing, Barry is a well-known financial planner/wealth manager and doesn't need a small cheque from Starbucks.

Thank you! It is poor use of time to argue about such a terribly writen article. If the OP author genuinely wants people to know it is OK drinking $5 lattes daily, they need to stop qualifying the consumption as occasional. The article has so many other problems, but the real premise of the article encouraging people to understand variable small expenses vs fixed large expenses and flat wages is critical. The comments here demonstrate how impossible conversations are when discussing the inarticulate.

On the point of the beater vs the new car... I find the best is often a middle ground. The new car is not worth the debt and the depreciation... assuming it's even an option.

The beater is often just as poor an investment due to the money you'll have to throw into it like a black hole whenever it fails. There's also the stress and instability it creates knowing it may not start the next morning.

I don’t think any one answer is optimal. I got a nice new car and kept it 12+ years. The advantage to this is minimizing transaction costs while getting exactly the car I wanted. I also drive far less than most people keeping the car in great shape.

If I put a lot more miles in it then I would be more concerned with break downs as it aged.

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 purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to."

(I really recommend reading the whole thing, for those that have never lived that situation long-term.)

There's additionally a more recent study on the cognitive effects of long-term poverty [2], which essentially finds that poverty skews prioritization in financial decision-making and produces long-term decision-making stress which amounts to a massive ongoing cognitive load.

Attitudes like ~ineedasername's are just fucking infuriating, especially when posted in response to an article in which the entire point was that saving money on coffee is not a habit which in isolation will make a huge difference in anyone's financial future.

It's only about one step removed from victim blaming. Impoverished people aren't poor because they occasionally buy coffee. They're poor because there's an economic system currently in place which is slurping as much wealth away from as many people as possible to feed it to just a few.

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-br...

[2]: http://review.chicagobooth.edu/behavioral-science/2018/artic...

I imagine a lot of people saying "Just give up your $5 coffee and you, too, can be a millionaire someday!" are trying to be realistic without being wrist-slashingly depressing about life.

But it amounts to left-handedly saying "The big problems in your life/ the world that make your $5 coffee An Issue for your budget? Yeah, honey, you can give up on solving those. Justice just ain't a thing."

Blame and justice-seeking are just two levers to fix different kinds of poverty. They're not even the only levers.

If someone spends all their money on rent because powerful interests are blocking new property development or because they're forced into rooming houses by a lack of rental history, then seeing them as a victim might be useful. If someone spends all their money on iphones and playstations and dinners and lattes and will stop doing it if they get negative peer feedback, then blaming them might be useful. If someone spends all their money on building a new house after a fire, then maybe neither is as helpful as integrating opt-out disaster insurance into land tax.

Taking a hard line against any particular lever is almost always going to make you wrong some of the time, which means that some people are going to stay poor when they don't have to, which sucks for them.

"entire point was that saving money on coffee is not a habit which in isolation will make a huge difference in anyone's financial future"

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.

I don't find his/her attitude infuriating.

If you're on a wage where you're not sure if you'll ever be able to afford your own home, that $5 does add up.

It was around 1% of my income recently. I want a house yesterday.

I think the best solution to all this is what I ended up doing: buy a cheap but good espresso machine and enjoy delicious cheap coffee.

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.

Everyone who buys the axe is better off for it, and everyone who sells wood at the market but doesn't own an axe is worse off for it.

Capitalism coupled with a tax and social service regime that hasn’t been torn apart over the past half century, for one.

It’s not all or nothing, and all or nothing thinking by fanatics of “Jesus” and Capitalism has destroyed America.

> Impoverished people aren't poor because they occasionally buy coffee

Impoverished people might be poor because they take everything literally and can't see the big picture though. Yes, frivolous spending absolutely has something to do with poverty. It's so clear and obvious and when I look at every example of a person that I know that could be called poor vs someone that is rich there is the same pattern: The poor ones HATE doing what's necessary, work, personal grooming, cleaning, eating healthy, working out whatever but they LOVE spending money they don't have on things they don't need and that will not make them happy. If you try to stop them from spending, they suffer. But if they spend it's the hedonistic treadmill: increase amount and GOTO 10.

Rich people I know LOVE to work. They would work for free. They get up and go work and if you stop them they suffer. The rich people I know HATE spending money. It causes them physical discomfort. IF they spend, they consider it for quite some time, look for deals or wait for special offers. Subsequently they are very happy with their purchases and keep them maintained and in good order.

> They're poor because there's an economic system currently in place which is slurping as much wealth away from as many people as possible to feed it to just a few.

None of this is true. We are getting wealthier and wealthier from this magnificent system that lifted BILLIONS out of poverty the last 50 years.

> small pleasures

This is a perfect example of the poverty mindset: consume to be happy. There is enough pleasure to be had without spending a single dime, in fact, the most fulfilling activities will net you money directly or indirectly. It's possible to be content without spending money all the time. If you think that the happiness in your life comes down to small or large purchases you are already on the wrong path. Just turn back.

And by the way, the story of lotto winners is instructive: you simply can't spend your way out of the poverty mindset.

"Rich people I know LOVE to work. They would work for free."

Would they work fast food for as many hours? How about in a call center where half the customers are angry and taking it out on you? How about if they couldn't afford the basics in life from the job? How about if they couldn't afford health care or food, so when working they are always tired?

The rich people you know don't have to deal with the crap poor folks do. They are more likely to be able to take vacations, spend money on things that make them happy (maybe it is their company/job, but it is still spending). They aren't worried that being late to pick up the kids will cost enough to make you have to eat less for the rest of the month, nor that a flat tire means you have to go without electricity.

IF they spend, they consider it for quite some time, look for deals or wait for special offers. Subsequently they are very happy with their purchases and keep them maintained and in good order.

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.

And by the way, the story of lotto winners is instructive: you simply can't spend your way out of the poverty mindset.

This doesn't prove anything. It proves that poverty deprives you of chances to practice long-term financial planning and unsurprisingly, when impovershed people suddenly get a lump sum of money, they fare poorly with the long-term planning. In contrast, rich folks have regular income. Even if you mess up one month, you have some income the next month. I'm going to guess if lotteries paid out monthly for as many years as jobs do, things would look different. Especially if it had an amount of upfront windfall followed by the monthly salary.

> Would they work fast food for as many hours? How about in a call center where half the customers are angry and taking it out on you? How about if they couldn't afford the basics in life from the job? How about if they couldn't afford health care or food, so when working they are always tired?

Not to speak for Americans but this is the classic immigrant story in America. I, personally, know many people who've done this.

It isn't about "this type of work" or "people taking it out on me". The world is a place. It is a certain way. I have an objective. To have my family better off. So if someone is going to yell, they're going to yell. It's just the constraint. I'm going to adapt to it.

I'm not saying there aren't situations where these aren't viable options. I'm personally an immigrant and would be happy with about any sort of job. I'd be fooling myself thinking said job makes me rich, and I don't have to work two of these jobs to make it. I also don't have to support a family. Luckily, I don't really have to work either, it merely affords us a different lifestyle. Lots of folks are motivated to work such jobs, and make the best of them. However, none of them are rich nor do they have the options and luxuries of the rich.

I'm saying no one would do these jobs for "love of working" if they are rich enough to avoid such labour. For example: You might open a restaurant, but you'd not likely be a cashier at McDonalds with no health insurance, vacation, nor agency over one's life. You might own a hobby farm, but it is highly unlikely you'd be a migrant farm worker if you are already rich. And so on.

Not going to argue that point. It's about moving up in the leverage thing and menial labour is very low leverage.

> 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."

This woman seems to have magically exhibited every moral failing and self inflicted difficulty that the American right wing ever made up. You should probably step back and realize that it sounds totally unbelievable - for instance, you can’t cause an entire years developmental delay in an otherwise healthy three year old simply by not playing with them enough.

It's not made up. You misunderstood about the developmental delays: she gave birth to her son, refused to nurse him, refused to even have him close to her. She did not go outside with him or interact with him in any way beyond what's necessary to sustain life. She was living in a 11 squaremeter apartment with him and did not let him explore, did not take him to the play ground, did not take him to child groups. For a young child this situation basically amounts to sensory deprivation and it's absolutely enough to stunt growth and development.

Oh it's real, I haven't even told you half of her insanity.

Like the time my girlfriend who is her friend tried to help her quit by listening to Alen Carr which had helped us a lot in quitting smoking. Quote verbatim: 'this is brain washing'.

Like the time my step son who would rather bite his arm of then confront someone told her straight up that smoking while pregnant is a shitty thing to do to the baby. She just shrugges, smiles and say I know I know.

Like when she told her baby father to move 700km so he can take their son on the weekends (she was always trying to pawn him off to someone) and then half a year later moved up 500km the same direction to her new boyfriend and now has the state pay for her legal bills from the resulting custody dispute.

It's all real. You can, of course think, that it's all invented by the american right wing to make poor people look bad but if you listen you will hear the same kind of stories from social workers and welfare officials from all over. You might not want to believe this because it points to a fundamental problem of welfare: bad attitudes, tendencies and habits get worse with more resources and not better.

No, they don't. And social workers and welfare officials that I know do tell stories like this - about the parents of children now in state care. Infants don't get left with mothers who refuse to nurse or hold them. Children who are found to be suffering from such severe neglect that they are developmentally delayed don't get left with those parents. I have no doubt you believe what you're saying, and I have no doubt that you are misinformed.

Yes, they absolutely do. How is this even a question? You don't cure a drug habit by giving the person more money cause they'll just buy more drugs. You don't cure a reckless driver by given them a faster car. You don't cure a reckless spender by letting them spend more. It's not even a question you would contest if there was something on the line for you except defending your ideology

> state care

Of course child welfare services (Jugendamt) is on the case. They gave her a case worker that used to stop by to make sure it didn't get too bad. Of course she thought the job of that person was to Nany her son so she went through about three case workers in as many years. Btw, she picks fights with everyone. But the state of Germany is (rightfully) very reluctant to take kids away. Even with this amount of neglect it's hard to be sure that fostering the kid would produce better results plus we have double sordid history with this kind of thing. [1] [2]

Doctors tell her in no uncertain terms what she needs to do but wouldn't you know it, she always reacts exasperated "how dare he say it's not normal that a child doesn't call for his mommy at 2 years old, I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT.". She feels like she is a perpetual victim of all these people who are really trying to help her.

> I have no doubt that you are misinformed.

I am perfectly informed as I get near daily updates on this case. I am going to be honest, knowing this person has absolutely shifted my view from a systemic one to a personal one. You can't make a welfare system that can fix this. It's literally better to have none at all because any welfare system is just paying people like her to become ever more useless and degenerate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensborn [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/22/germany-cold-w...

Fun fact: one of the single most effective interventions for homeless people who take drugs is to give them a place to live. It's an amazing example of how giving people resources helps them stop relying on unhealthy coping mechanisms.

What you describe is quite literally a textbook cause for removing the child from the mother in German law - an immediate risk to their opportunity to develop cognitively or emotionally. You may well be describing an amazing case where some half dozen welfare professionals have all seen a case that clearly evaluates to 'this child needs to be removed' and all done nothing, but ... the odds are low. And the idea that you can't be misinformed because of the frequency of updates? Oh dear.

I am sorry that hearing about this woman has impaired your ability to think about welfare as a system. Perhaps you should avoid the topic until you recover your ability to think beyond her.

> single most effective interventions for homeless people who take drugs is to give them a place to live

Have a fun citation for me on that? Is it effective in absolute terms or just "most effective"?

> unhealthy coping mechanisms

It's very telling that when you can't get past indivual behaviour anymore you still find a way to put it on the environment. I wonder why there is one group of people, let's call them "victims" where everything they do is readily excused and dismissed, like turning west coast cities into open air toilets. It's like they have no agency at all. It's almost as if the left habitually dehumanizes the subjects of their 'empathy' in the process of advocating their policies.

> an immediate risk to their opportunity to develop cognitively or emotionally.

No, children are not just taken away in Germany. Period. As long as the child is fed, clothed and free from overt signs of physical abuse it's a process and she is in it.

The most charitable thing to say is that you are halucinating some deep knowledge about child wellfare practices in Germany in order to prop up your ideology which can't deal with the existance of this one women, let alone the fact that she is a representative of a large class of people on similar paths.

> Perhaps you should avoid the topic until you recover your ability to think beyond her.

I think you should avoid any topic as long as you mistake your ideology for actual knowledge of the real world and the real people in it.

> 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 agree. But I don't think the people making the argument for spending less money on coffee are arguing against those two things.

They are not talking about never going to a Starbucks. As you point out, there are circumstances where buying a latte can provide a lot of value. But those situations don't account for most of the money being spent on $5+ lattes. In most cases, it's people in poor financial health, who are not saving enough, and who spend a significant amount on minor luxuries which don't actually contribute meaningfully to their lives. They do it just out of habit. It feels like a sacrifice to stop, but only because it requires giving up a habit. All habits are hard to give up.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to buy $5 lattes unless they have already socked away 15% of their income into a retirement account, have at least 6 months of salary in a savings safety fund, and generally live about 10% below their means or can manage to articulately justify it to internet strangers as somehow having gotten a lot out of it while homeless.”

― Anatole France's great, great, great grandchild

I've seen pieces that indicate that poor people spend on average like $90 per month on lottery tickets and other forms of gambling. If they invested that instead, they would have a meaningful nest egg. I think that's a brilliant thing to point out.

So, certainly, it can be reasonable to suggest that sometimes poor people can make better choices than they are currently making and it can, in fact, meaningfully improve their lives. But most such arguments really boil down to "The beatings shall continue until morale improves." because we simply don't approve of poor people having any bright spots in their dreadful, miserable lives.

It's generally disingenuous to act like if poor people just give up a few small luxuries, they, too, can invest their way to being millionaires. This is generally not true.

I see it as malicious behavior to act like poor people can save and invest their way to wealth with a little self discipline, like giving up their coffee. Doing so is the rare exception. It is not how most rich people got rich by any stretch of the imagination.

>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 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.

It's not victim blaming to say saving money on discretionary purchases might improve your financial status and therefore quality of life. This is true regardless of disability status, life situation, etc. If you don't think that's the case, and the discretionary purchase is worth the cost to you, then the advice doesn't apply and you can ignore it.

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.

We have more income inequality here lately than in The Gilded Age. Lots of middle earners are being squeezed by a combo of high medical costs, high housing costs and high transportation costs because it's nigh impossible to live without a car for many Americans.

This is why we have expressions like "The 99 Percent" -- because a stable, secure middle class lifestyle that you can reliably build a secure future upon has largely gone extinct.

If we are going to find a way out of this mess, it won't be by acting like "The 99 Percent" need to stop being undisciplined slobs pissing away potential trust funds for their children because they spend too much on coffee.

When millionaire rock stars end up in rehab for the umpteenth time, we don't try to insist they don't deserve to be wealthy. They just need to make the right noises about how drugs are bad and they are working on it, but, wow, it is hard to beat an addiction.

When poor (say, homeless) people have an addiction, the narrative is always that their poverty is due to moral failing and they just need to try a little harder, have some self discipline and quit the drugs.

Even when the drug is just overpriced caffeine.

Having two middle incomes in a household is a luxury that many households don't have. By definition, half of people have incomes below the median. Assuming random pairing of couples, 25% would have both people making below median incomes, but in reality people tend to pair up with people with similar incomes, so in practice it is even higher than that.

Thank you for this.

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."

I think the point is not "never ever buy a coffee again until the day you die (or retire)". The point is "examine your routine spending and see if you can cut off anything and use it as a source of money for savings". If you did that and consciously prefer saving a little bit less and indulge now and then, these recommendations are not for you, you're already past that stage. A lot of people didn't even get to "consider your spending, make a budget and evaluate your expenses and decide which ones you can do without". They don't even think in terms of considering whether it's worth it or not. I think getting people to think about that is the point of it.

It's saying focus on issues mostly out of your control (inflation). I'd prefer to focus on the things that are in my control.

I agree that some level of indulgence is okay, obviously this is a balance. Everyone has to figure out what they're comfortable with here, but some people we know may have become way too comfortable and complacent yet still want to complain about their financial situation. These are the people who need to figure out why and how to adjust their behavior.

When I was homeless and going to Starbucks, I used to watch people get $60 worth of takeout coffee on a Saturday morning. Family was coming over. Everyone needed a cup.

But no one tells well-off people to cut back on buying $5 cups of coffee by the dozen. No one suggests that if they saved that money, they could have two or three million more and, clearly, that's the morally correct thing to do.

No one is saying coffee consumption is the root cause of terrorist attacks and calling for coffee abolition. No one is saying coffee is generally some kind of moral failing.

It's apparently just a moral failing if you are struggling financially. And then you really need to quit it, you bad person you.

This whole "Your coffee is the problem!" narrative is just judgy, moralizing nonsense. Why is it focused on expensive coffee in specific? Why not candy bars on your work break? Or the high cost of participating in the annual insanity we call Christmas?

Because expensive coffee bought and consumed publicly is conspicuous consumption, something that is a pecking order signal of being one of The Haves. So The Haves are offended by The Have Nots participating.

That's part of what this article is criticizing.

Let The Have Nots have a small luxury here and there and quit picking on them over it. Geez.

Personally, I mostly stopped doing Christmas (and Halloween) years ago. It's not obvious because I'm so fucking poor that no one expects me to buy them presents.

But if you want to start a campaign to tell America that our modern Christmas habits are one of the roots of all financial evil in the world, I will happily promote your campaign. I'm sure you will be pelted with rotten tomatoes, because now you are also being judgy of the spending habits of The Haves, but I will support your right to subject yourself to that.

This all seems very hyperbolic to me. You're painting it as being a matter of judging rather than useful, lived advice.

For the first five years of my adult life I wouldn't have even considered spending $5 on a coffee, or a take out sandwich, or whatever. It felt like a ridiculous sum of money. When I visit parts of the UK that aren't awash with wealth, it still does.

I genuinely did think of it through the lens of - not doing that meant that I could quite rapidly save a month's rent, then a few months' rent, and so on.

Would it make me a millionaire? No. Certainly not in isolation. But it would break my fall if I were to become unemployed, temporarily ill, etc.

And that initial spark of starting to save, having a buffer, not going homeless if I lost my job for a month or two or six, was an essential ingredient in me becoming what you seem to call 'The Haves'.

$5 a day for 5 years is over $9K. Non-inflation adjusted. You could stick it under a mattress and that's still six months rent here in London or a _year_ if you share a flat. It's genuinely a large amount of money.

If I'd spent my whole life chucking money at everything that came my way I'd still be poor because I would never have been able to risk switching jobs, moving, I very well could have ended up homeless in periods when I left work for a while, etc. Living paycheck to paycheck is basically suicide. You have to make hay whilst the sun shines.

Until I had a decent amount saved I essentially did not have discretionary income. I felt it was frivolous. That has worked out for me and I see no reason why it wouldn't work out for others; as such I believe expressing my opinion to be useful advice, and it is rather odd to have that lived experience be painted as "moralizing".

Agreed on all counts.

What I find the most distasful is when people make it to the top of the pyramid, look down, and scream advice at those below.

Some do it to assuage their guilt, some to raise themselves further above the rabble, and others - whom I despise the most - decide to profit from their status by selling their "wisdom".

> 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.

Huh? That's exactly what keeps people that are on a cusp of climing out of the hole in a hole.

It is too bad fatwallet.com is dead. It has very long threads ( years long ) of people describing the tiny improvements that they made and how over years it significantly affected their life in a way they could not imagine when they made that silly "I won't buy $5 late and instead add that $5 to my credit card payment" change.

Which health issue does coffee treat?

Coffee (caffeine) is a stimulant. It's helpful for a lot of things that are routinely treated with stimulants.

In my case, that generally means respiratory issues and allergies.

People who drink a lot of coffee are probably self-medicating for something or other, possibly without realizing it. My coffee consumption always goes up when I'm exposed to more allergens. When it goes down, it's because I'm feeling better, not because I have self discipline.

Yeah... I did that too when I was homeless. More with Tim's though instead of Starbucks when I got my PNA; now BNA.

Although, when I look back, it would have been smarter not to have done that. I did manage to save $600 when receiving $30 a week though.

>Sometimes, taking care of yourself in some way is the best investment you can make.

Yes but is spending money on little things you don't need really taking care of yourself? I don't like the mindset that the only way to treat yourself or take care of yourself is to buy things.

You got a lot for your $5. At the other end of the spectrum are chronically bankrupt people maxed out on credit card debt who buy a takeout $6 giant candy coffee whenever they go anywhere and don't even bother to finish drinking it before they have to throw it away because they are walking into a restaurant. This story is based on true events.

Sounds like that person has fewer risks of losing all their savings in a freak accident, and lives with more luxuries. Is that not .. an understandable way to live?

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