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 ultimate drug, yet piling it up and walking over dead bodies to get ever more is seen as successful and worthy of admiration. I know a junkie when I see one, the fact that the drug is legal changes nothing.
Dropping $5 you don't have on overpriced coffee is proving that it has no power over you.
Posting this here is likely karma suicide, but here we go; this is my perspective, and it's as valid as any other.
> Dropping $5 you don't have on overpriced coffee is proving that it has no power over you.
Surely spending money you don't have on overpriced things you don't need is _precisely_ the sort of consumerism that proves you're fully bought into the rat race?
Had a 'poor' friend I'd hang with at the University Library. He somehow would get fast food or restaurant food, he worked at a car wash and his uncles cleaning company.
Met him in 2014, and in 2017 he had a panic when he was kicked out of his house. He came over for a moment and asked for any spare change, gave him ~5-10$.
I was eating raw ramen and protein shakes, always cooked at home. Saved like crazy(and worked). No college debt. Graduated, life is good.
5$/day is enough to pay for many months of rent.
>pretending that saving $5 could make any kind of difference.
This is the difference between the wealthy and poor. The poor can't visualize that 5$/day-> thousands of dollars.
Your post was great until you started framing that spending money you don't have was evidence of freedom. Whether you like it or not, when you do that you are giving money power over you that it shouldn't have. If you make almost no money, but can be content with the basics you mentioned and spend less than you earn, then yes you are more free than someone with millions who is obsessed with getting more. But if you can't help but spend money you don't have on things you don't need, money will continue to be a problem for you and something already has power over you. Maybe you don't have a money problem, maybe you have a money problem and a coffee problem.
The real problem I have with the author's mentality is that in real life it seems like the coffee is the symptom, not the disease. It's an easily identifiable marker that there are probably a lot of other things you are wasting money on. Sure the coffee only adds up to a couple years worth of income at the end of your life as the article points out, but everything else adds up quick, and you wonder how you aren't really ever earning enough to start saving at all.
For the author, who presumably makes millions a year, and his clients who do the same, it's good to not get tripped up on the small stuff to focus properly on the bigger picture. Doesn't mean that advice applies the same to the rest of us.
> Posting this here is likely karma suicide, but here we go; this is my perspective, and it's as valid as any other.
Not all perspectives are equally valid.
> Money is the ultimate drug, yet piling it up and walking over dead bodies to get ever more is seen as successful and worthy of admiration. I know a junkie when I see one, the fact that the drug is legal changes nothing.
Saying that friends and family are more important than money is a truism. Most people prioritize "things that matter" (including friends and family) over pursuit of money. People who pursue money to the detriment of everything else are rare.
Listing your "born poor credentials" is irritating. Boasting about how you lost your savings, which means you care about things that matter, which makes you virtuous (because you are poor again) is irritating. It's a transparent and silly perspective.
Pretending that the only two choices are virtuous poverty and sinful solvency is also silly. There are people who do not irrationally pursue money to the detriment of their personal lives and yet manage to avoid poverty.
I know it's discomforting to admit that there are people who have made better choices and live happier lives than you along every dimension. But it's true.
Same for me, but on the flipside I would say that learning to be fastidious with disposable income and growing my wealth was something I had to learn about the hard way, since I never had any exposure to this type of planning when growing up.
It's not really who controls who here, it's about knowing you're secure about the future while still enjoying the moment, even a latte. Maybe we're saying the same thing but in a different way.
Options like quitting a job you don’t enjoy, supporting your parent because the ACA doesn’t cover enough of their healthcare costs, or paying for IVF so your partner could have a child they otherwise couldn’t are not distractions. We’re not talking cable TV, smart phones, or fancy coffee.
Mindset isn’t a silver bullet (although it’s helpful and will keep you sane). Sometimes you’re going to need dig deep for that grit and find those dollars you need.
Life can throw you a turn and you might be hit by a car tomorrow but... chances are that won't happen.
There are people who devote themselves to living in the moment, push all their money into the now and whatever instant gratification they can get. In no specific case can you prove that's a terrible idea without knowledge of the future, but I think we can all say that quitting your job to shoot up heroin is a choice that deprives you of many of the joys of life.
AND YET, while I stand by everything above, buying into a system that deprives you of your life in the hope that you might be able to scratch out a living in your sunset years is awful and modern societies push toward "Be prudent toward your retirement" is one we need to balance with the joy of letting ourselves step out of the rat-race on occasion to enjoy stuff.
Either way, I think the OP is demonstrating the worst choice of both worlds, no where in his statement is it implied he's actually buying a coffee to gain enjoyment, just to reject the necessity of money - that's just a terrible reason... enjoy things, treat yourself, be conservative with constant spending and live life.
And lastly, coffee is complicated. The article and OP might be referring to the occasional splurge on a nice latte to relax with, but it could easily be read as the activity that turns into a fixed cost - buying coffee because your daily life has sapped you of everything you are to the point where Caffeine is the only place you think you can find the energy to carry on. I have OSA (sleep apnea) and feel into this sort of trap for a little while before I got a CPAP, it was dark depressing time that I wish on no one.
>> A warm place to sleep, good health, good food (and coffee) and nice, caring people are priceless. Dropping $5 you don't have on overpriced coffee is proving that it has no power over you.
In modern society, money has power over us no matter how we act. That is, we're forced to make money to sustain a satisfactory quality of life. Wasting $5 on a coffee will actually increase the power money has over you because you will be forced to make more money down the road.
It seems like you're wasting money as either 1) a training mechanism to prevent yourself from developing an attachment to money, or 2) an expressive mechanism to express to yourself/others how much you hate the fact that you have to make money.
I'd suggest finding a healthier mechanism for expression/change than wasting money. Lots of people learn to value things in life other than money without digging themselves into a financial hole.
Having grown up in similar circumstances I've turned out to be a big saver. Not in hopes of a lavish retirement but to not think twice when one of our cars needs new tires or one of my kids needs braces.
To me those types of things would be the motivator for most middle class folks to avoid Starbucks every day.
"Dropping $5 you don't have on overpriced coffee is proving that it has no power over you"
Surely it depends on motivation?
I wouldn't say money has power over me, but I want to be a responsible member of society, pay my own way etc, so I make sure I have money to buy coffee now and in the future.
Whereas if you're buying overprice coffee with money you don't have, just to impress your mates, that think you're rich and successful, and you want to impress them...
Further, if you're spending $5 you don't have (assuming it isn't stolen), its borrowed, which means someone else has power over you.
I think there might be a cultural difference here. In the USA coffee is not a status symbol (as far as I have experienced), I've heard that it is elsewhere. In the US it's more like just a regular addiction. Coffee drinkers need to drink coffee or they feel miserable. They can make it themselves cheap, or get a nice cup at a store.
> Dropping $5 you don't have on overpriced coffee is proving that it has no power over you.
Buying overpriced stuff you don't really need with money you don't have has to be somewhere in the definition of "money has power over me". For me, to be truly independent means to not need money a) because you have enough and b) because you don't need to compulsively spend it. b) leads to a) btw.
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 ultimate drug, yet piling it up and walking over dead bodies to get ever more is seen as successful and worthy of admiration. I know a junkie when I see one, the fact that the drug is legal changes nothing.
Dropping $5 you don't have on overpriced coffee is proving that it has no power over you.
Posting this here is likely karma suicide, but here we go; this is my perspective, and it's as valid as any other.