Posted on 07/18/2019 2:36:52 PM PDT by Red Badger
Suze Orman wants young people to stop peeing away millions of dollars on coffee. Last month, the personal-finance celebrity ignited a controversy on social media when a video she starred in for CNBC targeted a familiar villain: kids these days and their silly $5 lattes. Because brewing coffee at home is less expensive, Orman argued, purchasing it elsewhere is tantamount to flushing money away, which makes it a worthy symbol of Millennials squandered resources.
Ormans not alone in this view. The old guard of personal finance has spent years turning the habit of buying coffee into a shorthand for Americans profligacy, especially that of young Americans. Dave Ramsey, a finance personality who hosts a popular radio show on getting out of debt, says that forgoing lattes is one of four keys to saving thousands of dollars. Kevin OLeary, one of the investors on the entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank, once told CNBC, I never buy a frape-latte-blah-blah-blah-woof-woof-woof. Even the official Twitter account for Chase Bank has gotten in on the fun, intimating via meme that a failure to brew at home is why young people dont have any money.
In the face of coffee shaming, young people usually point to things like student loans and housing prices as the true source of the generations instability, not their $100-a-month cold-brew habits. Nonetheless, coffee endures as a personal-finance flash point because it provides such a tidy intersection of generational tensions. A cup of coffee embodies changes in everything from how younger Americans eat to where they live and how they approach their finances. For young people who buy one each morning, the walk up to the barista can be a shame-tinged tug of war.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
After being gifted a financial sh*t sandwich by their Boomer parents and "Greatest Generation" grandparents, if Millennials want enjoy a $5 cup of coffee, allow them this simple pleasure.
Coffee is unisex, so its OK
... or pay more in taxes. Somebody has to pay for socialism.
its not just coffee... its anything discretionary that you spend you money on regularly.
Point. If you show me a lifetime smoker (you know, like the pack a day sort of person... and I will show you a person who “could” of been a millionaire, if they had saved and invested the same amount of money over a lifetime.
Exactly.
These days people are just obsessed with weighing in on everything other people do or don't do.
DO WHAT YOU WANT WITH YOUR OWN CASH.
Agreed! Perhaps we need some “personal-finance gurus shaming” ...
Last time I checked Starbucks was contributing to abortaries.
I agree with that. Don’t fund them, that’s the answer.
That’s why I said “IF”, I brew my own on the cheap. Haha, there’s people that do that but it isn’t me.
Keurig with reuseable k-cups you fill with your own coffee you buy at the store.
Well, small or not it works out to less than $.20 a Cup per day.
You can get a Refill too.
Coffee means a break, a hot drink, alertness and a bathroom stop for me. It is worth the money. As an adult I am capable of figuring out whether it is worth it - or not.
Tip for saving money on your nice lattes -
Buy a hundred in gift cards to Peets from Costco for 75-79 dollars. An immediate savings of 20 percent.
Join the Peets club at no charge and get every fifteenth drink free
My excellent lattes with all benefits cost me about $3. Worth it to me. It costs me about 75 cents to make one at home but...Im not at home.
My office has a nesspresso pod espresso machine. I’d seriously think about moving on if that perk was removed. Also have a keurig, but that’s about the same as the starbucks that is brought in for catering. Definitely first world problems ;-)
McDonald’s has good cheap iced coffee.
You can buy milk and cheap coffee beans make your own.
I will try it.
5 buck for a latte here .
6 bucks for an avacado toast there..
Pretty soon we’re talking about having no money...
My employer provides unlimited good/gourmet free coffee to all employees. No lattes, macchiatos, etc, just good coffee. Were an electric utility company, theres about 10,000 employees.
I think because about 2/3rds of our employees are IBEW journeyman, management wants everyone to be as alert as possible.
Same here. Great coffee isn’t particularly expensive.
here’s how it works
$5 a day x 365 days a year = $1,825 per year on coffee.
if you saved that instead conservatively and got a consistent 8% return (about the average return on the S&P historically). And you started doing this at 20.. and did it until retirement age at 65. That’s 45 years of compounding savings. If you factor in a historical 3% inflation rate. You end up with a savings of $1,027,068 for retirement. It’s THAT easy to become a millionaire!
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