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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"You can't latte yourself to bankruptcy. The bladder won't stand for it" - Katie Porter in Helaine Olen's [i]Pound Foolish[/i]

I'm generally a pretty frugal person and avoid unnecessary expenses, including Starbucks. But I can't be too judgmental on those who choose to indulge. If your morning latte is the thing that gets you through the day, or one of the few things you reliably enjoy and look forward to, I don't think it's nearly as destructive as some people imply.

Let's say you spend $5 at Starbucks every day of the year. That's $5x365, or about $1,800 per year, or about $1,300 if you only go on weekdays. I don't want to imply that's a trivial amount of money. But it's not going to make or break your household finances. It's the big lifestyle decisions - car, houses, vacations, schools - that determine your big picture finances. Latte's aren't quite small enough to be dismissed as a rounding error, but they're definitely at the margins of your financial health.[/quote]

Two issues with this:

1. Anyone who spends $1,800 a year on crappy coffee is probably throwing money away on other pointless extravagances.

2. $1,800 a year *is* a lot of money when you think about the opportunity cost. It's a good chunk of an extra mortgage payment, a pretty nice vacation, or a meaningful contribution toward college/retirement. Versus time lost standing in line and a whole lot of pee.[/quote]

PP here.

1) I don't drink coffee, so I won't comment on its quality, just that if someone enjoys it that's their right. I agree that several $5/day decisions can quickly pile up, but I don't think coffee is a really such a "gateway drug," so to speak, to other unnecessary spending. If you're making a slippery slope argument, then the coffee itself isn't the problem, other behavior is. I think condemning the latte drinkers pulls in a lot of innocent people who don't otherwise fall prey to lifestyle creep though. In many ways, I could see it pay for itself if it means you get a raise from more time working harder.

2) Even if you assume a 5% return per year (whether from mortgage prepayment or retirement investing), and that all the money was invested on January 1, that's still only $1890 in lost money ($1365 for the weekday habit). More importantly, there's nothing about latte money that makes it any more especially earmarked for such long-term reward activities than other spending.

And I will actually rise to this posters' defense: $1800 could get you pretty far on vacation if you don't have kids in the picture.[/quote]

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