> Strangely enough, not enjoying a daily premium latte might be less frugal in the long run. You'd have to consider the utility of pleasure experienced over the years versus a few extra grand for your coffin.

It adds up faster than you would think: ditching your daily $3 latte saves $91.25 dollars a month. Investing that into a S&P index fund that traditionally has an average 7% annual return and 1.12% variance for over 50 years compounds into... $446,368.

I'd easily take the lattes, or really any small, simple pleasure that gives me a little bit of joy each day.

Forgoing a latte a day over 50 years means I essentially have to make 18250 decisions in order to save this money. But, on the other hand, let's say I decide to forgo, say, a $60k car and instead get a still very nice $45k car. If I invest that $15k in your hypothetical S&P index fund, and deposit no new additional money, after 50 years I'll have... $441,855.

So basically with just one, single decision I get the same benefit as someone that had to make 18250 decisions.

The small shit really doesn't matter very much. If you simply focus your frugality on a few simple things (namely housing, auto, and education) you will always be light years ahead of someone who is constantly worrying about their lattes or avocado toasts or whatever small daily bringers-of-joy.

> I essentially have to make 18250 decisions in order to save this money

I don't think so. When I quit smoking, I had to consciously make the decision not to buy cigarettes every time I was at the checkout in a super market. That went away after about two weeks. For a few months that followed, I'd stand there thinking "and buy some cigarettes" and then I'd realize I didn't smoke anymore.

I doubt that getting off of the latte-habit takes longer than getting off of cigarettes.

Another question is whether small sugary treats are a good thing in general. Again the cigarettes as a comparison: cigarettes are the best when you haven't smoked for a day. But that's because you're suffering withdrawal, not because they're that great.

I suppose it's partly a function of not really caring that much about caffeine in the morning although I do usually make coffee at home. But when I'm traveling and could even put a Starbucks latte on my expense account if I wanted to, a good part of the time I see the line of people out the door and just keep walking.

I think FIRE/frugal mentality would simply argue for making your own latte at 1/30th the cost of the Starbucks one, not completely foregoing all pleasures.

Time also has value.

I see you don’t frequent the same coffee shops I do that operate with a hipsters sense of urgency

It takes time to earn money, usually high stress time.

I absolutely agree. Creature comforts are important parts of the human experience.

I think there’s also an important distinction between being able to legitimately enjoy creature comforts vs needing them to feel whole. “Appreciating” a luxury car shouldn’t be conflated with “needing” one

> I'd easily take the lattes, or really any small, simple pleasure that gives me a little bit of joy each day.

That joy is mostly relative, the joy you feel drinking a latte is not greater than the joy a poor tribesman feel eating a piece of fruit. You will almost always feel it just for different things.

A good example is sweetness, if you quit eating candy you will find that much food is very sweet, and if you stop eating industry created food you will find that many vegetables and other things are actually quite sweet. So you don't lose the joy of eating sweet things, just that what you consider sweet changed.

To me there's a bigger question of: are the lattes or the 60k car actually bringing you joy? especially when had regularly? Most people if asked what brings them happiness it's quality time spent with loved ones, self improvement, or bringing other people joy- things like this. But then we forget about it and act like not having a latte regularly will negatively impact one's happiness over the long term.

I think you're kinda missing my point. First, the difference is not between the 60k car and nothing. It's between a 60k car and a 45k car. Yes, personal preferences differ, but it's pretty easy to spend an extra 15k on a car like that for things that have really marginal utility.

But more importantly, I'd much rather spend small amounts on simple daily pleasures that I enjoy. The lattes definitely bring me joy, and it's not like they are somehow taking the place of quality time with my loved ones or bringing joy to other people.

> it's not like they are somehow taking the place of quality time with my loved ones or bringing joy to other people.

Then we want the same thing. Genuine happiness. But try to see it our way: that coffee money could go to working 5 hours less a week in a decade. That could be quality time with your family. One the other hand, two years into that latte — you're hitting withdrawal by 3:00pm. So maybe your just as happy overall as when you started.

Some psychologists define two types of happiness, the “experiencing” type (enjoying a latte in the present) and a “reflecting” happiness (the joy of looking back on self improvement). They aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive

> But, on the other hand, let's say I decide to forgo, say, a $60k car and instead get a still very nice $45k car.

Does anyone else have difficulty understanding why anyone would pay this much for a car? $45k is an order of magnitude more than I've ever paid for a car. Granted, I don't even like cars or driving, but the cars I've owned have been perfectly functional and any mechanical problems they've had still didn't add up to more than $10k.

While you can find some/many luxury features on non-luxury cars, it's rare to get everything you want on a car without those luxury prices (if you are buying new / lightly used, and you get outdated if you go too far out).

Let's list some of the features that modern cars have which significantly improve the utility of them to most drivers, and which are considered (by the market) to be worth 45k+

Blind spot monitors, rear/side cross traffic alert, auto-dimming mirrors, digital mirrors (for when you have tons of cargo blocking mirrors), Backup/360 Panoramic Cameras, Parking Sensors, heads up display (massive safety benefit), Satellite Radio, lane keep assist, radar cruise control, pre-collision and collision mitigation systems (active breaking), improved design / additional weight for safety in collisions, more and better airbags. Better seats, better audio system, Nicer infotainment systems with Carplay/Andriod Auto, Hybrid/PHEV/EV powertrain, better reliability (if you pay Toyota/Lexus/Honda/Acura tax), semi-autonomous driving (Tesla)

I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff, but having recently purchased a 42K car with nearly all of these features and upgrading from a life of being driven in shitty base model kias, I find the utility gained from purchasing an expensive car to be MASSIVE. Driving went from being a frustrating chore to a pleasurable experience.

The risk of death dropping by an order of magnitude is alone worth the money, let alone the massive comfort improvements.

> Granted, I don't even like cars or driving

Don’t you feel like you answered your own question there?

It’s like asking why anyone would spend money on tasty food when some cheap foods are all you need to survive.

> Does anyone else have difficulty understanding why anyone would pay this much for a car?

Not really. I mean I've never spent that much on a car and I'm not sure I ever will, but I did spent $5000 on a computer one time. That's an order of magnitude more than most people pay for computers, and while nice, it sure isn't 10x better than a $500 computer would have been. But I spent the $5k, because a) I had the money and b) I really really realllly wanted that computer.

EDIT: In case anyone is curious about the $5000 computer, it was this one back in 1999, and no, it was absolutely not worth it in the end: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g3/specs/powerb...

The utility increase of going from a ~2000 to a ~5000 computer can be significantly more than 10x depending on the domain.

For instance, if you buy a 3090 Nvidia GPU with 24 gigs of VRAM, you are capable of training AI models that are eminently more capable of getting publications accepted than an owner of a 3080 would. (Yes, distributed training is possible, no it is not always an option). Sure, it's nowhere near 10X in gaming or flop improvement, but the relative capabilities offered by a top of the line computer can become exponentially more useful compared to a significantly cheaper computer.

I've never spent that much for a computer either, but the computer is somewhat more understandable because presumably that price buys you performance that has utility. For the most part that extra money doesn't buy you utility in cars because speed limits can be easily reached, and exceeded, without it.

Utility has many dimensions.

How fast a car can go is one, how many people it can transport is another, how few emissions it creates is another.

Someone might be willing to drop big bucks on a Tesla Model X to haul their family around rather than a used Dodge Caravan ... not because it'll get them between Point A and Point B more quickly or because it can carry more people, but because it doesn't emit CO2.

Point being that we don't all value the same things, and while I wouldn't make the same decisions as other people much the time, I can certainly understand how people come to (sometime vastly) different decisions than me.

EDIT: I have an uncle who is an emergency room doctor, and I guess after seeing all of those car crash victims, his car-buying decisions have always been based entirely on safety. So he's driven an otherwise unlikely progression of cars, some luxury, some not, based on whatever seemed to be the safest new car available.

Don’t discount that a big part of the “utility” of a vehicle purchase for many people is the emotional and/or status part of it. One interesting business example is a cohort who travels a lot on business and bought a $65k truck as a commuter vehicle for sales work. A $15k hatchback would have worked but their clientele attached a lot of status to a big ol’ fancy ranch truck.

Not saying it’s rational but like you said, there’s a lot of different dimensions to utility

I wondered if that was going to be:

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powerma...

- because they were gorgeous!

Assuming the index fund did not go to 2% in the meantime (or wiped alongside the bank getting you only weak guarantee), and that said latte is not keeping you sane and at work. Or from getting Parkinson's later on.

So, where can I get that crystal ball that lets you know the impact of any action? That'd make a fortune and infinite boredom all a possibility.

That's a completely valid point. Investing always brings risk. Including the risk that you could be hit by a car tomorrow.

So does not investing. Or owning assets you do not directly use.

The one good thing in the article is that it shows the power of saving more as a burst. It actually limits many types of risk, but then you can only actually do that if you have a rich job... (It does not address existential risks enough. There are a few important ones it should as they're related to investments and reasonable saving rates.)

The advice to save on latte presumes you can actually afford it in the first place. Otherwise you're not saving, you're just not overspending.

I liken it to the advice that you should buy stuff used to save money, when you need it. There are many caveats to that.

Is anybody actually buying a latte for $3? Or are they buying a socially acceptable trip away from the office for 15 minutes to clear their head, now that smoking isn't really a thing?

>Is anybody actually buying a latte for $3?

I don't disagree that sitting down and having a latte with someone (or even by yourself) is sometimes social/a break/a chance to work with some WiFi/etc. But for a lot of people it's just part of a morning ritual.

Daily 3$ latte is most absurd example of saving strategy I seen and it gets repeated all the time. I don't even know people who would buy 3$ lattes daily. Most people get coffee in the office for free.

Also, you cant invest your saved 90$ to investment fund. Those require higher initial capital.

You know none, and I know several (and used to have that habit myself - I walked past the Starbucks every day on the way to work and would drop in and grab a drink), but the truth lies in the data: Starbucks' gross revenue is more than 25 billion dollars a year. Their US revenue would be 12 cups per year spread across all of the 150 million coffee drinkers in the US, but you already know it's not distributed that way - ergo, there is a heavy tail of frequent Starbucks consumers who purchase daily or more.

This is a silly simplification. You might have $446,368. You might have $0, because in the interim your kids had to go to college, or you buy a house, or you got sick and you live in developing country that can't help you pay for it.

Or maybe none of this happens, and annual 3% inflation cut the real value by roughly 75%, and you had to pay 20% taxes on top of that. You're left with around 90k of value, of which ~36k is your investment return. In the meantime, you gave up 18,250 lattes.

If we're going to be fair, we have to consider the 18,250 lattes too.

Over time you'll build up tolerance and that cup of coffee isn't worth the same for you. Now you're burning cash for energy that would have been there without caffeine. And to think you could have paid for your kids college instead.

A lot of experts expect significantly lower returns than 7% given modern valuations. So it's more like you have some chance at some unknown amount of compound interest. You're also assuming this person won't have to take the money out due to medical expenses or some other crises at a younger age.

But even if you are correct, that person ditching the latte isn't going to be spending that 446,368 in old age either because it isn't "frugal". If they have a decent income they just end up dying with 446,378 in the bank.

Obviously it pays to brew my own but, I was getting at the actual utility derived from the experience.

Can you spend ~$1100 in one instance, at the end of every year, that produces the same total utility of pleasure you would have experienced from a daily latte? I'd probably drop the latte but, everyone is different. I would still argue that there are plenty of times when splurging is worth it in the long run.

Given the human tendency for homeostasis, I imagine people who have daily lattes are about as happy as people who don't.

I never got into the habit of buying Starbucks coffee so lucky for me I guess?

I don't know, a daily cup of tea in my local cafe is an opportunity for some social contact as I work from home all the time. If I didn't do that then I would probably end up spending more to work in a shared office space.

You're right, that's a 100% worth it. But I think you missed a key point. Live frugally to have the financial independence to do things that genuinely make you happy.

I don't think I missed the point at all. I've been living it for the last 30 years.

Don't forget about inflation. That nominal 7% is I believe 4-5% in real returns.

That's plenty for my gold plated coffin.

I like your quick math. It finally convinced me to ditch daily latte!

inflation

About the car example...

I switched to more expensive SUVs, and all these are anti frugality:

1.Car parts are often smaller (such as wheels) and less sturdy. And more prone to fail.

2. When an SUV is being built, the price premium allows the manufacture to build it using higher end components.

3. SUVs have more space to move and pack things

4. Better odds of surviving a crash vs a car.

5. Higher seated position means a better view of oncoming traffic.

And so on ...

I think frugality needs to be subservient to "form factor". Something that you are going to be using a lot, needs to be reliable, comfortable, and practical. A price premium is often justified in achieving these.

I could probably go on. But the cheaper option is inferior.

>Better odds of surviving a crash vs a car.

Top gear did a report on this years ago. They were four times as likely to roll in a crash as a saloon car. The stopping distance was quite a bit longer as well.

There is also the issue of what happens when you run into a pedestrian.

> There is also the issue of what happens when you run into a pedestrian.

I guess that's not relevant to parent's analysis from the perspective of maximizing his/her utility.

I have a cheap and small car with 110k km. It still feels like new. Maintenance is super cheap. I'm worried that I will never have an excuse to get an EV.