Why the fixation on coffee? If you bought a $5 latte every day you went to work, you’re look at, what, a bit more than $1200/year? If you make $150K/year, that is a perfectly reasonable outlay that won’t compromise your retirement plans. The key is having a balanced life. If you can’t help but buy every shiny thing you see, then that’ll be a problem. But the advice of these Internet personalities is just as poorly balanced in the direction of asceticism. Obviously this is a non-starter for nearly every normal person.

I think the problem is that people are fascinated by schemes that are extreme and highly unbalanced. Even the idea of FIREing… why are so many people obsessed with the idea of retiring early? Why not find a job that isn’t soul sucking and do that? Hey, maybe you get paid less, but maybe you’d have some coworkers you actually like and don’t mind spending time with. You have to be patient with your life to do that, and patience and balance aren’t sexy or exciting, I guess.

Agreed. Compare coffee to having a child. Daycare expenses + everything else, and coffee is a negligible expense, almost a rounding error.

In fact, that's probably one of the largest "lifestyle inflations" that happens.

You mean getting a child is one of the largest "lifestyle inflations" that happen?

The other thing so many overlook is that achieving your FIRE goals by living like a pauper means you have to continue to live like a pauper in retirement to make the numbers work. Otherwise, if you want to live those retirement dreams, plan on saving a whole lot more than the 25x the influencers tell you you need.

I'm not fixated on coffee? I said eating out every day and coffee as two arbitrary examples.

I think most people, definitely myself, find happiness in simplicity. Mindlessly consuming more and more luxury items as you progress in your career seems empty, even if you can afford it. And anyway, I prefer making my own food because it's less wasteful, cheaper, and I can make it how I want it

The difference between someone with a high paying job who doesn't retire early, and one who does retire early, has nothing to do with eating out every night or buying coffee. That's the point.

There's a big difference between spending, say, $50 a day and spending $100 per day, in terms of how much money is needed to retire and how much you can save.

A tech worker might make $200 a day after taxes. $5 on coffee isn't huge but in NYC etc it's pretty easy to blow $60 a day eating out and $100/day on rent, and that stuff can add up to where you hardly save anything.

Plus the biggest factor in how much you need to retire is what your expenses are. Significantly lowering your expenses boosts the savings rate but it also lowers that target number.

For me, it's a question of values. I'd rather live frugally and have more freedom than trade away more of my time to have more stuff and convenience in my life. For others, the balance is different.

I get what you're saying, but simply put - that coffee isn't going to do sh!t compared to being able to save 60% of your combined take-home paycheck, because you're living rent-free in your parents fourth home / inherited apartment / moms basement.

But it's much easier for these influencers to use these simple and everyday examples of how to save money.