Monday, March 18, 2013

Again with the lattes

You who are young and broke, did you know that buying coffee out every day costs more than not doing so? For what is, I estimate, the ten billionth time, the NYT is passing along this useful information.


Having already, in the linked WWPD post, listed my objections to this advice (coming, let me reiterate, from the standpoint of, I'm not commuting and I live in the woods, and thus am not defending a personal daily-coffee-out habit), I won't repeat the whole thing. 

This, though, is worth repeating: the first step, frugality-wise, should always be to cut that which you wouldn't miss. The money you spend on things (or upgrades) you don't notice. What that is will vary from person to person, and maybe it'll be coffee (or switching from lattes to drip), but chances are, if you're getting coffee out, this is something you actively enjoy. If that's where you cut (as opposed to, for example, realizing that there's no particular reason to buy t-shirts from J.Crew rather than Old Navy), you'll feel you're depriving yourself. 

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