Dude, use your head! Start drinking lattes today. Then, when you give them up next week you will realize a net savings of $1300!!! You could begin planning what to do with the money today:D.
If I may loosely summarize the thread thus far:
OP: These books insult my intelligence. How dumb do they think I am?
Everybody else: But lots of people really are that dumb.
When I was near-broke, the rules I lived by were:
Rule 1: Don’t spend any money, on anything, except when absolutely necessary.
Rule 2: Feel free to break Rule 1, but when you do, make sure it’s worth it. Every time you spend money on one thing, that’s that much less you have to spend on other things.
Not spending was the default, to be overridden at my discretion.
I’m better off now, but I’m still kinda sorta in that mode of not wanting to waste money. I’m not gonna spend 4 or 5 bucks on a cuppa coffee unless I expect to get 4 or 5 bucks’ worth of enjoyment out of it.
Oh, and Rule 3: Don’t borrow money unless you really need to and have a good idea how you’re going to pay it back. And yes, using a credit card counts as borrowing money.
You probably don’t smoke, so this won’t be helpful, but I was amazed at the extra money I had the first time I quit. It wasn’t just the cost of the cigarettes though, it was the other things I’d buy when I was picking up the smokes.
How often does anyone go to a grocery store and walk out with the one thing they went to buy?
I also saved myself a ton of money on books, when I stopped insisting that everything had to be a new first edition. Now I buy used, and if I have to – someday – I’ll remember where the library is. 
I’ve noticed that too, financial advisors mentioning lattes first thing.
For a good espresso grinder, yes indeed. You could just maybe dip under a $100 if you get very lucky at E-Bay or a car boot sale but definetely not $20. A $20 whirly blade grinder won’t make very good espresso and will damage your machine if you’re unlucky. (We’re talking espresso machines-I don’t know what happens with stove top contraptions. Those in my opinion make very nice strong coffee, but not espresso and therefore not proper lattes either.)
I agree with your general point, though. Even with the expensive coffee machinery it works out cheaper.
I was just making the not so important point that good coffee doesn’t costs “pennies”. It can be cheaper (and better) than Starbucks but it’s still going to cost. It’s worth it to me personally but I economise on other things.
Old but good cliche: You can have anything you want but not everything you want.
I’d have to disagree with you on that point - stovetop espresso makers make excellent espresso. My mom has one of those espresso makers that cost something in the area of $500-$600 (hey, she can afford it - why not?), and she asked for one of the cheaper stovetop espresso makers because all her really expensive machine was making was coffee, and not espresso. She’s had it fixed a couple of times, but it just doesn’t make the same quality coffee my $30 stovetop maker does. But it could be the brand type. What type do you use?
Oh dear, talk about hijacking. Now we’re onto espresso makers…
I have this one which is a lot cheaper than your mother’s and makes what I see and taste as real espresso (after a bit of practice).
Maybe it’s what your used to? If she had stove top before, maybe that’s what she’s expecting. Espresso machine also take a bit of practice to get it right. I also want to stress that stove tops make excellent coffee. I just don’t call it espresso. You don’t get that creamy layer on the top for instance (if you do, tell me how on earth you did that) and the flavour is generally different.
Okay, token effort to stay on topic: It just goes to show, maybe if you tried the cheaper option you’d even like it better. Or not. A matter of taste.
Alright, I promise to stop yakking about my espresso maker after this one little post. Really. Strangely enough, I do get that frothy layer on the top. It’s not really as creamy as comes off a machine, but I’ve still got it somehow. I’m not sure how - perhaps it has something to do with the type of water I’m using, and if my water is somehow creamy, I probably don’t want to know why. 
But yeah, either way - if you make your own stuff, you’ll probably save money because both are great investments, and you don’t have to pay for someone else’s machines over and over again.
My grandpa used to preach the “80/50” rule, and living by it got him from an immigrant with a less than a hundred bucks when he landed to a man who left each of his 9 children $65,000+ cash when he died, and that didn’t include the paid off house and very nice income for life he left for grandma. And this was a guy who didn’t even have the equivalent of a High School diploma.
And, no, he never hit a lottery, married an heiress, or became some great financial wizard: he just believed in working steadily, living simply, and saving at least ten percent of every dollar he made. He took the first job he could find after he arrived – basically a grunt laborer at a greenhouse – and stayed there until he died, learning the business and moving up to greater responsibilities, and saving his money to the point that when the previous owner wanted to retire, Granpa was able to buy the business.
Your genuine Horatio Alger/American dream story.
Anyway, the 80/50 rule:
Throughout your life there will many physical possessions you will want. Usually you will know exactly what will make you happiest – whether that’s a Bose bedside radio or an ankle length sable coat or a brandnew “McMansion” in the best part of town.
What Granpa believed was that if you were willing to look around at the options, or wait a bit for a sale, or hunt around for a used version, you could instead get something that fit the same niche but it would only give you 80% of the satisfaction…however you’d pay no more than 50% as much for it.
So instead of the trendy Bose radio w/CD player, maybe you’ll find out that a knockoff brand sounds virtually as good, but it doesn’t have a cd player, and it costs $200 rather than $600. At which point you weigh what matters to you. If you already have a cd player in your living room entertainment center, do you need another one? How much does having the ‘right’ brand name label matter to you? Can you be happy having the slightly less perfect choice plus the extra $400 bucks in your pocket?
And so forth. Maybe you find out you can be happy with a 3/4 length sable instead of the floor sweeper. Maybe a well built “older” house with four bedrooms and 2 and 1/2 baths would “live in” almost as well as the six bedroom/seven bathroom Mansion you were eyeing. How about picking up a used set of weights at a garage sale?
Or…maybe not. Some things just genuinely matter to you and you absolutely have to have a particular brand of running shoes or else you’ll always find it a downer to put them on and go run, in which case, buy what you really wanted.
But his theory was that overall in life, 80% of ‘perfection’ was more than enough to be satisfied, and the 50% savings in cost on all the things were ‘perfection’ was critical to your happiness would put you leaps and bounds ahead financially.
Now, that is good advice. Thanks, StarvingButStrong.
OMG! I’ve been in New England too long because I thought, who pays more than $5 for a grinder/hoagie/sub sandwich?? Speaking of things I could afford to cut out… 
This thread really hits home. When I moved in with my bf, I was amazed at the amount of money that he was spending on dining out and credit card late fees. I don’t mind spending money to go out for dinner every now and then, but I’d much rather us go out for a nice dinner together that him just stopping and grabbing take-out because, “There’s nothing at home to eat.” Also, by advising him to pay at least the minimum on all credit cards the second he gets the statement email, we can avoid those annoying 30 dollar late payment fees. It’s one thing to miss a payment because you don’t have the money to pay it; It is quite another to miss a payment because you forget it.
I’ve done my job: There is always food in the apartment for us to eat. We’re enjoying the extra money and putting it away.
I’ve had the exact same argument with a similar type of article that shows up a lot in bone-headed women’s magazines. (Bone-headed modifying magazines, not women.) “Lose 20 pounds right away! Here’s all you do!” It normally suggests that you trade in that morning doughnut for a yogurt (and it’s been years since I’ve had a doughnut); Give up that afternoon candy bar (Nope, don’t do that either), Switch from regular soft drinks to diet (I dropped soft drinks for water decades ago), have the grilled chicken and baked potato instead of fried chicken with french fries, etc. Yup, they’re all good advice, and individual ones can probably make a big difference for somebody if it convinces them to change that habit. But seeing as how I typically don’t engage in any of the practices they’re talking about, it’s a bit annoying to see it headlined with “Here’s how anyone can lose dozens of pounds almost effortlessly!”
Okay, I get it. The lesson is: start being wasteful now (with money, time, calories, or whatever), so that you’ll have something you can easily give up when you need to.
I was in debt once, I got myself out. It was tough and simple. Tough, in that I was fighting the high interest rates, simple in that I paid off the small debts first, so I could then concentrate on the big ones. There was no grand or secret plan, I just bit the bullet and did it. I have credit cards. I use them occasionally to buy lunch and the occasional Christmas gifts, just to keep them active. Whenever the card companies send me “offers” to increase the limit, I cut them in half and toss them. Higher limits = larger debts. Credit cards will break you if you let them. The other thing I did was to get a house. Rent just puts money in the landlord’s pocket. With property, a lot of the money goes to the bank as interest, but when you’re done, you own it. With rent, you never do.
I already know I am not a “saver”. So, I have a portion of my pay automatically deducted and put into a thrift saving plan. If I don’t have it on hand, I won’t spend it. I get savings bonds too, for the same reason. The returns are somewhere between modest and reasonable. I’ll never be Bill Gates, but I won’t be starving either.
After all this, I can still go to Starbucks any time I please.
It’s not only the profligate non-savers who drink daily lattes.
So, according to 98% of public radio stations surveyed, do their listeners who don’t pledge contributions. They’re doing their semi-annual pledge drive right now at KCRW–I guarantee you that you’ll hear the word “latte” at least once during every pledge break.