How many different services advertise that they cost less than your daily cup of coffee? Of course, they don’t mean Folgers drip in your skanky old mug – they are referring to the $3-4 coffee at one of the ubiquitous coffee shops like Cairbou or Starbucks. Still…that doesn’t seem like much cash. But especially for students, it adds quite a bit to student loans, as Javanomics 101: Today’s Coffee Is Tomorrow’s Debt, points out in the Washington Post. I love cafes – I think they are great. But it is certainly a coup for coffee shops to have accustomed us to thinking that it is a trivial cost, when it really isn’t. We complain about movie tickets being $10, but that’s 2 hours of real entertainment if you don’t pick a dud. Everyone will always spend money on non-necessities, which is fine, but coffee as a daily habit can really rack it up:
To quantify the craziness, Lim distributes coffee-consumption charts. One shows that a five-day-a-week $3 latte habit on borrowed money can cost $4,154, when repaid over 10 years.
Maybe cut back to once or twice a week? It’ll make the trip feel more special, and you won’t regret it two years down the road.
Good point !
But, I think that real life quality comes from daily habits. Ok, expensive coffee is not one of my habits, but I certainly have other habits that could be classified as unnecessary. I’ll try to make the same analysis for my small luxuries.
Left by Robson on June 18th, 2009