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Coffee has for years now been the straw man burned in effigy to the gods of fiscal responsibility. It\u2019s the reason you\u2019re not a millionaire, why you can\u2019t afford a house, whatever it is that you are supposed to want but don\u2019t have, there\u2019s some self-proclaimed financial guru out there who will tell you the reason you don\u2019t have it is because you drink coffee (and occasionally order the avocado toast<\/a>). It\u2019s an exceptionally dumb argument made even dumber with each new iteration, like a stupidity phoenix rising from its own steaming, coiled ashes.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t always just a quippy soundbite for some rich nitwit to tell you how to not spend your money. In a recent article, Vice traces the history of the coffee vs. savings platitude and finds that the origins had a much more positive bent.<\/p>\n According to Vice<\/a>, it all begins with Grandma Rose, the grandmother of financial guru David Bach. Back before her kids had kids, Grandma Rose worked at a department store, living paycheck to paycheck until she \u201cfigured that being poor sucked and decided to become rich.\u201d Her plan to escape this lifestyle was to put \u201c50 cents into a coffee can each week, then [deposit] those hard-earned savings into a brokerage account at the end of the year.\u201d This, as the story goes, led to Grandma Rose\u2019s financial security.<\/p>\n This quaint little story about how making a small change can have a big impact (if you were lucky enough to be born a 20th century white privileged American etc.) was the inspiration for Bach\u2019s first book Smart Women Finish Rich<\/em>, one that launched his financial guru\u2019ing career. But after a 20 year game of telephone, the story has mutated into something more heinous and weaponized against whatever generation the olds feel need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. In its most recent iteration, Suze Orman\u2014who saves 20% off her name by not writing the i\u2014has stated that she would not \u201cinsult [herself] by wasting money that way.\u201d (All her insults are reserved for the people she is being paid to pretend to help.)<\/p>\n Many financial advisors are now saying that focusing on small changes is an ineffective strategy. Our focus instead should be on larger decisions like \u201csaving $150,000 on a house purchase or negotiating a major raise.\u201d Others see comments like Orman\u2019s as some mix of nonsensical and classist (and also definitely racist, because the whole history of property ownership in America is racist<\/a>). Senior researcher at the Economic Policy Institute Elise Gould notes that even those with \u201cstable, middle-class incomes\u201d find themselves living paycheck to paycheck.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a world where lots of people can\u2019t find $400 for some unexpected expense, like fixing their car, I think a lot fewer people are spending money on lattes to begin with,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like, who are we even talking to?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like with most things, this wisdom from the \u201csimpler times\u201d doesn\u2019t track with modern life. Back in the day, Grandma Rose could easily save 50 cents a week to pull herself out of poverty or work a part-time job flipping burgers to pay her way through college (and then some!), but those options simply are available to the generation currently being admonished for not owning homes and having too much debt. Today\u2019s reality for prospective home owners is incalculably fucked<\/a>, except people\u00a0have\u00a0<\/em>calculated it, and the numbers are tragic<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fuck a Suze Orman. Grandma Rose\u2019s house is now worth 30x what she paid for it and she and her realtor won\u2019t take a penny less. There\u2019s only one thing that\u2019s going to help people in America level the playing field when it comes to home ownership and generational wealth accrual, and it\u2019s fast on the way<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the meantime, we drink coffee.<\/p>\n Zac Cadwalader<\/a>\u00a0is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas.\u00a0Read more Zac Cadwalader\u00a0on Sprudge<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post A Brief History Of Not Buying Coffee As Financial Advice<\/a> appeared first on Sprudge<\/a>.<\/p>\n Source: Coffee News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Coffee has for years now been the straw man burned in effigy to the gods of fiscal responsibility. It\u2019s the reason you\u2019re not a millionaire, why you can\u2019t afford a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[63,45,65,47,61,49,59,55,57],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2242,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions\/2242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}