Your post was great until you started framing that spending money you don't have was evidence of freedom. Whether you like it or not, when you do that you are g

Your post was great until you started framing that spending money you don't have was evidence of freedom. Whether you like it or not, when you do that you are giving money power over you that it shouldn't have. If you make almost no money, but can be content with the basics you mentioned and spend less than you earn, then yes you are more free than someone with millions who is obsessed with getting more. But if you can't help but spend money you don't have on things you don't need, money will continue to be a problem for you and something already has power over you. Maybe you don't have a money problem, maybe you have a money problem and a coffee problem. The real problem I have with the author's mentality is that in real life it seems like the coffee is the symptom, not the disease. It's an easily identifiable marker that there are probably a lot of other things you are wasting money on. Sure the coffee only adds up to a couple years worth of income at the end of your life as the article points out, but everything else adds up quick, and you wonder how you aren't really ever earning enough to start saving at all. For the author, who presumably makes millions a year, and his clients who do the same, it's good to not get tripped up on the small stuff to focus properly on the bigger picture. Doesn't mean that advice applies the same to the rest of us.