3 ms·

Great job of completely missing the fucking point. Also, while lattes may be a luxury from your standpoint--personally, I prefer black coffee--expensive purcha

by cs137 4y ago

Great job of completely missing the fucking point. Also, while lattes may be a luxury from your standpoint--personally, I prefer black coffee--expensive purchases, for white collar workers, are not. You have to play those "status games" or your infinitesimal chances of getting promotions will go straight to zero. It's not always lattes. It could be something else: eating lunch with the popular kids, drinking with the bosses, etc. But you have to do it if you want any chance at all of having a career. Furthermore, you need to take a course in remedial math. To be able to afford a starter house in the U.S. where there are decent jobs, you need to skip about (wait for it) a hundred thousand lattes. That's about 5,000 months (416 years!) of forgone coffee. The life expectancy from age 20 is about 58 years. Wrong; play again. It's funny how Boomers and cappies love to talk about our need to take "personal responsibility" for surviving in the shit-ass world they've left us, but never consider that they should take responsibility (or be held responsible, because that's Bolshevism!) for having made the world the way it is.

zpeti 4y ago
If everyone took this advice, then the status games would change, because everyone would be more frugal and it wouldn't be about eating lunch with the popular kids. But because society as a collective has decided on these games, and decided that you need credit cards, and need lattes that cost about $0.10 in raw materials at home, then everyone has to play these games. Most importantly, if everyone refused getting mortgages, house prices would crash. But because mortgages (and low interested by the fed) have made housing more affordable to everyone, they've pushed up prices to where you're back to square one, except you have to pay interest as well as the house's price, rather than waiting until you've saved up the price. This goes back 50-100 years though. Here's an another option: start your own business, so you don't have to play these career games. There are a million options, it's just that they are harder, especially on a personal discipline level, which is not very popular these days.
sifar 4y ago
It is not just the $50 latte but what it signifies. That expensive phone plan, car lease, gym membership, subscriptions etc. Together they would represent a few months rent which you would save otherwise. Invest that and in a decade it would matter.
deleted 4y ago
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by cs137 4y ago

zpeti 4y ago

If everyone took this advice, then the status games would change, because everyone would be more frugal and it wouldn't be about eating lunch with the popular kids. But because society as a collective has decided on these games, and decided that you need credit cards, and need lattes that cost about $0.10 in raw materials at home, then everyone has to play these games. Most importantly, if everyone refused getting mortgages, house prices would crash. But because mortgages (and low interested by the fed) have made housing more affordable to everyone, they've pushed up prices to where you're back to square one, except you have to pay interest as well as the house's price, rather than waiting until you've saved up the price. This goes back 50-100 years though. Here's an another option: start your own business, so you don't have to play these career games. There are a million options, it's just that they are harder, especially on a personal discipline level, which is not very popular these days.

sifar 4y ago

It is not just the $50 latte but what it signifies. That expensive phone plan, car lease, gym membership, subscriptions etc. Together they would represent a few months rent which you would save otherwise. Invest that and in a decade it would matter.

deleted 4y ago

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