[jeremydeanlakey]

When I was a student, buying lattes would have significantly hurt my freedom. My stress level would be higher and I may have struggled to graduate before running out of money.

After building a career, worrying about lattes was a waste of effort. But buying a nice car would have limited my freedom. For example, I would not have bought as much investment real estate and I would probably be >$500K poorer.

But worrying about buying new cars probably won't make sense for me soon.

Avoiding lattes and new cars was, in fact, very important for my finances (in the past, but not now). The article acknowledges the importance of individual circumstances:

> What should determine personal spending is the totality of the buyer’s financial circumstances.

But the headline risks misleading people.