[swimorsinka]

I have a knee jerk reaction against posts like this, mostly because of the reference to $4 cups of coffee.

While the point is true, I think your time is best spent worrying about other things.

90% of money problems seem to come from a few things: * Expensive cars - bought with debt. * Expensive housing - again bought with debt. * Expensive schooling - even more debt.

I've never bought (pun intended) the argument that dining out in any form (including coffee) even comes close to these other items. Even if you're eating out 3-5 nights per week, it's just not expensive enough. I guess if you're always feeding a family of 5 and buying expensive bottles of wine while you eat, then maybe.

I also think that time spent worrying about trivial stuff like coffee would be better spent trying to make more money.

[throw0101a]

> 90% of money problems seem to come from a few things: * Expensive cars - bought with debt. * Expensive housing - again bought with debt. * Expensive schooling - even more debt.

Nick Maggiulli made a good observation in a 2020 weblog post:

> All the expense tracking and goal setting in the world cannot make up for an insufficient balance.

* https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-biggest-lie-in-personal-fin...

The bottom 40-50% of US households can either barely or not-at-all cover the basic necessities: housing, food, transportation, healthcare. Note that this doesn’t include any money for education, clothing, or any form of entertainment.

> That’s why the biggest lie in personal finance is that you can be rich if you just cut your spending. And the financial media feeds this lie by telling you to stop spending $5 a day on coffee so that you can become a millionaire.

[…]

> Instead of trying to convince everyone that they can be rich, we should be trying to convince everyone that they can be not poor. Now that would be a start to undoing the biggest lie in personal finance.

[Bilal_io]

It depends on whether you see a $500 ($4 * 21 business days * 12 months - exaggerated $500 for drinking coffee at home) a year in saving as big of not. For some people it can be an emergency fund, for others it's 2-3 expensive dinners for 2.

The issue is that you also mentioned dining in general, which takes that $1k of coffee to a completely level.

Bottom line is drinking coffee at home and cooking save you a lot of money.

[nicbou]

Cooking definitely do. My groceries bill is around 150€/month. You'd need about 750€/month to eat out twice a day. The difference is 7200€/year, a pretty hefty chunk of your post-tax income.

[curation]

Yes! I did not eat in a restaurant for 15 years. It helped my family never did so I did not miss it. Perhaps a tip for people trying to future-proof their kids for economic depression.

[nicbou]

I wrote a long guide about saving money in Germany. It made me look more seriously at my budget.

- Eating out is a big expense. I eat quite well on 5€ a day. Eating out would cost me about 25€ a day. That's a 7k€ per year difference.

- Housing is a huge, but mostly unavoidable expense. Yet my rent went from 950€/month to 550€/month when I moved out of the centre.

- Health insurance is another big expense. At one point I paid more for insurance than rent, because I'm self-employed.

- The things I tend to skimp on (subscriptions, quality food) make nearly no difference.

[ChuckNorris89]

Just out of curiosity how and what do you eat to fit in 5 Euros a day?

I'm thrifty as well but that is stretching it.

I mean, I eat meat and only buy organic free range stuff if I can, which is of course, more expensive, but as long as I make a dev salary, why would I eat lower quality stuff to save a few bucks if I can afford the best quality?

I feel like when it comes to what you put inside your body you should not make compromises if you can. There are other areas in your life you can save money(car, subscription services, eating out, fancy clothes), but food is not one of them, as long as you can afford it.

[dgellow]

I'm located in Hamburg, we spend less than 40€ per week for 2 on groceries, so that's below 6€ per day for a couple.

Every Saturday we make a plan for the next week. For example last week we had (note that we don't buy prepared meals):

(Day: lunch / dinner)

Monday: Salad + egg + wrap / Udon soup (spring onions, asian noodles, tofu, miso, egg)

Tuesday: Salad + beans + wrap / Chili sin carne + rice

Wednesday: Salad + veg. schnitzel + wrap / Sweet potato curry

Thursday: Salad + roasted vegetables + wrap / Backed potatoes + mix of vegetables

Friday: Porridge + apples / Carrots in oven + smashed potatoes

Saturday: Pancakes + leftovers / Vegetables soup + bread

Sunday: Brunch (fruits, joghurts, cheese, bread, etc) / Pizza

We now have a list of maybe 20-25 recipes we rotate between, cooking takes a bit of time but that's something I really like to do to relax. I personally do not eat the morning and my life partner eats some simple cereals + joghurt + fruits. Food like chili sin carne or a curry is something ridiculously cheap to do and is very easy to do in huge quantities. Also we really like to eat wraps filled with salad for lunch as you can see :). If you alternate the filling and salad sauces that's not too boring and doesn't result in an after-lunch food comas!

We buy almost everything at Lidl and do not eat meat.

[nicbou]

I cook everything myself. Basic ingredients are cheap, so I don't need to be careful. This budget includes lots of wine and cheese. No compromises there.

[ChuckNorris89]

Ok, but could you please give some examples on your daily meals that fit in those 5 Euros as I'm genuinely curious?

Basic ingredients are cheap as long as we ignore quality and where I live, you're not getting any good quality wine and cheese in your 5 Euros a day.

Cheap supermarket budget brands full of chemicals, hormones and preservatives? Yes. Quality stuff? No.

[noir_lord]

5 euro comes to about 4.34 a head, in my house there is me, my partner and her son so assuming ~£13 a day - we probably don't even go that high most days.

As for diet - A typical day would like this.

Breakfast.

(them) Home made pancakes for breakfast with a drizzle of honey. (me) Muesli.

Lunch, Salad Wrap/veggie heavy (other half is vegetarian) or KaposztáS TéSzta (cabbage/noodles).

Evening Meal - Spaghetti Carbonara or Tuna Steaks/veggies.

My other half loves cooking (she's hungarian) and it's completely the norm that for her/where she is from to just do everything from scratch.

Lots of fresh seasonal veggies, lots of soups, noodles, pasta etc - it's a good diet tbh and seems to suit my health issues.

[nicbou]

https://nicolasbouliane.com/recipes

[ChuckNorris89]

Thanks Nic

[hectormalot]

> Cheap supermarket budget brands full of chemicals, hormones and preservatives? Yes. Quality stuff, no.

This is in the EU, regulation basically prevents excesses like that in most cases.

Furthermore, price doesn’t have to be a predictor of quality. E.g. LIDL/Aldi (budget chains) commonly win awards for best vegetables.

I used to spend ~150-200 on food per month when I was living by myself and wasn’t strictly managing it for low cost. Now with a family of 3, we spend 300-400€ a month on groceries (incl bread and meat) and are never holding back on anything because of price.

So, 5€ per day doesn’t sound unreasonable even in the Netherlands. Note: we eat vegetarian 5 out of 7 days, without that we’d probably spend 100-150 more.

Edit: I get that this doesn’t work everywhere. When I lived in the US (NYC) and tried to cook my own meals I couldn’t believe 1) how few supermarkets there were and 2) how high prices for basic food were. Eating out was basically cheaper :/

[hycaria]

Portion of rice / pasta / bread or derivates /other cereal with veggies => endless variations and very cheap.

During this season it’s also soup time. Our favorite is butternut two oignons a bit of butter and cream or coco milk. Super cheap. Makes 2 to 4 servings depending on dilution and veggie size. Add 1€ for bread (for 2). And bit of cheese and / or fruit.

[id]

>I eat quite well on 5€ a day. Eating out would cost me about 25€ a day. That's a 7k€ per year difference.

But the thing is, a lot of people could easily make additional 7k€ if they switched jobs / renegotiated their salary / tried out other ways to make more money. Especially if you enjoy eating out from time to time, it's probably not worth the effort to try and save a few thousand not doing it when there are other, much more impactful choices to be made.

[bradleyjg]

Underrated point. There are people for whom investing energy into saving money has a decent ROI, but if you are reading HN that’s probably not you.

Instead it’s far more likely the most efficient way to get more money is to work on your career and not learn how to cook well, fix your own car, or extend your commute way out into the country.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have a hobby of cooking, if that’s what you love—go for it, but be honest with yourself. If it was about getting to FIRE you should order in a pizza and working on leetcode.

[MaxBarraclough]

> FIRE

Having googled this I presume you meant Financial Independence Retire Early.

[nicbou]

Where do y'all work where an extra €7k post tax is so easy to reach for?

[zemvpferreira]

It's not easy but it's not that hard either. My girlfriend is up around 20K/year this year simply from changing job and negotiating firmly. This coming from a previous salary of maybe 20K. (Lisbon, Portugal where 40K is a pretty good wage)

[seppel]

> - Health insurance is another big expense. At one point I paid more for insurance than rent, because I'm self-employed.

Health insurance is also really expensive as an employee, but people dont notice because half of the cost is completely hidden for them ("paid" by the employer) and the other half also never reaches their bank account but is on listed in the monthly payroll notification.

[BrandoElFollito]

Yes but all the other deductions are expensive as well (retirement, death insurance etc.). Why specifically pointing out the health insurance part?

It is as compulsory as the others.

[seppel]

Death insurance is not compulsory and I'm not sure why the OP pointed out health insurance. I was just pointing out that it is expensive, independent whether you are self-employed or not.

[nicbou]

Depends on where you live. Note the currency used.

[seppel]

I was talking about Germany.

[elcapitan]

Is that guide online somewhere? Edit: Found it :) https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/saving-money-germany

[nicbou]

Yep! I also repeat some of the advice here, but in a different context: https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/cost-of-living

[brailsafe]

I think quality food is a no-brainer, but convenience eating, like you calculated, is an easy bad habit to develop. If you're deliberate about when, where, and why you're eating out, than it seems unlikely to be a problem though.

I'm curious, what role does health insurance play in Germany? I'm been curious about the prospect of at least temporarily living in Germany (from Canada), but don't have a great sense of that yet. Here we have socialized medical, but you'd get insurance to cover out of country emergencies, regular cost of drugs, and dental, among other things.

[nicbou]

It's much better than what I had in Québec. It's also proportionate to your income.

https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/german-health-insurance

[rorykoehler]

What do you eat that you can eat on €5/day? I am no where close to that.

[nicbou]

Berlin

[rorykoehler]

I live in Berlin too...

[nicbou]

I'm not very careful with what I buy. If you cook from scratch, it's really cheap. You don't have to change your diet or anything.

Snacks can be a bit more expensive, but it's still (literal) peanuts in the budget.

I do shop at Lidl, and I do pick the store brand most of the time. However, I don't consciously try to save money on groceries. Good food is good living.

[rorykoehler]

€5 gets me a typical breakfast with a little to spare. Coffee is around 75c per cup * 2 (good beans and oat milk). Avocado is €1 and 3 eggs also €1. That's already €3.50. Then add some olive oil prob just 20c but it adds up and maybe some dark chocolate and you're close to €4 already.

[tasuki]

Should be easy to eat it then ;)

[gen220]

Unless you’re really special, your grocery bills at the end of the year will dominate your takeout and restaurants bills combined.

This was an eye opener to me, after meticulously tracking my finances for a year.

There’s two takeaways. (1) on the days where you don’t feel like cooking, do not feel bad about ordering take out or dining out. (2) consider how you can minmax your staple grocery items, by buying in bulk, joining a food co-op. Etc

You win a lot more by shaving dimes off every pound of oatmeal, integrated over a lifetime. And it’s recurring returns on a one-time investment of finding the best source in your neighborhood.

Buy the coffee every once in a while if it brings you joy. Everything in moderation, of course.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

> Unless you’re really special, your grocery bills at the end of the year will dominate your takeout and restaurants bills combined.

You'd be surprised at how much a lot of people eat out. As of 2016, total spending among all Americans was higher on restaurants than on groceries. The average American (although not necessarily the median one) spends more on restaurants than groceries.

[warlog]

Probably inverted in 2020.

[OJFord]

> your grocery bills at the end of the year will dominate your takeout and restaurants bills combined.

Only if days you cook for yourself (heavily) dominate days you order a takeaway.

Also, 'groceries' probably accounts for a lot more alcohol (assuming you drink of course!) really tilting the balance. Not least because if you order a takeaway you're probably still drinking something from your grocery order.

[gen220]

It doesn’t need to heavily dominate! Especially in WFH days, where you eat breakfast and lunch at home.

If you eat three meals a day and have staple breakfasts and lunches (for us it’s oatmeal/muesli in the morning with fruits, sandwiches for lunch) and only ever order in for dinner, at least ⅔ of your meals each day automatically come from “groceries”. And home cooked dinners are usually the most expensive meal of the day (if they feature the typical dinner meats).

Trading off for takeout, many restaurants are overjoyed to give you two servings in the name of one, and that makes at least one meal for the next day! At least this is how it works for us.

Alcohol is a good point though! It can definitely make groceries look more expensive than they are.

[ryandrake]

This thread made me go check, since I obsessively track my expenses in Quicken. My grocery bill has been consistently 4-5X my restaurant spending for basically as far back as I have data (over 20 years). So at least this anecdote supports OP's anecdote!

[id]

Is alcohol not considered a grocery? I don't spend that much on alcohol, maybe it's 2% of my grocery spending. But even if it was 10%, I don't see myself keeping a separate mental account for it.

Maybe let me add, when I buy a bottle of wine, it's a $5 bottle.

[OJFord]

No I explicitly was considering it a grocery? I wrote:

> 'groceries' probably accounts for a lot more alcohol

[nicbou]

> your grocery bills at the end of the year will dominate your takeout and restaurants bills combined

I spend 150€/month on groceries. Reducing that would be really difficult, and involve changing my diet and buying cheaper ingredients. Even then, I wouldn't save enough to make a difference.

A restaurant meal is 10-15€.

[UncleMeat]

Most people aren’t spending so little. My wife and I are at like $150-$200 per week if you are including alcohol. And we are cooking almost every dinner from raw ingredients.

[nicbou]

We live on different continents

[globular-toast]

Like any problem you should always start by tackling the big low-hanging fruit. Then work your way up as far as you can be bothered.

For most people the biggest thing is a car. If you can not own a car at all then you're laughing. But if you have to then I recommend buying old, undesirable cars from good brands like Honda, Toyota or Ford, but always research the model first as every brand has made stinkers over the years. You can drive these cars until they are scrap and pay a fraction in depreciation that you would have on a newer or more desirable car.

Of course, if you want to own a car then by all means do it. But just be honest with yourself that it's not an essential thing and you'll be making sacrifices elsewhere for it.

It's totally possible that the lowest hanging fruit on some people's trees is things like coffee. But the important thing is to record your expenses and budget so you can identify what the lowest hanging fruit it.

Also, just because something is a bigger expense, doesn't mean it's a lower hanging fruit. Most people spend most of their money on housing. But you need a roof over your head. You don't need coffee from your local hipster outlet.

[curation]

I agree. I retired at 35 by saving 90% of what I made and lucked into living in Toronto at the beginning of the property ladder in the 90s. Like a diet, it's more about the determination to live with what seems like privation but really it is just being free of all kinds of crap - furniture, creams, soaps, appliances, clothes, decor - that provide social acceptance but ends in indentured servitude.

[mastazi]

> I've never bought (pun intended) the argument that dining out in any form (including coffee) even comes close to these other items.

Well it's easy to know if that argument holds true or not... just track your expenses. It holds true for me.[1] Once I started WFH during COVID my weekly expenses got in much better shape.

[1] Edit: combined lunch + coffee + snacks during the work week were equivalent to about 15% of my rent (and rent is high where I live). I did not include weekend dining out with friends/family in that figure, or it would have been even higher. (The reason is that during the work week I always get food or coffee from the same merchants so it was easier to track, but during weekend it varies more).

Edit 2: solution was to pack lunch/snacks, and use the office coffee maker. Packed lunch is less than half of the previous amount, and office coffee is free. Now the figure is about 5% of my rent.

Edit 3: a positive side effect is that my snacks started consisting more of things like an apple or an orange, rather than the crappy processed-food sugary snacks I was buying at the cafe.

[aadillpickle]

Haha in the original draft of this post I had "make more money/work on yourself" as one of the points but took it out - most people seem to know the big stuff like don't make big purchases you can't afford. What seems to be less common knowledge amongst my friends at least is how much little things like eating out often has a financial impact on them since it's harder to see. We aren't programmed to understand compounding very well so I wanted to highlight that in the post somehow. This could just be my very young self talking since I haven't seen very many different financial profiles out there.

[thinkingemote]

Edits I'm with you totally. It doesn't feel right or valid. why worry about a coffee? ( I don't!). But that feeling could be worth challenging...

If there's 2 of you and you eat out 5 times a week for the length of time you would own a car... then it might be equivalent? There's that old paradoxical saying about how the rich are rich because they don't buy anything.

[BrianOnHN]

52×5×40=10,400

[omgwtfbyobbq]

That's a good point. The only thing I can think of adding is that in some markets, housing is just plain expensive, and people don't have as much wiggle room there unless they can make more relative to lower housing costs in some other area and are willing/able to move there.

[Terretta]

Don’t forget the cable (or cord-cutting channel), mobile, game, music, news, and magazine subscription bills, to which now we have to add apps. Large ones can often be cut to 1/10th by rethinking, switching, etc.

[notapenny]

I treat Netflix/Primevideo/Hulu & friends like this. It takes a bit of thinking but I usually have only one subscription at a time and cancel as soon as I close in on the end of whatever show I'm watching, then re-subscribe to whatever I need to. Some services (not necessarily the streaming ones) allow you to re-trial after a few months (love that), others will cut your subscription fee if you try to leave after a few months. So try to leave after a month or so anyway, even if you don't want to, then take the better offer.

[kiba]

For me, my biggest controllable expense and vice is indeed eating out.

[NoOneNew]

Yea, I live in the US and I came from a poor immigrant family. The arguement about the true price of your 4 dollar coffee is lost on people. That's why poor immigrants typically rise in economic classes in the US and the folks who defend their poor purchasing habits stay locked in.

You buying the occasional overpriced, poorly made coffee doesn't hurt in the grand scheme of things. The compounding habit does. For whatever reason, a majority of Anglo saxons and anglo culture just dont understand compound interest in general. Maybe it's because western culture adopted Protestant ideals more than they think. My half jewish, half catholic background doesn't jive well I guess. Anyways, let's get into examples, shall we? And no, I won't get into the Lamborghini/Ferrari endgame. Italian cars are crappy anyways. They catch on fire too often.

3 dollar coffees a month, that's 90 bucks. I go through about a bag of coffee a month, at $15 a bag of BRCC, I only save 75 a month. That's only 900 a year extra I have by being slightly snobbish about my coffee routine (french press or cowboy coffee it). Let's also do your eating out example, because habits are not in a vacuum, they're holistic and systemic. Most things I would want to eat at a restaurant are 15 to 20 bucks. I won't get into a decent steak or seafood because that's too easy to prove my point. Let's do, I dont know, chicken alfredo, I made that a week ago while babysitting my buddies kids. I spent like 25 bucks, but that included popcorn and icecream. So 20? This fed a toddler, 6 yr old, preteen and my own fat ass, with enough left overs for lunch the next day for everyone. If we went out, that's 15 for me and then 15 for the preteen and then another 15 to split between the younger ones. So 45 bucks. 25 dollar savings. However, there would have been no left overs. So let's say an extra 20 in savings, 45. Alright, to get just me on the savings, I'm thinking about 6 adult portions. 7.50 in savings per meal for myself when I want a fully proper dinner on average. You say 3-5 times you eat out a week. 4 for an easy average. That's 30 a week, 120 a month, 1440 a year. My average savings for not eating out and drinking crappy coffee is $2,340 a year as a single guy. $195 a month. Thats the advertised payment of a new Jetta. Choosing to be at the whim of someone who brews coffee like shit and people who over charge for super simple meals or doing things myself.

Let's nix the car. Let's think opportunity cost. Are you really maximizing your extra 10 minutes saved ordering dinner? Are you reading earnings reports or geopolitical negotiations? Maybe the latest white paper for next 5 minute programming fad? No. You're watching netflix. Stfu. I watch netflix and cook. Well, that and audible and curiosity stream. I also buy lots of books. And I do the occasional masterclass and random course online.

That extra 2k a year isnt enough to be a market mover. It is however enough to invest in yourself pretty well. Which goes all the way back to my immigrant comment. Your philosophy is investing in the market. That's dumb as hell especially when you're young. My philosophy, and most immigrant families that pinch pennies, is about investing in yourself. I think most people agree that a person's greatest investment is themselves, not outside endeavours. So yea, is that overpriced cup of coffee worth not investing in yourself?