I’ll take the $4 coffee every time: here’s why…
It has become almost a rite of passage for any derivative finance writer to advocate saving a few dollars on coffee as a way of topping up the coffers over the long run.
Just as the big mac index speaks for national GDP, a harmless $4 cup of coffee seems to have become a token of enough symbolic value that it has been co-opted into the moralising prudence of personal finance.
It is not our dependency on caffeine that seems to be in question.
The benefits of drinking coffee regularly are evident (?!)…in the research sponsored by large companies with a vested interest in our continued consumption of caffeine…
Instead, we see an onslaught of moralising and unsolicited money tips from influencers who by their own admission are not even qualified to give financial advice.
It plays upon a scarcity mindset — the idea that our hard-earned cash is being wrenched from our hands and that we can can regain autonomy and take control of your financial life if we just make our coffee at home!
Delayed gratification is a real thing and yes, interest compounds.
BUT…
there are also costs to not buying your coffee and there less immediately calculable but will probably have a greater impact on your life.
Here’s why..
A Deficit Of Serendipity
Franz Kafka had nightmares about a world that lacked serendipity.
Working as an insurance bureaucrat in the early 20th Century he prophesised a world built on meaningless and predictable social interactions and the existential perils of being confined to a small room for the rest of your working life.
A trapped bug will slowly die…
We’ve seen just how excruciatingly boring lockdowns can be…
Two years of enforced remote working made anti-social behaviours like ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘goblin mode’ seem normal — a resignation to that limitations imposed on us from above.
We got used to it — now we do it on our own free will.
So, stay at home and tap your fingers on the table whilst your coffee painstakingly drips through the carcinogenic-free filter you bought with someone’s affiliate discount link…
Whilst you’re there waiting you can look at the ceiling and think longingly about:
- that chance encounter you could have with your soul mate in the queue,
- the old friend you would have gladly bumped into and made plans with to go climbing next weekend,
- or the life-affirming conversation you could have had with the barrister which restored your faith in humanity on an otherwise dull and introspective day.
If you value serendipitous moments like this, which put a smile on your face and punctuate your day then
It’s such protestant mindset — repress the imagination and count your pennies instead.
It’s like a reverse marshmallow test.
Why take a gamble on two marshmallows when you can enjoy one on your own later…
Ideas are the new Oil
The web 3.0 revolution is hotly tipped to be the new renaissance of ideas.
That doesn’t mean that all the action will happen online.
Most ideas emerge from discussion and collaboration in person and the coffee shop has been a hotbed of ideas and collaborations for hundreds of years.
Why?
It’s where people intersect, ideas collide, routines are put on hold and the mind can unplug from the preoccupations of the day.
By the 16th Century, coffee was served freely in the Ottoman Empire as a social lubricant for businessmen and traders whose aspirational machinations eventually brought coffee to Italy, France and England in what was to be the flint that lit the spark on the revolution of the Enlightenment.
Within decades of its arrival in London, some of the largest international companies who still dominate the worlds of media and banking to this day like Lloyds, Tatler and the Spectator were forged in the swell of collaborative ideas and caffeinated suggestibility that the coffee houses fostered.
There is also something to be said for the fact that stay-at-home creators who advise you not spend your money on coffee are so often parroting the same productivity, finance, lifestyle ideas as other stay-at-home creators who also advise you to save shillings a day by abstaining from treats.
Your world is an echo chamber of all the stimuli that you input.
The youtubers and content creators who push subscriptions to newsletters, private Facebook groups and thinly veiled affiliate marketing on you are often the same ones taking minimalism to such extremes that they never leave their homes.
Why would I want to get my ideas from someone who stays home all day?
If ideas are in fact the new oil, then the modern-day creator is cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Want your thinking to grow rigid? Stay home listen from the kitchen to a podcaster broadcasting from their kitchen.
Why save $4 a day when you can strike oil with a flat white?
You really can have you cake and eat it (with your coffee).
Real interactions are good for you
It all started with the blue zones.
The elixir of life and secret to so many centenarians old age wasn’t hidden away in the micronutrients of superfoods from Guatemala.
Nor was it to be found exclusively in the esoteric morning exercises of the coastal communities.
The only thing in that these longevity hotspots had in common was the warm embrace of a like-minded community.
Revelatory at the time (for being blindingly obviously) — real community and a sense of belonging have long been missing from our lives even before the pandemic and money-saving hacks started circulate online.
Digital nomads who spend the $4 and then sit at a table plugged into their own matrix are also missing the point entirely.
The coffeeshop is a place to interact with other people — to actually look at the person you’re speaking to, to get wrapped up in your own little universe with someone else if just for 30 minutes.
It’s a place where exciting life updates are broken, where friends are reunited, where co-founders have their eureka moment and where first sparks are felt by strangers.
Money has always been just a tool for the exchange of goods and services and it’s value is determined by the value that we give to said goods.
In this context, once it has all been tallied up, what does that extra $1,000 saved on coffee across the year actually do for you if it comes at the expense of all the above in your day to day life?
Is it really worth it?
Freddie Kift
I write about language, communication, flow, collaboration and technology.
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