Hot Espresso, Syrup Flavored Latte w. Breve Milk – has 444 calories in a tall.
one a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year.. is 240 Espresso’s.

That add’s up to 106560 calories in a year. –> Which at 3500 calories per pound of fat – is 30 pounds.

(OK – I know the body wont quite work like that – but replacing a morning coffee with a glass of water is going to do good things for you)

I economize where possible on the necessary-but-uninteresting expenses in order to have more resources for the things I really care about intensely. Nobody needs to agree with me on which expenses fall into which category…the point isn’t to resolve a One True Way To Live (which doesn’t and indeed can’t exist) but rather to look at the situation logically, and apply reasonable metrics to one’s choices.

This is an interesting post. The major challenge to the post is that the “latte factor” can have almost as much as of an impact on your finances as one of these major decisions. I think the best thing to do is to minimize your “latte factor” as well as paying attention to the big decisions.

Best,

James

In all seriousness though, the point of mentioning schools in the first place was to illustrate that sometimes people need private schools and sometimes people need public schools, neither is better, and it all depends specifically on the person and that the general advice of “go public” may not be fair for everyone on a global basis (of course, planning to go public and saving the rest in retirement, the original message in the article that I missed, may be a valid one). In my case, I feel that a private school education helped me get to where I am today.

If you’re truly insulted by the fact I went to a private school, there are plenty of blogs written by people who went to public schools (many of which are better than my blog) and I invite you to read theirs. At no point did I saw private was better than public and so your hostility towards something as pathetically minor as grammar is misdirected and petty.

That being said, small expenses are certainly not the only place to look… and if such small expenses can have such a large impact, just consider the impact of much larger expenses.

For instance, I live in a very nice cost-of-living area of the nation. We have two vehicles that we bought two-years-used, and we financed them. The monthly expenses for the two vehicles (monthly loan payments, insurance, fuel, and maintenance) is about the same the mortgage on our home.

That is a very large expense that MANY people live with, and they never try to change it. Short circuiting the financing on vehicles can make a very dramatic impact on your financial future. Instead of keeping a vehicle for two-to-five years, keep it five-to-eight years, and always buy about two-years-used. Pay off your current vehicle and use reverse amortization with a high-yield savings account to save for your next vehicle. To replace your current vehicle with another similar vehicle that is two-years-used will cost you about the same monthly amount, but you could save that amount for two years and be done with it. Then, you have five to eight years to save up for your next vehicle at a dramatically lower monthly amount.

Then, invest the difference and repeat. That one factor could affect a huge portion of middle class families more than about any other.

Guess you didn’t get your money’s worth.

Assuming that you are paying for your childen’s college education (not everyone does). There are many factors in deciding schools and I personally don’t think it should be driven by private versus public. (If you can’t afford the private schools that is one thing, but I think to say that a private school is better than a public one is being a bit too general.) Big name schools can also open doors. A law degree from Harvard opens alot more doors than one from a state school (at least that’s the input I get from some of my friends who are lawyers). Private schools can also provide smaller classes and more individual attention. However, many public institutions have excellent programs that rival the private schools. University of Virginia has an excellent English department; University of California at Berkeley has one of the premier Chemistry programs, etc. The goals of your children also come into play. If you kid wants to be a high school teacher, is the fact that the school is public or private so important?

Regarding public vs. private university, I think the article was targeted at parents who are struggling to save for retirement. For such people, I totally agree with him. Plan for in-state public tuition. Then let your child decide if private school is worth it. If they think it is, let them foot the added $164k cost (although that number seems a bit high to me).