Opinion: Buying a Coffee Today Could Put Your Future Family in Danger

A single-family home. A loving spouse. 2.5 kids. Doesn’t that sound nice? All of this could be in your future. But judging by the state of your life right now, it won’t be. The problem is that you have a terrible addiction: You can’t stop making daily purchases between $5-16. They come in all sorts of forms. A caramel macchiato with oat milk. A soy vanilla latte. A bagel with cream cheese. You need to buy something small, yummy, and slightly overpriced in order to feel some semblance of productivity for the rest of your day.

Make no mistake, you’ve tried hard to fight it. You bring your own lunch to work or school so that you don’t need to buy a $10 breakfast sandwich in the middle of the day. But you did anyway. You’ve tried to make coffee at home instead of going out to buy one. And it tasted fine. But you started to get bored. So you started adding syrups, and frothed milk, and Bailey’s, and then a full Guinness, and now you’re making coffee that was even better than what you could buy at a café. But it’s never enough. You’re still missing something. 

What you don’t realize is that the treat itself is only part of the addiction - it’s also about the spontaneity of it. No matter how good your own coffee is, it could never compare to the dopamine rush you get when you tap your phone to pay for your $7.65 12 oz mocha, and then the barista spins the little iPad around and your only tip options are to add at least 2 more dollars to the transaction. You don’t even have enough time to fully process how much money you’ve just spent before they call out your name. Oh god, your heart is probably racing just thinking about it. 

But you have to stop. You’re pushing your future spouse and kids further and further below the poverty line with every pastry you buy. Every week you muster up the courage to check your bank account, and you’re down $900. That math doesn’t even add up. How are you doing this badly? I have no clue how that’s going to look years down the road when you’re millions of dollars in debt for all the boba tea that you wanted soooo badly and then threw away after 5 sips because it made your stomach hurt.

The worst part of all of this is, when you inevitably do end up a financial wreck in the future, it won’t even be from a cool addiction, like alcohol or heroin. It’ll be from almond croissants. Do you know how embarrassing that is? Imagine trying to explain that to your future spouse. Yikes.

I know it feels like you’re in a classic Catcher in the Rye situation. In order to be able to support your family in the future, you need to be saving money today - but if you want to be alive in your 30s, you need to buy a little treat immediately. Well, you can’t. Not if you don't want to disappoint your wife with an extravagant honeymoon in Idaho Falls. Not if you want to fund your daughter’s post-secondary education. You heartless monster.