Right, but if you stop buying coffee every single day, even a cheap cup, that’s like $30-100 saved per month or $1200 or more in a year. That’s not nothing. That dread you get around the holidays of “will I have enough money to buy presents?”, well, now you can buy presents.
For a sense of proportion, in a housing market where house prices go up 5% a year, a $200k house (which nowadays is cheap), goes up $10k in a year.
So that “trick” barelly slows down the rate at which you’re getting further behind on your chance of getting your own place to live, even a cheap on in a moderatelly growing market.
Such barebones saving only works if you’re really really close to being able to afford a house, otherwise you’re just making your life a bit more miserable for no actual gain as the extra savings are just going to be sucked out in paying for just about anything where realestate costs have an impact (so, not just somthing quite directly affected like your rent, but also pretty much all products and services bought from stores and companies who rent their space).
At this point, if you don’t have the income, you won’t have the savings. You won’t save your way to home ownership by cutting coffee out. But if you’re a cup-a-day person from Dunkin or Starbucks or Tims or wherever, start making coffee at home and take back some of your money. I’d much rather make coffee at home and have an extra $1200 per year back.
Right, but if you stop buying coffee every single day, even a cheap cup, that’s like $30-100 saved per month or $1200 or more in a year. That’s not nothing. That dread you get around the holidays of “will I have enough money to buy presents?”, well, now you can buy presents.
For a sense of proportion, in a housing market where house prices go up 5% a year, a $200k house (which nowadays is cheap), goes up $10k in a year.
So that “trick” barelly slows down the rate at which you’re getting further behind on your chance of getting your own place to live, even a cheap on in a moderatelly growing market.
Such barebones saving only works if you’re really really close to being able to afford a house, otherwise you’re just making your life a bit more miserable for no actual gain as the extra savings are just going to be sucked out in paying for just about anything where realestate costs have an impact (so, not just somthing quite directly affected like your rent, but also pretty much all products and services bought from stores and companies who rent their space).
At this point, if you don’t have the income, you won’t have the savings. You won’t save your way to home ownership by cutting coffee out. But if you’re a cup-a-day person from Dunkin or Starbucks or Tims or wherever, start making coffee at home and take back some of your money. I’d much rather make coffee at home and have an extra $1200 per year back.