Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Do you frequent Starbucks?

I guess I will quit griping about the price of a can of Folgers.

No you won't.

I have no use for Starbucks. We have Community Coffee.

IT is more than just coffee. My stepdaughter drinks at least two Red Bulls and smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. Not taking in to account what it does to her health, I cannot make her understand the cost. She spends at least 10 dollars per day on those three items. She has to gross $12.00 to clear $10.00. That calculates to $4380.00 per year, 15% of her total income, and 100% wasted money. Without getting in to the cost of fast food, she can never understand why she is constantly broke and behind on her bills.

I suppose one could make the same points about the more 24hr Campfire-Correct weekly consumption of alcohol and tobacco, or firearms, latest hi-soot ammo, extraneous truck doo-dads, boats, motorcycles, fishing gear or anything in RealTree.

Starbucks is an astonishingly successful endeavor, now up there with McDonalds and Coca-Cola as quintessentially American brands. Perhaps Starbucks has stepped in to replace cigarettes as our daily indulgence. I value them for their free WiFi, especially now that I have none at home. A whole lot more congenial atmosphere than a McDonalds, especially when confronted with some lengthy tedious task like entering grades or transcribing bird count data.

Better yet, if you just sit down and start working without buying anything the young millennial “baristas” behind the counter will not bother you, both because they abhor that sort of personal confrontation and because they do not know how to evaluate bearded old White guys in outdoor-type clothing, especially when they arrive on a bicycle. We could be homeless and/or crazy and therefore members of a politically- correct class deemed worthy of compassion as well as being potentially unpleasant and even dangerous to confront.

Beats the crap out of a McDonalds as a WiFi hangout where around here I am often outnumbered by actual bearded old crazy homeless White guys

Cheapest decent thing on the Starbucks menu for me is a toasted bagel and cream cheese, $2.30. Maybe once a week I’ll get a hot venti chai latte for five bucks.

Birdwatcher

pretty much what happened to me. Meeting some highschoold classmates at a starbucks. first time and only time. asked for a cup of black coffee. they acted like i was deranged.

Pretty tough looking up at a menu for "fresh brewed coffee"

I am usually accused of drinking basically milk with coffee added for coloring. but the tread was not about starbucks, it was about saving money. I started doing it at about age six when someone would give me a dollar bill, no fun to play with, so i would exchange them for silver dollars.
forgot about them until after college and my mother wanted to know what i was going to do with them.
then there is pocket change, i hate pocket change. So about 40 years ago i started dumping it into big bottles, lots of big bottles, still do it.
I have no idea of whats in there. probably a fair amount of silver.
I have been in the investment world for about 50 years. One of the first rules as always been, it's not what you make, it's what you keep.
and to live below your means. and allow time and compounding to take care of the rest.

12% from an index fund, really? Does YOUR personal rate of return from investing in index funds match 12%? Honestly? Wish mine did.

I invest about 20k a year and about half of that is in index funds in my 401k.

Apparently there is no room in most folks budget for spending money on things they enjoy without tanking their retirement. That would be a difficult position to be in.

This prompted me to go to Starbucks this morning. $2.65 for a large coffee.

Scott, you seem to be taking this thread personally and to have completely missed the jist of it.
It's not about the nail....

Its not about the coffee, it is about waste.


From the article:

That idea — saving small sums and investing continually — is central to O'Leary's personal finance advice.

"The truth is, there is a lot of crap you don't need," he explains. "What I've learned to do, and what has really helped me in maintaining growth in my own personal investing is, anytime I pick up something I'm going to buy, I say to myself, 'Do I really need this?'

"Because if I don't buy it, the money is going to be invested and make money every year for me while I'm sleeping."

He suggests you follow suit. No matter how much your income is, "You have to take 10 percent of your paycheck every two weeks and invest it," O'Leary advises. "People say, 'I can't afford that! I can barely afford my rent!' But it's not true, you buy crap you don't need every day."

For O'Leary, that coffee just isn't worth it.

A good example is what we spend on cell phones, internet, tv services, landlines. I looked at all my expenses a couple of months ago and was shocked what I was spending per year on those services. I lowered it from $7620 per year to $4380.00 per year, with cell phone contracts being the biggest cost/problem. That is a savings of over $3240.00. Pre-tax dollars for me would be well over $4000 and for absolutely nothing of value.

I'm not anal about the returns, so I had to look them up; my average was 13.5% over the last 10 years. The index funds over that period were a little lower, around 9%.

This exercise is not about a 3, 5 or 10 year span. You can pick years, like the "lost decade", and no, you can't ALWAYS do that well, every year, guaranteed. But, over the last 100 years or so, the average return on equities was right at 12%. For someone with a 40, 50, 60 year investment horizon, that's the only number that matters.

But the real issue is not the rate of return, or the mutual fund to pick, or if it is Roth or traditional. The real issue is to invest SOMETHING. Almost ANYTHING saved, over a long, long period of time turns into a LOT of money.

No. Never.

Larry Root,

Should you actually do it, post video please! lol

Back to Starbucks: I can probably count the number of times I have been in one, using both hands, with one or two fingers left over. As Mike said, they have free wi-fi and you can pretty much sit there and use it as long as it takes. I used to attend a lot of meetings on or near college campuses, and there was always a Starbucks just across the street. When you're in a strange town and need an internet connection, they are easy to find. I always buy a cup of plain black coffee and usually drink less than half of it, no matter how long I stay. I am a bit of a loner by nature, so the usual clientele doesn't faze me, and I can't say that the counter help has ever been anything but polite.

E

I gotta wonder how much we could all have been saving for retirement if we had all been eating beans and rice every day and leaving the AC and heat off all them years. All that wasteful steak and such, money literally crapped out.

So the point is, as long as they ain't costing me anything I could give a rip how others spend their money. I will say that looking around me, carrying serious debt seems to be our modern American way of life

LOL, I stop in at Starbucks every now and then. Never had a problem ordering or receiving a plain cup of black coffee. They sell lots of it, it's not an unusual order.

Never had a rude server either, even when my practical joker buddy payed for my coffee and told the server my name was "Dong."

Poor kid had to call out "tall dark roast for Dong," and then listen to my buddy laugh hysterically as he handed it to me.

That fuggin chitstick.

Good bust Fost.

The combination of seriousness, humor, wisdom and rancor (and other stuff) in this thread has been inspiring, so I up and drove the 115 miles to the nearest Starbucks this morning early. The coffee was good or better (and HOT), the folks working there were cheerful, left space and made certain that I got my additives, and I could have eaten a muffin or such right tight there. Spent less than $2.00 - not counting fuel, wear/tear and depreciation on the vehicle. Obviously would have been more efficient had I taken my wife and the costs shared between two folks. Not worth all of the fuss - but did scratch my curiosity - that can be important. Came home and checked the index effect. Indeed, it has been a good bit better than 12%. Maybe I'll rethink it all and go get another cup.

Just think how much coin the judgmental one's could save by dumping their internet bill, think that will happen?

You'd have to be an idiot to shoot a .45ACP, 9mm is way cheaper.