On balance, the personal finance bloggers and the gurus have done a lot to educate people. But sometimes, it feels like they undo a lot of that work with ridiculous nonsense that they preach.

If you listen to some of these people, you’ll learn that you’re ruining your retirement just by drinking a cup of coffee every day. Instead of spending on coffee, you should apparently be investing that money and letting it compound at 15%. And then there are the miseryporn people. These people have somehow deluded themselves into thinking that misery in the present is the price you pay for pleasure in the future.

By now, I’ve realized that trying to psychoanalyse these people is like trying to understand what Keeping Up with the Kardashians is about.

Came across this blogpost today that debunks this nonsene:

When we get into things like houses, cars and kids we start to get into territory involving deep-seated emotions around values and status. Much of the consumer debt industry in America is built on a deep reluctance to sacrifice status to save money. If anything, the culture encourages the opposite.

This is not an argument for hairshirt frugality. If you want to live a high status lifestyle, you either need to make a whole lot of money or take on a whole lot of debt.

Treat yourself on the coffee. Save your energy for the tough. stuff.

Let people live. Let them drink coffee, wear decent clothes, use soap. There are far bigger things in things in life that affect people’s finance than all these trivial things.