I bought 1 large can of regular instant coffee (makes 260 cups) and 1 large jar of decaf instant (makes 160 cups) for $25 (both on sale & with bonus Air Miles). If I spent $5 per day, Monday to Friday at Starbucks, I’d have spent the same amount. On 5 grande cups of coffee for just myself. The coffee I bought today should last us 4 months or so, with my Hubby averaging 3 cups/day and me 1/day. That’s a big difference.

However, using a Starbuck’s break as a special treat or as a once a week (or month) cheap date night for a busy couple instead of going out to dinner or a movie or to a club is a responsible way to provide the small treats that keep people moving forward on what is sometimes a long and difficult road back to financial responsibility.

I sometimes put $20 on a Starbucks card at the beginning of a month and allow myself to go whenever I really want to. When the card is empty, I can’t go again until the next month. It allows me basically 4 visits per month but sometimes the card lasts 2 or 3 months. Just knowing it’s there is enough. Right now I have a $10 card I won at Bouncing Back from Bankruptcy. I went once and still have about $5 left.

The problem comes when people think they “need” a venti size specialty coffee in order to just get their eyes open in the morning. That’s not a treat. That’s a lifestyle escalation. If you have the income to support that lifestyle, it’s your choice. Most people who act as if they do, don’t.

None of this, however, really has anything to do with whether or not supportive, encouraging comments are more beneficial to bloggers who are aware of their situation and trying to get their act together than toughlove comments are. The oblivious masses are a totally different situation and many of them will not change until life comes up and smacks them in the face with a job loss, a foreclosure, a repossession or the like.

But people defend their spending habits to bankruptcy. I’ve read read too many articles and posts where people insist they ‘deserve’ to buy what they want merely because they’ve reached a certain age or have to buy that because someone is expecting it or because they want to, regardless whether they can afford it.

People insist on spending $3 to $5 a day on Starbucks because they’ve talked themselves into the idea that it makes them feel special or it’s their little “luxury”. Too bad they don’t add up what the luxury is costing them a month. They could buy better coffee and feel special at home for less than half the cost.

CC companies have succeeded in convincing people to “buy now, pay forever”. It seems more people regard having a credit card balance like a utility — something they are always going to have to pay on. That’s why the CC companies have them trapped.

I don’t know that saying “I’ve done that too” is necessarily enabling, but I think the most useful kind of comment runs along the lines of “I had that problem too and this is how I handled it”. Not, “You’re wasting money left and right and will spend your retirement in penury”.

BTW, Grace has a net worth of over $500k, so I hardly think she’ll be reduced to eating Alpo!

I have noticed a tendency to ‘enable’ among PF bloggers. In fact, I did a post about how reading certain PF blogs actually made me want to spend more! I totally get the encouragement aspect of it. No one wants to be judged. However, I think we should do both – encourage and also discourage once in a while. If you read a finance blog regularly and that blogger is justifying every purchase, it’s OK to say “hey, step back..a $1,000 purse is not an investment.” You can do that without jumping down that blogger’s throat.

I think CJBR’s point is that the duds tended to gravitate to each other while the stars likewise moved to be with other stars (probably feeling they would be held back by the duds).

As such, the duds took easy projects and yet still failed earning low grades while the stars took hard projects and succeeded thereby earning the highest grades.

The point being (as I interpret CJ’s post) was that like minded people seek each other out and do as they do. IOW, people who have a problem and want to work it out will seek out help/advise and fix the problem while others just want to commiserate about the problem but not really do much more about correcting it.