To cancel my guardian supportership

[SmallBuisnessOwner]

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/money/2018/jan/29/can-you-really-save-for-a-deposit-by-ditching-coffee-and-avocado-toast-i-tried-to-find-out

Ridiculous story's like this of someone 26 with a well paid job working in the media and London spends over 500 a year on coffee. Outside London I don't know anyone like this. Most go out once a week to the pub and get a cheap takeaway occasionally as a treat. I don't think articles like this help anyone.

YABU to cancel your supportership because of one article that you don't like. I can't see why it massively changed your opinion of the Guardian to be honest - had you ever read it before you took out this supportership? YANBU to cancel your Guardian supportership if you just don't like the Guardian.

You could say that SBO, or you could say that the answer is not to try and live in London unless you know you're going to earn a lot. I certainly wouldn't want to live in London if I was earning 35k.

People can spend money however they want. The point (to me anyway) is that if you actually saw your £60/month coffee habit as a bill to pay then you would perhaps make different choices.

"We need this kind of pressure on the millennials because to keep the inflated prices we need people to be able to buy the houses.
Any kind of frivolity needs to be gently demonized- coffee, cinema, takeaways. If they give up then the whole thing falls down!"

You could equally argue that the situation is one engineered by global corporations who have normalised spending habits that would once have seemed frivolous. And that the whole thing would come crashing down if people looked seriously at how they spent their money...

I liked it and I love the Guardian. The fact we’re all debating it suggests something... it’s nothing like the Mail. I doubt people who say that actually read both papers..

I do like Guardian for its Comments sections but they always choose the most unrepresentative people to feature in their stories. Hard to feel any sympathy towards them.

But still doesn't take away the fact that house prices are ridiculously inflated nowadays and wages haven't followed suit making it difficult for many to save, especially if life gets in the way in terms of unemployment, divorce, ill health etc.

My kids wouldn't spend that sort of money on coffee but before I retired, a couple of years ago, there was a young woman in the office who came into work by train. She arrived with one of the big cardboard coffee cups every single day. I think it was Starbucks, is that the green one? I used to think it must cost a fortune.

I think travelling slowed down my kids getting on the housing ladder but I don't blame them, some fantastic trips lasting anything from 2 weeks to 3 months all over the world. You don't get that time back, as I now realise.

Most go out once a week to the pub

£500 a year on coffee is around £9.60 a week. The rough equivalent of 3 pints of beer a week or a couple of glasses of wine. So no more than an average night out at the pub.

She makes herself sound like an absolute twat and 35-40k is not the average salary for journalists. Editors maybe but not reporters/staff writers

The take home is if you are a very high earner with little student debt you can make yourself packed lunches and spent most of you youth not doing much in order to buy a shitty overpriced flat eventually.

Exactly. The burden of blame is shifted onto the individual instead of us all questioning the foundations of the economic system we live in. And that's the Guardian, which is supposed to be on the side of working people. Ha.

I actually found the article to be kind of sad. She's a young, successful woman with her whole life ahead of her and no dependents (yet) in one of the world's most exciting cities - and she's being shamed for spending a few pounds on a cup of coffee and a dinner out to meet friends. She's young! She should be having fun. I wish I had spent more of my 20s having fun instead of being responsible and saving.

But I recognize that is easy to say from the wrong side of 35 with a lot more money in the bank and a mortgage I'm close to paying off.

Vivienne - what a nasty comment. And what's wrong with asking for people to pay for journalism?

I liked it and I love the Guardian. The fact we’re all debating it suggests something... it’s nothing like the Mail. I doubt people who say that actually read both papers..

That makes it exactly like the mail! I think it's a shadow of its former self and often does mail esq articles these days. I did used to really like it, but every day I go off its current format.

My dm (77) was bemoaning the fact her money doesn't go as far as it did. She goes out for coffee three times a week. I worked out that that was about £370 per annum. She was horrified as that would cover Christmas for her.

The money bothers me less than the waste. Blubbering about the mess the older generation have made of the planet while clutching single use bottles and coffee cups is rather hard of thinking.

£500 a year on coffee is around £9.60 a week. The rough equivalent of 3 pints of beer a week or a couple of glasses of wine. So no more than an average night out at the pub.

Articles like this assume about £10 a day on coffees and a muffin and have in addition to this daily everyday expense several nights out with expensive gins or coktails for a tenner each. So very different.

I read as a comical take on the debate, that she was laughing in the face of martins advice by going for expensive haircuts etc and going out on the lash, losing cash on night out.
How many of these ‘millenial’ dilemmas aren’t based on living for the here and now though, but desperately wanting to keep up with friends? For instance she didn’t have to get such an expensive haircut but it was likely the ‘right’ kind of salon etc. It’s toxic, the FOMO culture - and the home ownership obsession is all part of it.

Op you are also making assumptions

1. I don't go to the pub
2. I very rarely have a takeaway-maybe twice a year
3. We are in the North and earn very good salaries-I love how there is always the idea that the capital is the only place you earn well
4. I buy a coffee in a cafe as I use them as places to work between appointments so the wifi and the loo is v useful as it is for many people who are mobile during the working day. I take my own mug.
5. The Guardian is being ridiculous-what else is new? Sky high rent and house prices is not the fault of the under 30s.

There was an article on there a while back that really fucked me off, a woman who claimed had saved thousands by "buying nothing for a year". It turned out "nothing" didn't include rent, bills, travel, food, pension, etc etc. She saved two or three thousand per month AFTER these things were taken into account, and was saying how easy it was "not spending anything" when you got used to it.

Different fucking planet.

You do know saying "I don't know anyone like this" and talking about most people I know isn't making an assumption on every person?

I just wish people would move out of London and realise there is life outside the capital.

If you earned £30k where I live, and gave up your coffee/lunch/any fun at all habit you could actually look forward to buying your own place by your early thirties. Grim, but better than London.

"How much exactly is a bottle of expensive water a day?"

In terms of purchase price for the consumer, or environmental cost of single use plastic?

Articles like this assume about £10 a day on coffees and a muffin and have in addition to this daily everyday expense several nights out with expensive gins or coktails for a tenner each. So very different.

I find it really puzzling that you genuinely seem to think that all the articles in the newspaper should reflect your own circumstances. Plenty of people do have salaries like the author (and she says it is average for a journalist). There are also articles by people who are a lot richer or poorer. It's really not all about you.

The author says:
"I earn considerably more than the national average salary"
"I am undoubtedly in a privileged position"
She knows that not everyone is in the same position as her - what should she do, shut up because other people are worse off?

In terms of purchase price for the consumer, or environmental cost of single use plastic?

I don't think expensive water will come in a plastic bottle.

This is s rip off of an Australia article last year even down to toast 🙁

YANBU.

I've switched to The Times this weekend as The Guardian is a pile of virtue signalling, champagne socialist wank these days.

The Guardian is a joke thesedays, I wish it would just give up and fold. I refuse to read it any more, it’s like a shit uni project of a paper that happens to have good distribution.

Once again the Guardian, which was once a great newspaper, demonstrates that it is now just another source of vacuous clickbait and a mirror image of the Fail.

What a shame the current editor is a woman.