Never Retire - Rethinking The Latte Effect

Probably the most surprising thing about Italy

I’m preparing an article that’ll hit Medium most likely on Monday. But I’m giving newsletter subscribers a free preview here.

My girlfriend and I spent the first two weeks of February mostly in Italy.

The thing that surprised me most—relative to the United States, it costs much, much less to drink and eat in Italy.

Across the board.

Plates of pasta just about everywhere range from 8 to 12 euros. So that’s $9 to $13.50 at the moment.

Pizza is similarly inexpensive, typically sold by weight on the street and in cafes and markets.

A bottle of beer ranges from 3 to 6 euros.

A liter of house red wine quite often runs roughly 8 euros.

And, most surprisingly of all, morning coffee and pastries are downright cheap.

Two cappuccinos and two pastries typically cost 4.60 euros at our favorite all-day cafe/bar in Rome—Bar San Calisto.

While pastries tend to be closer to 1.50 euros in most places, a cappuccino routinely costs you 1.50 euros, pretty much any place we visited in Rome and Florence.

When you look at it this way—and consider the entire experience, including the taste of the coffee and food as well as the social environment—it’ll be difficult for me to ever pay $4.50 for ONE cappuccino again here in Los Angeles. And it’s not just an LA things. That’s the going price—or close to it—for coffee in most American cities.

Even in Buffalo!

Anyhow, I tend not to believe that small expenses add up. Most of us are still better off savings on the budget line items that can have the most substantial hit, particularly housing and transportation. Therefore, I never bought into the latte effect of saving $5 a day to end up with six figures in thirty years or whatever.

That said, I was not expecting these prices for food and drink, especially in a big city such as Rome.

Maybe the surprise of it all will wear off (this was my first time visiting Europe), but, at the moment, I’m going to have trouble buying pasta, pizza, wine, or coffee at restaurants. If nothing else, it’ll be a way to save a few bucks going forward and pump up my pots of money.

As always, thanks for reading and supporting my work as a freelance writer.

I appreciate it.

Rocco