Simone Charles is a disabled and unemployed Gulf War vet who likes to pass time at her colorful neighborhood coffee shop. A single mom on a fixed income, Charles says she sets aside no more than $15 a month to spend there.
But her favorite espresso drink — a double-chocolate mocha topped with frothy goodness and served in a wide, squat mug that’s just perfect for coddling — costs nearly $5, and Charles, 45, is sometimes in the coffee shop four days a week.
How does she make up that spending difference?
Certainly not with her disability checks, which Charles describes as tantamount to a minimum wage.
“I read tarot cards (there) on Saturdays and Sundays — because I get free coffee,” she says. “I take my luxuries where I can get them!”
And that, according to some, is quintessentially American.
Despite the nationwide belt-tightening that’s resulted from a four-year Great Recession and its crawling recovery, Americans continue to indulge in small luxuries, with working Americans reportedly spending around $1,100 a year at the corner coffee shop.
We like our “vices,” and we will have them.
American consumer spending fell only slightly on beer, wine and booze from 2006 to 2010, from roughly $497 a year to $412 a year, according to the U.S. Deparment of Labor’s Consumer Expenditure Survey. A similarly unimpressive dip occurred in the amount we spent eating out between those years, from $2,694 in 2006 to $2,505 in 2010.
Spending on cigarettes, brewed coffee, sweets and junk food actually went up over that period. (Of course, the data come with the usual caveats: They fail to calculate extraneous factors such as the rate of inflation, or rising and falling income. And if your favorite vice is illicit, the Labor Department’s spending survey surely missed it.)
The assumption that spending on unnecessary indulgences falls simply because income goes down is false, according to Colorado State University economics professor Stephan Weiler.
“It’s not as straightforward as people think,” Weiler says. “When people are hurting, sometimes it’s those little luxuries that carry them through. They may not be able to have them quite as often, or they may have to trade down in terms of quality, but it’s the little luxuries that make living enjoyable. That becomes particularly important during times of crisis.”
Besides reading tarot cards for coffee, Simone Charles has other tricks for indulging herself without blowing her budget. She satisfies her craving for fancy, stinky cheese by picking through wrapped single slices at her local gourmet foods store, and she picks up treats for her 7-year-old daughter at Dollar Tree.
And there are things Charles denies herself, like drives from her Denver home to visit her best friend in Boulder, because of the gas those trips consume. And sometimes school supplies for her kid — like a $20 illustrated children’s dictionary — are put on hold. Charles’ daughter “understands that we don’t have enough money to buy things like we used to,” the mom says.
“I want to be a consumer because that’s being an American,” Charles adds. “I just consume in smaller amounts.”
Americans’ hunt for budget luxury is a boost to websites like . Dubbed “Consumer Reports for the cheap,” the site identifies and rates relatively inexpensive products. One of its more popular searches, according to editor in chief Max Levitte, is for low-cost champagne.
“A lot of people are searching for cheap nowadays,” Levitte says. “People understand that if they just lower their average consumption price per item, then they can save significantly.”
But that doesn’t sit right with Joe Udom, a Portland, Ore.-based blogger who posts at .
Udom, 38, is a married computer engineer with one young son who decided about a year ago that his family should live on only his wife’s income of roughly $37,000 a year. Meanwhile, Udom socks away the family’s second salary. His goal: Retire by 40 and become a stay-at-home dad.
The thrifty blogger was especially taken aback by a recent survey of American workers conducted by the market research firm Accounting Principles that determined they spend $1,092 a year on coffee — around $5 a day when you subtract weekends and holidays — and another $1,924 buying lunch.
“That’s a lot of money,” Udom says. “There are too many things to spend money on these days.”
Udom and his wife rarely eat out; he brews coffee at home or drinks the free stuff at his office. He thinks the problem with indulging in little luxuries is that spending is difficult to track and adds up fast. Personal finance pundits la television’s Suze Orman or Jim Cramer tend to agree.
“When you buy coffee or junk food, it’s only a few dollars at a time,” he says. ” It’s just not as noticeable as a new car.”
Elana Ashanti Jefferson: 303-954-1957 or ejefferson@denverpost.com
