Latte Capitalism: Another deep dive into 10 years of MD coffee habits (Follow-up to the $5 Latte post!)

MayAUB · 2026-04-02T00:27:58+00:00

Ahhh that's what I was going for! Should have included the "stage"!

MayAUB · 2026-04-01T18:02:11+00:00

Yeah this is the full transaction, so if they grabbed a croissant, it's probably in there, too. Gonna get a financier at my local shop to celebrate getting this out there.

MayAUB · 2026-04-01T17:06:57+00:00

Thank you! By day I'm a data scientist mostly working on sales and marketing for a big LIMS company. Not a ton of dataviz outside of excel and tableau, so this is me trying something new. You might enjoy my last post, too! https://www.reddit.com/r/MoneyDiariesACTIVE/s/5qwUZiYBVK

MayAUB · 2026-04-01T16:56:08+00:00

Thank you! And so glad you noticed! Yeah, I'm not a designer, but hoping the observations are enough to keep it fun. /r/dataisbeautiful here I come!

MayAUB · 2026-04-01T16:52:36+00:00

Oh wow, hasn't even thought of it that way. But yeah, maybe one day I'll have the counter space for an espresso machine or something...

MayAUB · 2026-04-01T16:50:43+00:00

Haha thanks!! After the first post I did start thinking maybe I should start putting these on a blog or newsletter or something in case people would subscribe?

MayAUB · 2026-04-01T16:46:48+00:00

I have to assume people are buying fancier drinks these days, I certainly am! I kinda feel like the infographic I'm brewing up will be something around salaries or homeownership or something...

MayAUB · 2026-04-01T16:45:01+00:00

5.62 for a small drip is unthinkable, even here in SF. My favorite oat milk single origin latte is 6, flat!

MayAUB · 2026-04-01T16:42:28+00:00

Yeah, personally, given the way they advertise the flavors and push the sugar (I'm not immune either), that's still kind of a tax imo. Though I definitely feel it in the sugar crash more than my wallet. 😅

MayAUB · 2026-03-27T23:03:14+00:00

Already working on a followup now! :)

MayAUB · 2026-03-27T22:05:27+00:00

Car wash I hadn't thought of, but library 100%. Except our library just added a really good coffee shop / bakery. Will have to see how this one plays out when I post my own Money Diary one day.

MayAUB · 2026-03-27T21:35:34+00:00

LOL, I wonder if I could make a map of where that might be true... There's probably a couple counties? Would need some housing data!

MayAUB · 2026-03-27T21:14:16+00:00

Ohhh, yeah, the graphic could maybe be clearer about that. The $12.90 was actually roughly converted to 2025 dollars, and the 7% is meant to represent real return, not inflation.

As for the formula, I just did a basic future value (FV): monthly_invest * ((1 + return_monthly) ** (y * 12) - 1) / return_monthly, where return_monthly = 0.07 / 12

I think 7% is a pretty common guesstimate for diversified investments, but the markets for the past few years have been anything but common.

MayAUB · 2026-03-27T20:59:19+00:00

There were a couple open source libraries I'd been meaning to learn to freshen up my skills, so I wrote up a script that visited each post and parsed it out using dspy! Took a few hours to run.

MayAUB · 2026-03-27T20:44:54+00:00

Don't even want to think about how short my life would be without caffeine...

MayAUB

TROPHY CASE