What a 500 latte mortgage payment gets you in Austin

I had no Starbucks photos, so here I am outside a different coffee shop w my boys. No coffee for them though.

Obviously you can’t buy a house with coffee.  However, I got a lot of questions on what I referred to in the last email as “dollar destruction”, so let me clear that up.

A few years ago, I was a Starbucks barista on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  At the time, a grande latte cost $3.  Since I only had $30 in my bank account at any given time, I knew I could always go crazy and buy 10 lattes if I wanted to.

Now at Starbucks, in 2026, that same grande latte costs $6.  So that same $30 in my bank account only gets me 5 lattes.

See what I mean?  Same $30, except it gets me half as many lattes now.

The same thing applies when we pay our mortgage.  Say I get a 30-year loan, and my mortgage payment is $3000 right now (or, 500 $6 lattes).  In 15 years, my mortgage payment is still $3000, but really, it’s only 250 lattes now, bc lattes in 2041 cost $12 each.

Now does this make more sense?