David Bach

The Latte Factor is the idea he is known for: that small daily discretionary spending, compounded over decades, accounts for a large part of why people who could have been comfortable are not.

Bach is a former financial adviser and the advice is conservative and repetitive across many books, automate savings, pay yourself first, buy a home, start early.

The latte framing has been criticised for implying that poverty is a coffee problem, which is a fair objection to how it is often quoted and a less fair one to the books, where the point is automation rather than deprivation.