To be fair: Soy caffe latte vs. owning a home. A dispute over the basic truth of today's days.
Young people are often seen in cafes, indulging not only in coffee, but various sweet drinks or expensive pastries. Why do they do this? Why don't they rather save money for something useful, like their own housing? There are two answers to these questions: either the young generation is spoiled, as is often the case with young generations, or people just do what they want and resisting temptation is too difficult for them.
The outlined discussion was fueled by a ČT report, which on one hand shows youth spending "up to 10,000 crowns a month" in coffee shops and on the other hand a sociologist and bankers, who contextualize it by saying that the spent money could be missing in the future, or they do not deal with the future need of money for housing.
The report was noticed by the Alarm daily, where righteous anger fell not on the spendthrift youth, but on the violation of the public interest, which Czech Television is supposed to follow. This interest should be affordable housing for all and criticism of the current state, not an analysis of beverage consumption in coffee shops.
Homeownership is a fundamental matter in our country. This is also proven by international comparisons. Only about a fifth of Czechs live in rented accommodation and at the same time, half of them want to move into homeowner accommodation. How is it then possible that young Czechs in cafes ignore this holy grail?
"The richer the country, the greater the proportion of rents and non-homeowner accommodation. One would expect the opposite. It is largely also because in richer countries, rented accommodation is a full-fledged alternative to homeowner accommodation,"
Sociologist Martin Lux from the AV CR stated for Czech Radio. In light of this statement, it seems that youth is one step ahead, foreseeing a richer future and therefore not accumulating resources, but leaving them in cafés. However, such a sophisticated calculation probably doesn't lie behind the visit to the café, despite its cunning.
Expensive coffee, like rising apartment prices, paradoxically show one positive thing. We live in a free society where demand can drive both of these sectors forward. However, there is more often talk about the need to address unaffordable housing. Freedom is simply the ability to choose. In no advanced European housing is homeownership cheap.
On the contrary, it is even less accessible, as evidenced by data about the high proportion of rental housing. In Germany or Switzerland, around half of the people have home ownership, compared to the Czech Republic. It is hard to consider these countries poorer because of that.
But the equation of free choice has two sides. Anyone planning to buy their own home in their twenties is certainly an exception from a psychological development point of view, but on the other hand, it's good to say that money doesn't grow on trees. Even if someone would say that the difference between the price tag of coffee and a pastry in a cafe is really significant, the frequency of buying both commodities is also different. Alarm calculated that it takes 60 years of enjoying the cafe menu to afford a studio apartment in Prague.
The second side of the numerical operation can be well illustrated by the FIRE movement. That is a kind of club of retirees who could afford to leave work and live on their current earnings, usually wisely invested around their forties. The ways to achieve this financial idyll are varied, however the following is considered the most practical on this journey: spend little both in the accumulation of wealth and in its spending phase.
Endless hedonism in a café with avocado toast in mouth would not fit into the philosophy of young retirees. However, everyone can be substituted for a variable on any side of the equation, depending on the taste for soy chai latte, retirement with non-gray hair or the comfort of one's own housing. At the same time, it's good to say, you can't always have everything at once.
