Starbucks & David Bach's (trademarked) "factor"

This advice is similar to what many gurus, from The Your Money or Your Life gang, to Suze Orman make, though I don't know what trademarks they hold on framing the idea. "Never Have Any Fun at All" might be a good phrase for Your Money or Your Life to trademark.

Sensible, but so is the advice to eat less food and get more exercise weigh less. Advice is easy to make, hard to follow. Orman (see the link above), for one, seems to have learned to lighten her tone, at least when she's peddling her advice to a younger audience, and attempting to make financial planning sound hip. She realizes it is really not as simple as saying, "put that $3 in a mutual fund" and become rich just in time to die. That $3 tends to disappear into other more pressing needs before it finds its way into an investment vehicle, for one thing.

Another way would be to increase your income by $3 a day, invest that, and keep your latte. You thrive, but the economy thrives also -- both from your increased labor and your spending. Or you could practice further discipline and invest $6 a day. Your choice.

And ultimately, awareness of choices made is what all these versions of the same advice boil down to. But this awareness has to be ongoing, and requires regular, periodic re-evaluation. Nothing sexy about that.

There, you just saved the money you would spend buying another book, video, or seminar ticket founded of yet another repackaging of the same common sense information. I hope you invest it wisely, or if you can't do that, at least enjoy your latte, consciously.

Michael Canfield is a private investor, a business and media writer, living in Seattle. He doesn't own stock in Starbucks, and has spent a lot of money of financial and other self-help/advice books that he could just as easily checked out from the library, but where would that leave the publishing industry?