I’ll spare you a click and let you know that this is based on the premise that saving a little more than $3 on coffee a day would turn into $1 million, after 40 years at 12% in a Roth IRA.
For every expense, it is necessary to do cost benefit analysis with respect to the value of eliminating it. For the larger fixed cost expense, is it worth it? Absolutely!
Without educating herself on how the risk/return profile of different assets; she handed her money to a broker at Merrill Lynch who invested in options and lost it in a market downturn.