I'm not a Ramit fan, but it is true that big items matter more than small ones. If you can turn shave hundreds of dollars off of your rent or get rid of a car it will matter more than your latte habit.
I disagree.
A couple can spend A LOT by not paying attention to the "little" day to day indulgences.
Lattes, K cups, buying lunches, brunch, going out to restaurants, mani-pedis (a regular routine for many), monthly hair appointments, expensive groceries and food wastage due to not planning so ordering in with Uber Eats, drinks at the pub after work, decent wine at home, parking fees, cosmetics, gym memberships, subscriptions, dry cleaning, fancy dog food, etc, etc...
I haven't even touched the actual buying of random shit like clothes and home items.
The "little indulgences" that don't really seem like much of significance individually can all add up to thousands in a single month, which is a lot more than the "big ticket items" generally add much much more than buying a bigger home, unless we're talking very HCOL area, and even then, at least a home is a form of forced savings.
I know a lot of upper middle class people who think that only the big ticket items really matter and say things like "life is just SO expensive, we don't have an updated home, we don't drive fancy cars, and we never take fancy vacations, and still, we never have any money left over!"
Meanwhile, they're literally spending so much on essentially nothing, that if they redirected their spending, they could actually afford to update their home, drive nice cars, and take an international vacation annually.
I once sat down with my assistant, who made $22/hr and calculated the opportunity cost of buying her fast-food breakfast and lunch every day and calculated that if she invested it instead and retired at 65, it would add up to something ridiculous like $750K, and I know many many people making a lot more than $22/hr and blowing A LOT more than $15/day on crap.