David Bach

David Bach is an American personal finance author and speaker whose The Automatic Millionaire popularized the latte factor and automated savings as a path to financial independence for ordinary workers.

David Bach worked as a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley before becoming a personal finance author and speaker. The Automatic Millionaire (2004) is his most widely read book and the one that established his core argument: that the path to financial independence does not require willpower, budgets, or discipline, but automation. By setting up automatic transfers to retirement accounts and savings before the money reaches a checking account, ordinary wage earners can accumulate significant wealth over a working lifetime without making active choices.

The “latte factor” — Bach’s term for the small daily expenditures (coffee, lunch out, subscriptions) that compound into substantial sums over time — became a cultural touchstone and a focus of debate: critics pointed out that the latte factor overstates small expenses relative to housing costs and income stagnation. Bach’s response is that the latte factor is an illustration of the broader principle about the power of small, consistent investment, not a claim that coffee is the primary obstacle to financial independence.

His other books — Smart Women Finish Rich, Smart Couples Finish Rich, Start Late, Finish Rich — apply the same framework to different audiences. Bach’s particular audience is people who have not engaged with personal finance before and feel intimidated by it; he writes with an explicitly non-intimidating style and focuses on the few things that actually matter rather than comprehensive coverage. The Automatic Millionaire remains the most useful single book in his catalog.