Saving Coffee Money

Stop buying coffees every day. You can’t afford it.

I mean, of course you can afford a coffee. It just costs a couple dollars for a drip coffee, maybe a few more for a fancy latte or a flat white. Surely $5 for a delicious treat is worth it, right? Perhaps a couple times per day, especially if it’s a good excuse for a break from work or some time to spend with friends?

Wrong.

At $5 per coffee, twice per day (I usually have three but let’s assume you’re not as caffeine-fixated as I am), five times per week: you’re looking at $50 per week. If you do that every week, you’ve now spent $2600 in a year just on your weekday coffees. That’s not even counting weekend beverages (you can add another $1000 or so to your calculations if you drink just as much on the weekends, as I do). So now you’ve spent $3600 in a year, give or take, for a ‘little’ treat a couple times every day. All those coffees start to add up in not a lot of time… and if you drink coffee not just this year but every year – well, the math is easy enough.

Am I going to tell you to stop drinking coffee and save all that money?

Not likely. Fancy Frugal Gay doesn’t live an ascetic life, and neither should you. Instead of paying someone else to make your coffee, why not do it yourself?

The way I think about it:

• I can buy my own coffee beans, even fancy ones, for $15-20. A 450g bag will last my partner and I for two weeks. I can buy in bulk for less but the smaller size means maximum freshness, the same as I’d get at any coffee shop.
• I can make exactly the coffee I want, whenever I want, from the comfort of my own home. I can enjoy morning coffee in my favourite mug on the front porch in peace, and I can make espresso for my guests at the end of a dinner party with very little fuss.
• I’ve had my current coffee maker (which includes a grinder for the whole beans) for 10 years. It was a gift, so it didn’t cost me anything. Even if you buy a fancy one, that sets you back a few hundred dollars. If you take care of the machine, that’s a once per decade expense (the one I have feels pretty fancy to me and it was originally $700).

Over 10 years, if I pay for the pleasure of someone else to make my coffees, I’ll spend $36,000. If I do it Fancy Frugal style, I still get excellent quality, I don’t go through any single-use cups, and I’ll spend $5900. That’s assuming my partner also drinks the same amount of coffee as me (so if you’re living alone that number might look even lower) and it spreads the cost of my coffeemaker over the same time horizon.

That’s approximately $30,000 in savings per decade on coffee alone, while still keeping it fancy. What would you do with an additional $30,000 that you didn’t even need to make sacrifices for?