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If anyone is curious if the girl was buying a single $5 coffee per day, contributing that $35 into a basic S&P 500 fund each week, and doing so for 2 years she should have about $4500 in her account. Now, if she's buying coffee supplies at a grocery store to replace buying it at take out , we'd have to subtract the cost of coffee supplies from the $4500 to know how much she truly saved making coffee at home.
Providing she doesn't spiral into a coffee hobby.
Stay away from espresso and super "high end" artisan beans and you can have a very solid coffee hobby for not a whole lot of $$. We do a mix of drip, French press, and cold brew. The cost per cup is basically the same for each and the equipment was not very expensive.
You got me curious, so I did the math for us.
I am a drip coffee person, drink far too much coffee (40 oz) throughout the day, and work on a fairly large corporate campus so I have easy access to hot/fresh coffee that I can purchase. Even though there are multiple branded places to get coffee from on campus, they have similar pricing.
- Small (12 oz): 4x @ $2.65/pop = $10.60/day
- Medium (16 oz): 3x @ $2.95/pop = $8.85/day
- Large (20 oz): 2x @ $3.25/pop = $6.50/day. This is obviously the cheapest choice, but will result in a cold bottom half of the cup due to drinking my coffee slowly vs pounding it
My wife and I split a pot of coffee. It takes us 3 oz of coffee beans to brew it. I can buy a 20 oz bag of the coffee beans we use for $15.29, which works out to $2.30/pot. We often stock up on the beans when they go on sale, but I don't know what we paid for them the last time around.
So.. since my wife also drinks coffee let's say that the price spread between purchased already brewed coffee vs brewed at home coffee is between $6.50-$10.60/day. Splitting the difference = $8.85. Doing that 365 days/year = $3,120 saved.
The fact that I have coworkers who drink a similar quantity of espresso based (more $$) drinks at work is insane.
Do this over a 25 year career, invest the money monthly ($260), plan for a conservative 5% rete of return and you'll have $162,577 - only half of which is principal.
Apply this pattern of thinking over a number of different spending categories and you'll be way better off financially. That said, the stats on the billionaire class are eye watering and no amount of frugality will catch any of us up to them.
Boiling the water costs money too.
Ha, this is true as does amortizing things like the coffee maker that needs replacing every 5 years, white vinegar for monthly descaling, the Stanley thermos I bought 4 years ago to bring coffee to work, etc.
Let's say that it takes 15 minutes to brew the pot of coffee at 1,500 watts. That's 0.375 watt hours. At $0.20/kwh that's $0.075/pot. Yay for dumping it into a thermos once it's brewed.
All in, even if you added an extra $0.50/day brewing at home is still way cheaper.
I don’t know how anyone can survive on a cup of coffee a day.
Usually people eat some food and drink some water, as well as the coffee, during their day
Damn, is that why I feel like shit all the time, I'm supposed to be eating food too?
Yes, but just one? By noon I am already on my third cup with two or three still left to be had over the afternoon and early evening.
I don't want to tell you how to live your life, but that sounds like a bit much...
It likely wasn't just the one cup
I calculated that if I only drink coffee at home I spend about 1000€ a year on it.