How much do you figure you spend on a week on your daily coffee habit? Have you ever sat down and done the math? A Large Tim Horton’s coffee runs about $1.55 and some of those specialty coffees I can’t pronounce at Starbucks or “cafes” can run you $6.00 per cup of coffee. Now, assuming during the week you only drink one cup a day (which certainly some drink more!) this means you are spending somewhere between $10.85 and $42.00 a week for coffee. Over one year, your annual coffee budget accounts for $564.20 – $2184.00! These are eye opening numbers.
Solution?
Brew Your Own Coffee
We buy organic free trade coffee in a bag from the grocery store. Sure, it costs a lot more than Nabob or Maxwell house, but I do love my coffee and appreciate flavour (as opposed to that cardboard taste I get from Tim’s). A bag of this ethically friendly coffee runs about $10-$13 and I yield about 30 cups of coffee (a large Tim’s sized mug). So I spend about $0.33 – $0.43 for my daily coffee, and the coffee is REALLY tasty. This works out to $1.65 – $2.15 per week or $85.80-$111.80 annually.
The added bonus is that with my re-usable mug I don’t go through 28-31 paper cups each month as well!
Check out our 365 Green Tips Series
I really agree with this! I can’t fathom why some people spend so much on coffee. If you are on the go or a road trip, then I can understand it … but buying your everyday cup of coffee out makes 0 sense to me.
You might as well go out and buy the best possible coffee you can buy and brew it yourself at home and, like you said, you will enjoy your coffee that much more because it tastes better and you will save a ton of money to boot. Win win!
And with programmable coffee makers people can’t even use “convenience” as an excuse! It can start brewing whenever you program it to start.
Its like they say, the more work you are willing to do for yourself the more money you can generally save. A good example of that is those bags of pre-cut vegetables. It makes no sense to me to pay the extra money for the extra refining, packaging, etc., and oftentimes the pre-cut “fresh” vegetables don’t even taste as good. I love the convenience of my Keurig coffee machine, but I do know deep down that it costs me.
Don’t get us started on pre-cut veg! bad idea (rarely organic, lots of nasties sprayed on em)
As for coffee – it takes me 2-3 mins to make mine. Hardly an inconvenience when I think about how much I save (and can use to pay down debt, invest, or enjoy on something like a vacation!)
Guilty guilty guilty! I knew the savings to be had from bringing your own coffee into work. However, the nice little break you get from doing a coffee run, certainly makes up for the $2.00 I have to spend per coffee break. Although, when you think about it over a long term (i.e. money spent on coffee runs per year…or even quarter) it certainly adds up!
$520 a year Alaric! (assuming 5 day work week) – $728 if you buy 1 coffee every day @ $2!