In my grubby little hands I am holding a wonderful 12 ounce bag of dark roasted Starbucks Café Verona coffee. This powerhouse of anti-oxidants and wakey-ness is sustainably farmed and all of the Starbucks employees get educational benefits and health insurance. So this is the good stuff.
A look at the coffee numbers
Each cup of coffee we brew at home takes 2 ounces of the delightfully aromatic Starbucks grounds. And in 12 ounces there are 72 US teaspoons so that means we get 36 cups of coffee from a bag of grounds.
This bag costs us $8.59, or 26 cents a cup. A year of home brew will costs a whopping $96 dollars. For two people that is $191 bucks. We use half and half for an additional $2.29 a week or $119 a year. Total coffee expense is around $310 a year.
That same drink is a very reasonable $1.85 made by a hard working barista. For two people over a year that would be $1,317.
Wow, a savings of $1317 and then account for the $310 in home brew expenses we save $1007 over a year.
Right?
Wrong!
A second look at the numbers
This is what is so counter intuitive about frugality. Frugality itself is a compounding machine. It took me years to notice it and first I shrugged it off as improbable if not impossible.
What is missing here are the secondary and tertiary by side effects.
The first is the actual financial savings.
Lets take a look.
It takes me less than a minute to scoop the coffee, add the water and push the button.
The drive, wait and drive back to our local Starbucks is 20 minutes.
While waiting for the coffee I usually make breakfast. Nothing better to do as I have plenty of time. But with a 20 minute commitment to pick up coffee in the morning I simply don’t have time to cook and I will add another $15 in breakfast vittles. Another $3750 in annual expenses to add to the total.
And we aren’t done yet. It is a mere 4 miles to our local Starbucks and back. Sweet! Or is it? The federal government estimated cost of 51 cents per mile in car operating costs. Add another $2.04 to the cost or $532 bucks a year to the total.
- Coffee savings – $1000
- Breakfast savings-$3000
- Car savings – $500
This results in a grand total (and I rounded down a lot here) of $4500 in expenses ,annually. That home brew actually saves you $45,000 over ten years.
The second benefit is even better. The quality of life effect is what keeps so many already financial independent people to stick with their frugal ways.
Once you have bought a coffee maker, got into the habit of buying ground coffee (or grinding your own!) and then learned to operate the dang thing the actual process is easier than going to get coffee. And there is never a line as our home coffee shop.
Self taught barrista super powers
This means, after you become a coffee brewing expert, you will have a choice.
Choice 1: Stand in your kitchen drooling with one eye open until the coffee is ready about a minute or two later.
Choice 2: *Or* you can throw on some clothes, find your keys and shoes, rush out, feel the cold rain go down the back of your neck, fight for parking, wait in line and then zoom back home to reverse the process.
If both choices are available which would you choose? Yes the coffee isn’t quite a yummy as the store made stuff but your overall quality of life is so much better.
This is the power of frugality and of doing just some of the steps yourself.
The skeptics among you will note you don’t go to Starbucks 356 days a year and certainly don’t scoff down scones. I don’t want you to believe me. I want you to try it out for a month and make your own assessment.
This is just a single example. You can find a lot more ways to pay for private school that are much bigger such as avoiding Black Friday, saving $3000 in a single weekend, or using the Granny Smith cash multiplier method.
