How to Brew Up $47,000 in Coffee Savings

We are turning our focus on saving money, and every week we're going to tackle a new way to save on things you’re already spending money on.

 

By taking action and doing some of the stuff we’re talking about here in this series, you can build your first emergency fund and pay down tons of debt.

 

The next tip we’re sharing is how to save hundreds of dollars on coffee! 

 

Now wait, before you close my video and say no way! I'm not here to take away your Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts or any other high priced cup of joe.

 

But let’s seriously consider the numbers here. 

 

According to a recent poll done by AMERISLEEP, we’re spending a good chunk of change on coffee. Their poll showed that women spend $2,327 a year on coffee, and men spend $1,934. 

 

If you’re between the ages of 25-34, you spend the most on coffee at  $2,008 per year. 

 

If you’re 35-44, you spend the second most, $1,410. 

 

The older people in this country are crushing the younger people because after the age of 45, the amount of money people spend on coffee significantly drops. 

 

Now I love coffee. In fact, I'm a huge Dunkin' Donuts fan. But guess what? I LOVE my bank account more than I love my coffee. 

 

So let’s pick on my coffee habit a bit and why I made the switch many years ago.

 

I typically will drink three, 10oz cups of coffee per day. If it’s a rough morning because of my newborn baby girl, Avery, I’ll drink four. Hey, don’t judge.

 

A small Dunkin' Donuts coffee is 10oz, and if I were to buy it at the restaurant it would cost $1.59. But since I drink about 30 oz of coffee per day, and for good comparison, I'm going to go for the 24 oz extra-large cup of coffee for $2.29 to save money. Being that coffee is a part of my every day morning routine, we're going to multiply that by 365 days, which brings us to a grand total of $854.47, which comes out to about $71 per month. 

 

But what if I made that same coffee at home?

 

At the time of this post, a Dunkin' Donuts 45oz bag of coffee will cost me $20.39 at my local grocery store. A 45oz bag will provide me with 106 refillable K-Cups for my Keurig coffee maker, making me 106 cups of delicious coffee. The coffee will cost me about $19.5 cents per cup.

 

Add in about $.05 cents for the half and half and I'm only paying about $0.25 cents per cup, OR $0.75 for those same three cups of coffee. And as I mentioned earlier, being that coffee is a part of my every day morning routine, we're going to multiply that by 365 days, equaling a grand total of $273.75, which comes out to about $22.81 per month. 

 

So let’s compare. 

 

Buying my coffee straight from the source will cost me $854.47 per year. But buying and making my coffee at home will only cost me $273.75 per year. That’s a $580.72 savings, which is about $50 per month I can put back in my monthly budget.

 

When it comes to money and personal finance, many people fall victim to short-term thinking, meaning we’re always wanting to satisfy our emotions and our wants of today, and many of us aren’t considering what those spending habits are doing to our future. For instance, many people might save this $50 on coffee only to find something else to spend it on.

 

But what if we didn’t do that? Let me give you a glimpse of what I mean.

 

If you took that same $50 savings from this simple coffee habit change, and you invested it into your retirement account for the next 25 years, and let’s say the market averaged an 8% return over those 25 years, you would have $47,372 in your retirement account, meaning that $50 per month is now worth $157 per month, nearly tripling it's value. That’s a habit change worth making in my mind. 

 

When I started this video I told you I'm not here to take away your coffee. But maybe I've enticed you to cut back just a bit. The purpose of this example is to show you that all of the small purchases we make add up. But they're also the easiest purchases to overlook because they don’t hurt as bad when you’re only spending several dollars at a time.

 

What if we found ways to SAVE on all of these small purchases and used them to build a solid financial future? In today’s example, we used $50 month by making some simple coffee habit changes, but what if we did that with all of our purchasing habits and instead of only $50, it was $500 per month. What would that look like in 25 years? $473,726! 

 

With just a few simples changes and spending a little time, you can save yourself tons of money, freeing up cash to save your first emergency fund, pay down your debts, or even saving for your future! Go ahead and get started and I can't wait to hear how much you save!

 

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