30 Easy Ways To Save Money - Day 2: Coffee

This is Day 2 on my series “30 Easy Ways To Save Money” – Am I Doing All Of Them???”, where I decide to put my spending habits under a magnifying glass and tackle every point on the list.

• 2. “Make your own coffee: Everyone seems to have heard of the latte factor. Even though the author may have overestimated the savings from skipping a latte at Starbucks, don’t underestimate the ding it puts in your pocket in the long run. You don’t have to entirely ban drinking coffee, but skip it as often as possible unless you make it at home.”

Quoted from original post at: Dumb Little Man, Photo: Coffee-Exchange. 

Now this is actually one I’m quite good at doing. Drinking coffee at home. I know that in an earlier post I mention that coffee-on-the-go is one of my spending vices. However, the ratio is probably 1:3. For every one cup of coffee I drink out, I drink 3 at home. Sometimes more. (I drink a lot of coffee, lol :)

And in this 1:3 ratio I also count the cups of coffee that I take at the university as “drinking out”. Which is dirt cheap ($0.80).

Often times I’ve caught myself wanting to grab a cup of coffee on the go, but then decided to wait either ‘til I got home or got to the university.

As these would be by far cheaper than spending anywhere between $5 to $9 on a cup of coffee.                                                  (Prices: $5 at the train station, $9 at a regular coffee place).

So despite that I do on occassion catch the expensive coffee on my way, I by far drink the majority of my cups fairly cheaply.

But I think this was a conscious decision made some years back when I more or less grabbed a cup of coffee and a small breakfast sandwich at the train station everyday. This was my trusty morning routine. But in the long run after having done this for one and a half years I realized that I was spending (wasting) too much money on this. And so changed this habit.

And so today it’s only on occassion that I grab a cup of coffee at the train station or at my favourite coffee place on my ‘travels’.

I still do it though, so I’m not guilt-free, lol :) But I’m very conscious about this, so I often choose to wait ‘til later and grab the coffee at cheaper prices either at home or at the university.