If you ask me, the thought of starting my mornings without coffee is terrifying, almost to an anxiety-inducing degree. My orders are fixed, black for the morning, white in the afternoon, and as a treat, maybe a cold brew or two during the mandatory weekend brunch. The habit must have started during my first part-time job at Starbucks or when weekend brunches started to become an acceptable social activity. Regardless, I’ve been hooked onto coffee for as long as I can remember.
It all started last month when I read an article about budgeting and it encouraged the recording of daily expenses to help one make better money decisions. So that’s what I did. I took note of everything I spent on, from groceries to the weekly beer run and dinners with friends. At the end of the month, I did the sums and was shocked to discover that I spent approximately $150 to fuel my coffee habit.
Thanks to that shocking revelation, here I am calculating the real cost of coffee so that it may serve as a public service announcement (you can thank me later) for coffee enthusiasts who are unknowingly spending more on coffee than their monthly insurance premium.
Whichever your preferred caffeinated brew may be, here’s a detailed breakdown of how much your coffee habit is really costing you.
For the purpose of this exercise and easier calculation, let’s assume that we take a cup of coffee a day on weekdays with an additional cup during the weekend brunch session (because you need to be awake to hear about Karen’s new love interest and Becky’s office drama). That brings us to a total of 6 cups a week, 24 cups a month and a whopping 288 cups of coffee a year. Note that the calculations below do not include transportation, water, electricity and other machine operating costs.
