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August 25, 2008 
i admit it: i have a must-buy-coffee-out addiction.
when i arrive to work every morning, i find that i MUST go to the cafe downstairs and order a large non-fat aulait. every day, monday through friday, i MUST have one before noon. otherwise my mind is distracted, knowing that something is missing, that a daily habit has not yet been satisfied.
several months ago i re-evaluated my finances and learned something quite fascinating and shocking (to me) at the same time — i was spending about $50-75 a month on coffee outside home! this seemed preposterous to me. how could this be? perhaps i made a calculation error. but no, adding up the numbers several times later, i was still confronted by the same cost range.
hmm. from then on, i decided that i would bring coffee from home daily in order to satisfy my morning habit. every morning before i leave for work, my significant other (SO) prepares my coffee in a small thermos for me to throw into my backpack.
so now i don’t spend $50 +/- a month anymore. the cost of buying our own coffee beans to grind in the coffee beans grinder every morning is about $10, plus the 1% milk added is about $5 monthly. we generally buy these from costco. add cost for brown sugar and any differences i’ve not accounted for, and the price of bringing my own coffee from home is at most $20 a month! i am now saving $30-45 a month.
the SO spent about $350 for his espresso machine, and somewhere between $60 to $300 for his coffee beans grinder (it’s been awhile). (note that a fancy espresso machine is not necessary! one can purchase a simpler coffee maker for less than $50.)
the thermoses we have were something we already owned. i bought one of the stainless steel thermal bottles in cusco, peru a few years ago for about $10. the SO has one from starbucks (~$25). $10-40 for initial investment costs are not bad at all — less than the price of buying coffee out daily for a month! and a worthwhile long-term investment for me to use and reuse.
what about you?
what possession from a lifestyle change has been saving you a bit of change for awhile?
approximately how much have you been saving monthly as a result?
