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this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
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I have spent $964.60 on coffees this year. As they've crept up from $3 to $4 to $5.30 over the last decade or so, I haven't noticed the difference it makes to overall finances.
If I had a club membership at the cafe where coffees were free, but annual membership cost $1k, I wouldn't take that up. Yet, it amounts to the same thing.
The road to poverty is paved with lots of little expenses that don't seem too significant, but which add up to a lot.
At the same time we are not used to seeing the yearly totals of what we spend, so quite resonable spending can be perceived differently when looked at that way. Your brain is anchored to around $5 being a reasonable price for coffee, seeing $1K attached to the spending just feels wrong.
Sometimes going further and looking at the amount over years can have the opposite effect as you start comparing it to other big things - cut out coffee for 10 years and you could save $10K . So cutting coffee is not going to get you a house deposit, or a new car - it might get you one holiday, which you will deperately need after 10 years without coffee.
there are other things to buy than houses and holidays, like long term investment in a mixed asset or managed fund or tbills
There are, and once you start adding in the calculations of compounding interest and comparing your daily coffee to number of years earlier you will be able to retire it all starts looking different again!
That's probably the main complexity of trying to make good financial plans, comparing and weighing all the different short term and long term priorities. Our brains tend to be wired to prioritise short-term interests, until we look back on our lives with hindsight and wish we had made other choices. I think my financial management was dramatically improved when I started budgeting for my full lifespan instead of just focusing on fairly short term spending - everything is about balancing costs and opportunities and picking which are the most important to you.
Does that include coffee at home or just cafe expenditures?
I would take that $1k deal in a heartbeat
This is just the cafe expenses (bank statement merchant filter).
Besides home coffee, this number also misses the occasional 7-Eleven coffee I've bought through the year; but there'd only be a dozen or so of those. If we went to total coffee expenditure, I expect the overall total would be probably 1.5x this amount. On top of beans purchased for home, I'm partial to the occasional iced coffee milk thingy. There'd easily be a 50+ of those to throw into the mix.
2 coffees a day , 48 weeks a year, 10 x48 x$5 =2400
Yikes. Coffee disagrees with me, but that's enough $ to avoid taking up the habit anyway.
As vices go, it's cheaper than alcohol or cigarettes - and less likely to kill me. I wouldn't call myself addicted to caffeine, but all evidence points to that declaration being suspect. I will say that I've had occasion to go without caffeine for a few days more than once and have never had the headaches people report from missing out on their coffee. Sadly, I also never get the 'energy boost' people are supposed to get from coffee.
I'm absolutely addicted to caffeine. But if that was the only reason you were getting it you would be happy with any caffeine containing substitute, which is most likely not the case.
I think with things like coffee there are a lot of factors that go into why we want it. Caffeine and taste are the obvious ones, but there is also things like taking a break from work, the chance to walk away from your desk for a bit (maybe even outside, depending on your location), sometimes a social aspect if you chat with the barrista or people in the queue. Even just being able to pick up and drink for a micro-break from your work without feeling like you are doing nothing while your brain processes something can be important.
Once you add all of those things in buying coffee starts to look like a better deal (which is probably why so many people resist the idea of cutting it out to save money) but it can also help you to think of other ways to meet the needs it is fulfulling if you do want to cut it out.