Coffee

Took a little longer than planned to throw this together but I'll start off the money saving posts with one of my favorite substances on this earth, coffee.  I feel slightly hypocritical for writing this while sitting in a starbucks sipping an americano but it's too cold outside to sit at the baseball field during practice and they've got free wifi here so what the heck...

I've never been an every morning Starbucks drinker but was guilty in one stage of life of paying a visit to the lady in green several times a week after calorie and MSG filled lunches with co-workers which definitely added up over the course of a month.  This coupled with my mail order gourmet coffee bean habit for my morning fix added up to just shy of $60/mo or $720/year which is a chunk of change, if you're a 5 morning a week $4 latte drinker you could be spending close to $1000 a year on coffee.  I love my java but not that much.

Going out to lunch less as I mentioned here not only helped the food budget but also led to fewer caffeine stops and more free coffee from the breakroom at work.  I also started buying my beans in bulk from Sam's Club where a 2.5lb of (Fair Trade) French Roast can be procured for ~$15.  BAM,  $40 back in the monthly budget or almost $7000 if that monthly amount was invested over the course of 10 years.  Pretty crazy that a minor modification like that could lead to enough money saved to cover a whole semester of college for one of our kids.

If convenience is key, k-cups can be found at your local warehouse club or on Amazon (search San Francisco Bay Coffee, great and the cups are biodegradable!) for ~$.40 each.  Factor in $100 for a Keurig machine and you're making your morning java for 1/10 the cost of a cup at the coffee joint, paying the Keurig off in less than 30 days as well as saving yourself time standing in line (or time AND gas sitting in the drive-thru).  If Espresso is your thing, a nice machine that's just about automatic can be found for several hundred dollars which might take more like 4-6 months to hit payoff but after that you'll be the happiest barista in the world saving cash while making a myriad of fancy coffee drinks.

As I divulged above, I still enjoy a cup of strong coffee made by someone else from time to time and in fact had 7 or 8 over the course of the 2 week vacation we just returned from which I will consider savoring the sweet taste of budget victory since it was changes like this that gave us the ability to actually take that vacation!