How Much is Your Starbucks Habit Really Costing You?

Coffee is America’s psychoactive drug of choice. Drinking it can be a habit that comes so naturally that you couldn’t imagine life without it. How else could you get through your day?

But how much is your coffee habit really costing you, from the perspective of lost free time?

Don’t worry, we aren’t suggesting you never drink coffee again! However, we think the decision of whether to grab that Starbucks or Philz coffee twice a day, versus filling up on homemade coffee beans or that office Keurig cup, is one that we should be thoughtful about. Again, we are all about simply being mindful. We don’t judge one decision over another, but we must avoid mindless decision making. So let’s think about whether or not YOU think your coffee habit is worth it!

While some coffee drinkers opt for the pure freshly brewed coffee route, many prefer a Latte, Mocha, or Macchiato. We will consider the impact of your coffee habit on two different groups, “premium drinkers” and “regular drinkers”, where premium drinkers are those who regularly opt for the more expensive drinks mentioned above.

We assume that an average cup of Starbucks fresh brewed coffee is $2.10, and the average price of a “premium” drink is $4.15. At two cups of coffee a day this amounts to $4.20 per day for fresh brewed coffee drinkers, and $8.30 per day for premium drinkers.

	Freshly Brewed Coffee Drinkers	Latte, Mocha, Macchiato Drinkers
Average Price	$2.10	$4.15
Cups per Day	2	2
Cost per Day	$4.20	$8.30
Cost per Year	$1,095	$2,164

Woah. This sounds like a lot off the bat. But how many days of financial independence are you losing out on as a result of your coffee drinking habit?

Using the Free Times Framework as described here, we arrive at the following:

	Freshly Brewed Coffee Drinkers	Latte, Mocha, Macchiato Drinkers
Additional Days Working Due to Habit	398 Days	787 Days

Choosing to buy coffee every day can delay you reaching financial freedom by over a year! (Click to Tweet)

Worth it Rating:

⭐

Rating: 1 out of 5.

The only way we can imagine this being worth it is if you simply cannot get through your day without coffee, and the coffee at the ole office simply won’t do for you. Go ahead and buy yourself a cheap coffee maker like this one, and give yourself the gift of over a year of free time.

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