Coffee is one of America’s go-to drinks for a morning pick-me-up. There’s just something about a nice little caffeine kick in the rear that makes us ready to take on the day. But did you know you could be spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per year on coffee? What ever happened to cheap coffee?
Alright coffee drinkers, this one’s for you. I’ve got some news on how you can save some beans on your daily roast.
Coffee Consumption
Americans consume about 3 cups of coffee per day. Over the course of a year, that’s over 1000 cups for the average Joe!
Of course, there comes a price associated with this addiction. Turns out the average cup of coffee costs over $3, and if you are buying multiple per day, you could be spending A LOT of money on your daily pick-me-up. The good news is there are ways to consume coffee for less than $3, and I’m here to help you do just that.
Whether you buy or make coffee, I think there are really three main ways you can get your daily roast. I consider these to be buying it, making it with single serve cups, and brewing a pot of coffee. I’ll leave out the “oddballs” for now. We will start at the worst option, then get cheaper and cheaper until we hit the epitome of cheap coffee.
Buying (Not So) Cheap Coffee
Buying coffee every day can cost you an arm and a leg if you aren’t careful. While everyone and their mother sells coffee, you need to take cost into account, and not just convenience.
Three places that you can buy coffee are McDonald’s, Dunkin, and (sigh) Starbucks. Each one of these have a different quality of coffee, different blends, and yes, different prices.
Note: These prices are based on my local area and may be different in your location. I recommend doing your own research to see how much you can save. I also based everything off the average Joe, who consumes 3 cups of coffee per day.
McDonald’s
Starting off with McDonald’s, a small cup of coffee will cost you $1. Over a year, you’re spending $1,095 for coffee! That’s not terrible considering the other options in this section, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
Now I know a lot of people don’t like the flavor, and McDonald’s doesn’t offer many options for flavors, but if you just need the caffeine, it’s a decent option.
Dunkin
A small cup of coffee at Dunkin will cost you $2.99. That’s an extra $1.99 per cup of coffee. Over a year, you’re spending an extra $2,180 for coffee! From a straight cost perspective, this is a poor choice.
Ok, ok, so they have more flavor options. And that’s to be expected. Dunkin is a coffee shop after all. Why shouldn’t they have more options to choose from?
Starbucks
Ahh yes, Starbucks. If you know me, you know my “love” for the brand. Financially speaking, Starbucks is just a bad choice. A small cup of coffee costs $3.15. That means you’re spending $3450 per year. Compared to Dunkin, you are spending an extra $175 per year and and extra $2,355 compared to McDonald’s.
Compared to the other places I’ve mentioned, Starbucks is the land of opportunities. I mean, you need a book to understand all of your options at Starbucks. You can get your drink exactly the way you like it.
So yes, you have more options, but are they really worth the extra cost? You are paying more than twice as much per cup of coffee.
Single-Serve Cups: Cheaper Coffee, More Work
Now if you’ve been in the loop for the past decade or so, you know all about Keurig. Bringing a new level of ease into making coffee at home, Keurig’s k-cups have allowed coffee drinkers to to make single-serve cups quickly and repeatably. One of the best parts is you don’t have any leftovers.
Now there are other brands, such as Nespresso, but since they are mostly the same, I will use k-cups in my pricing. I also won’t include the cost of the machine.
One of the great things about making your own coffee is the options. You can put whatever type of coffee you want into your coffee maker, not just what a coffee shop offers. But if you’re looking for the same taste, you can get that too. In fact, McCafe, Dunkin, and Starbucks all have single-serve coffee pods.
If you were to buy these, you can do so at a fraction of the price of buying it in-store. McDonald’s McCafe goes for about $0.56 per cup (save $0.44), Dunkin goes for about $0.77 per cup (save $2.22), and Starbucks goes for about $0.76 per cup (save $2.39).
As you can see, putting in the two minutes of effort every morning to make your own coffee can have a huge impact. Assuming you drink three cups of Starbucks every day, you could save roughly $7.17 per day, or $2,617 per year! Now I know that sounds crazy, but remember that this is based on small black coffees. If you’re adding milk, sugar, syrups and all of the extras, you could potentially save even more.
Old-Fashioned Brewing: Cheapest Coffee, Most Work
Now we come to our third mainstream way to get coffee. It’s not glamorous, and if you ask my wife, it takes a certain amount of skill to get right. We all know how this one works. You scoop coffee grounds into the coffee filter, then add water and let it brew. It takes time. It takes effort. It SAVES MONEY. At the end of the process, you have yourself a few cups of cheap coffee.
So first things first: we need to measure the same. In an average k-cup, there is about 0.3-0.4 oz of coffee grounds. Since one k-cup is one cup of coffee, one cup of coffee requires this much grounds. To keep the comparisons relevant, we’ll continue to look at our three coffee shop roasts.
McDonald’s McCafe coffee can be purchased for $0.15 per cup of coffee ($0.41 savings), Dunkin coffee for $0.25 per cup of coffee ($0.52 savings), and Starbucks coffee for $0.23 per cup of coffee ($0.53 savings). Just for fun, I’ll add in a fourth contender here, and toss up good old Folger’s. While they don’t have a store front, they have been a household name for coffee for decades, and I figured they were worth a mention. Folger’s can be bought in bulk (you know I like me some bulk shopping deals) for $0.10 per cup of coffee. Compare that you your $10 on Starbucks every day and the savings add up.
BIG Savings
Speaking of savings, here’s the numbers. If you start brewing a pot of coffee every morning instead of going out and buying it, you will save hundreds if not thousands per year! Again, assuming 3 cups per day, every day for a year:
- McDonald’s: $165 per year instead of $1,095 per year ($930 yearly savings!)
- Dunkin: $275 per year instead of $3,275 per year ($3,000 yearly savings!)
- Starbucks: $250 per year instead of $3,450 per year ($3,200 yearly savings!)
Now I don’t know about you, but I think a few minutes every day is something we can all spare (that’s right, I see you bringing your phone into the bathroom to entertain yourself while you do your business). Now if those few minutes can save you over $3,000 per year, I think that’s worth it, don’t you? Cheap coffee is right there, all you have to do is grab it.
Cheap Coffee Made Easy
Let’s face it, brewing a pot of coffee is a whole ordeal. You have to get out the coffee pot, get a filter, fill the filter, pour in the water, then you may have extra coffee at the end of it. It’s a lot of steps to follow when you’re still wiping the crust out of your eyes early in the morning.
Luckily, there are ways to get around this process in the morning while still spending only pennies per cup of coffee. I’m not going to go into depth about cold brew or pre-brewing for iced coffee. What I do want to touch on is reusable single-serve pods.
Now reusable single-serve pods are exactly the same size the standard ones, but they allow you to put in your own coffee grounds, and they can be emptied and reused. This allows you the ease of the single-serve machine, with the money savings of the traditional brewing method. Essentially, you are getting cheap coffee for the least effort. It’s a win-win!
The pods can be purchased for only a few bucks and can be reused daily. My wife and I recently switched to this and found that we were spending far less on coffee each month. My wife only drinks one cup per day, but instead of spending roughly $15 per month on standard single-serve cups, we found that we can pay $15 for 40oz of a blend that she likes, and it lasts us for over 4 months. That may not sounds like huge savings, but now were saving $135 per year on coffee, which we can use to help pay for another travel adventure.
Final Thoughts
So if you’ve been following the blog, you know I have a beef with Starbucks, and here’s why. You can save over $3,000 year on coffee, and that’s assuming you just get a small black coffee. And I know some of you out there are getting the large with espresso shots and the syrup pumps on top.
I’m not here to criticize you if you spend $10 or more per day on coffee. Rather, I want to open your eyes and have you think about whether that’s really where you want to spend your money. The numbers in this article may be different than your own, but I think seeing the yearly savings warrants a second look how much you can save. My wife and I switched from standard single-serve cups to the reusable ones, and we haven’t looked back since.
If you are ready to start making cheap coffee, and want to start living your ideal life, then it’s time to start your financial journey. I recommend you start here.
Happy Spending!
-The Spendgineer