Let’s talk about coffee.
Coffee is awesome. Personally, I can’t wake up in a morning without having a coffee. I might be an extreme example, but my morning routine involves turning off the alarm and then walking straight to the coffee machine in the dark, arms outstretched like a zombie seeking out my morning fix.
Some people can and do make it out of the house first and then buy a Coffee from the likes of Starbucks, Costa, Nero or a whole host of other coffee shops.
How much is my coffee habit costing me?
In the UK a cup of coffee averages £2.45 and in the USA it’s $2.70. If you’re doing that every day that’s £894.25 a year or $985.50.
Wow! That’s a lot of money.
It sure is.
Isn’t there a better way?
Yep
Some people have a cafetiere / french press and make coffee that way. I find that they just create a lot of mess and you have to carefully remove the ground beans when you’re washing up or else you end up blocking your sink and having to call out the plumber.
Plumbers are expensive, and unlike what Nintendo led me to believe, they are also not fun and they don’t even defeat giant dinosaurs or rescue Princesses named after fruit.
Get on with it and tell me the easy way.
The easy way is to just carry on throwing your money away every day at the coffee shop.
But I’m a millennial and I can’t afford a house, a shed or even a tent.
OK then you should probably buy a coffee machine because counter-intuitively you’ll end up saving money.
Which one? – Please bear in mind I’m poor.
OK so buy the Nespresso Inissia Coffee Machine by Magimix.
Nespresso Inissia Coffee Machine, Black by Magimix
Why?
It’s super straight forward, you flip up the semi-circle ring thing at the front, slide in a pod, put the ring thing back down and then hit one of the two buttons at the back depending on the size of coffee you want. That’s it. Super simple. I can operate it even in zombie mode (that’s me, not the machine, as far as I’m aware no manufacturer has zombie mode for their coffee machines yet). It’s also tiny, so should squeeze in anywhere in your kitchen (but the electricity cable is quite short – that’s actually a good thing because it prevents having an excess of cable to hide) and it has 19 bars of pressure for making a nice Crema on your coffee.
Here’s the user manual if you’re into that kind of thing: http://www.magimix.co.uk/files/prod_12931/UM_INISSIA_D_MAGIMIX_PROD_WEB_2015_09_07.pdf
How much cash will I save per year?
Well assuming the machine costs £80 and lasts 4 years (reddit users seems to suggest they can last for longer but let’s be conservative here) the machine is costing you about 5p a day to own (5.4p for you accountant nerds).
Next up are the capsules, these cost around 30p each from Nespresso but you can get them from Lidl (and other cheap supermarkets), or online for 18p each although they have fewer flavours to choose from.
So, it’s going to cost you between 35p a day (5p + 30p = 35p) and 23p (5p +18p = 23p) a day for your coffee (i.e. amortised* cost of machine plus cost of capsule), instead of £2.45 a day.
That’s a huge difference!
Over a year you’re going to spend £129.21 (if drinking original Nespresso capsules) so that’s
A saving of £765.04 per year!
Or £85.41 (if drinking Lidl equivalents)
A saving of £808.84 per year!
For over £800 you could go on a nice holiday, maybe even two! You could definitely buy a tent or add it to your deposit for a shed (London) / house (everywhere else).
So what are you waiting for? Buy one now at the following link:
When it comes to coffee though I actually think you should buy the medium-priced recommendation available in the next blog post. The reasons being more control over the taste and flavour of your coffee, together with it being better for the environment.
* Amortised just means to gradually write off the initial cost of (an asset in this case your coffee machine) over a period of time which I have determined as the lifetime of the product of four years. It might last longer in which case your coffees are even cheaper and you’re saving more. You may get a serious coffee addiction and then end up buying a better machine, in which case you’ll save less.