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Coffee on a budget

July 20, 2009

Many people are trying to turn over a frugal new leaf lately. Faced with the possibility of job loss, wage reductions, increasing costs and an unstable stock market, even people who are doing okay are trying to buckle down.

There are tons of web sites dedicated to frugal living. One topic that seems to garner some attention is the cost of coffee. Like people on opposite sides of the political aisle, there are people on opposite sides of the coffee aisle.

You have the people who are coffee connoisseurs and especially love good quality coffee. Those people are often willing to pay for it. Then you have the occasional coffee drinkers, or those who see little to no difference between a cup at the gas station versus the brew served at a specialty coffee house.

I would put myself into the first category. I love my coffee. I love good coffee. And I can tell the difference between a good and bad cup of coffee, regardless of where it came from or how much it cost. And I should note that with coffee, like with wine, cost is not necessarily an indicator of how good the product will be. I just have certain brands that I like the best, and some are more expensive than others.

The expensive coffee critics love to cite the infamous $4-a-cup Starbucks coffee.  That’s a bit of an urban legend.  A regular cup of coffee at Starbucks is less than $2.  The drinks that push the $4 price range are the large, fancy espresso drinks.

I say drink what you like … as long as you can afford it! 

Even if you have expensive coffee taste but money is tight, you can still indulge your gourmet tastes on a gas station coffee budget.

If you buy a pound of coffee from a coffee house to brew at home and you pay $12 a pound, you can average approximately 56 cups of coffee from that pound. (That’s if you like your coffee on the strong side.) That averages out to 21 cents a cup. Not a bad price.

One other thing to watch out for is the actual amount of whole bean or ground coffee you are buying. I’ve noticed in some stores you’ll see a package of coffee for $8, but you’re only getting 12 ounces of coffee, not a full pound. If you’re comparison shopping by price, make sure to compare apples to apples, or, in this case, ounces to ounces.

Written by admin · Filed Under Misc. 

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