Would like to add "habit of drinking water" to this list. ANY beverage whether its coffee, soda, tea - is easily 4 to 6 dollars and is an entirely made up requirement.
Don't pay for somebody else to make your tea! A cup of ordinary tea should cost, like, 15p. That includes teabag, electricity, water, milk, and amortized cost of kettle and mug.
Even if you buy something unnecessarily expensive, like fancy matcha tea powder, you're looking at less than 50p.
For those who don't want to relinquish drinks altogether, getting a thermos/French press etc. and buying tea/coffee yourself reduces those expenses almost twenty fold over time.
Yeah, coffee is crazy expensive when you look at how much shops charge you for a drink. It costs about $1.33 per day for the 20oz of coffee I make for my wife and I. Really not bad considering if we were to both go out and buy a coffee everyday it would be around $10.
And it is a good practice indeed. I think deep down my comment history here one can find that I found it strange that someone would pay a lot of money on an annual basis for coffee out of the home.
That said I also think that it is not bad to be able to spend money like that. Not about the money itself, but the mindset required to spend. It must require a very pleasant way of life to not want to save all money, like in case of emergencies or saving up so you or your kids can go to college.
Coffee and tea can be inexpensive if you brew it yourself. Coffee even less so if you roast it. I've been roasting my own coffee for years now, started with a $100 machine which lasted about 4 years/100 lbs, and then I upgraded to a $350 machine. A pound of coffee costs between $4 and $7, and tastes comparable to something that a boutique roaster sells for $15/12oz. The upfront cost is relatively high, but if your enjoyment of coffee is encroaching into the realm of "hobby" then it's absolutely worthwhile.
I second this. Fresh coffee tastes awesome. I've been using a $100 roaster for a while now, only recently having got into the habit of roasting all the time (previously I'd get lazy and buy a bag at the store pretty often, which would break the habit). I need to roast every 3 or 4 days, but it only takes about 10 minutes. I don't think my roast quality is quite on par with the $17/12oz (aka $1.42/oz) bags from the store, but it's still damn good, and only like $5/16oz (aka $0.31/oz, 77% cheaper).
In India earlier, people in the South used to brew their own coffee at home, from coffee grounds / powder. There is a special steel utensil for it, with two vertical parts, one of which sits above the other. The top one has fine holes in the bottom of it. You put the coffee powder into the top, then pour some hot water over it, then wait for some time until it extracts the coffee into the bottom part. None of your fancy coffee machine stuff. They call it "decoction" :) Oldsters (and youngsters too) used to swear by it, and could not manage without their morning fix of a cup or two. Some probably still do. We had one of those utensils at home. Usually made with milk, BTW.
if you don't mind, can you share the brand of the machine, and your source for preroasted beans? i'd like to get into this too but am not sure the best approach
If you can find it in the library, the book "Brain Maker" [0] has a good starting point in its recipes section. Here's [1] a video showing how it's done. You've got to buy the Kefir grains (or get them from someone you know who makes Kefir). Once you have the grains, you most likely won't need to buy them again, as you'll keep them alive and growing on your own. (Note for the grain-free folks, Kefir grains aren't actually grains. They're a bacterial culture conceptually similar to what you'd use to make yogurt.)
Basically, you combine water, Kefir, and sugar, then you wait a few days. Then, you drink. Or if you want to add flavoring (which I highly recommend), you do a second fermentation process: add in the flavoring (e.g. dried strawberries or something), bottle it for a 1-3 more more days, then drink or refrigerate.
Even if you buy something unnecessarily expensive, like fancy matcha tea powder, you're looking at less than 50p.