What does coffee have to do with wealth and edutainment?
Heads up – this is NOT a column about coffee. It’s about wealth. And perhaps where yours might be getting sucked up. And it’s about choices. And perhaps where a trashy one leads to.
Recently, I’ve been in the company of someone who starts each day with a cuppa morning brew. In the hotter months it’s iced coffee. In the colder months it’s hot coffee.
Nothing wrong with that.
Except this coffee isn’t being poured from their kitchen carafe. It’s being paid for at the local Cumberland Farms. At $.99 per pour plus tax, for a per-serving price tag of $1.06.
Again, not a big deal (other local coffee shops charge way more). But this is a daily habit, weekends included, and oftentimes twice a day.
This is also not a column about Cumberland Farm’s products or prices. That’s just the establishment this person visits.(And by the way, their coffee is SO good)
So, at $1.06 per one-cup-a-day the expenditure adds up to $386.90 per year. Multiply that by the more likely daily intake of two-cups-a-day and we’re up to $773.80 per year.
For?
Daily coffee?
Order your brew outside of Cumbies (as the regulars call it) and you’ve topped your coffee expenditure off with more than cream and sugar.
And in defense of coffee, this isn’t about coffee. You could purchase tea. This really is about priorities and the monetary choices resulting from.
Now, some may argue that treating oneself is a form of taking care of oneself. A little twisted on the scale of self-care but I get how this daily habit brings joy.
Personally, though, I could find other things to joyously spend $773. 80 per year on.
Like?
My Joy-inducing Choices
Here’s what happened as Instagram pinged me this morning – while sipping – homemade coffee at my breakfast table.
An e-book offer crossed my path.
Jennifer Weiner, #1 NY Times best selling author of “Mrs. Everything” and “In Her Shoes” announced that her e-short, “EVERYONE’S A CRITIC, is out today (10/23/19) and on sale everywhere.”
The click-bait, “It’s the story of an aging book critic, desperately clinging to relevance, and a hungry debut author who will do anything for a review. It’s also about the media and the publishing world, and vanity and envy, and whose stories matter, and who gets to decide.” enticed me enough to curiously click the link.
Books, new, old, hard cover, paperback, e-books, the mere mention of them is like the scent of coffee beans to every book lover.
And that “Buy now with 1-Click” big yellow Amazon button is just way too convenient.
Click.
Bought.
$.99
And that’s when it hit me. The coffee connection. And how we pleasure ourselves.
Justifiable Spending Habits
I LOVE coffee. I’m a regular hot, cream no sugar for the most part. But every now and then I treat my taste buds to a Hazelnut. And at $2.51 per cup, a coffee treat is few and far between. (Obviously, I’m also not purchasing at Cumbies)
But as I clicked the Amazon Kindle Buy Now button and had Jennifer’s e-book delivered faster than any coffee dispenser or barista could ever do, it dawned on me:
- People spend a lot of money consuming coffee from outside establishments
- You can save a lot of money yearly by brewing from your home coffee bar (like between $4 and $800 savings)
- I would much rather spend $.99 on an e-book than a beverage
We all have our “Cumbies” curse. So, while we’re being honest, my previous morning brew was BookBub. Yikes! I had to opt out of that enticement. That had way more addictive power over me than any cuppa coffee. Now at least I have to be enticed by the smell of the author’s aroma, click on their link, “look inside” if that option is available then decide if I’m laying down my $.99 to “Buy now with 1-Click”. Usually, though, if I’ve gotten as far as “look inside” then I’m looking for that Buy Now button.
Now, obviously, it would take me much longer to digest a book (even at $.99) than a beverage. But still, for me, an avid book lover, 365 to 730 E-books educating and entertaining (edutaining) me is far more brain-boosting than 365 to 730 empty coffee cups and lids.
I do wonder, though, whether I’m just trying to justify my book consumption by making coffee-consuming spenders look like they’re wasting their resources.
I mean, at the end of it all, coffee consumers have the jitters (from either too much coffee or coffee withdrawal), an empty “loose change’ fund (because that loose change is funding the tax on their $.99 coffee) and an empty cup and lid to properly dispose of.
E-book consumers have hundreds of books educating and entertaining them, no trash to dispose of and an evergreen product.
Wobbly Wheels on the (book-buying) Wagon?
This revelation could be worse than I thought. I’ve just totally justified my cuppa e-book consumption addiction. And now I feel the compelling desire to buy a $.99 e-book daily (because I drink from my home coffee bar). And if I limit myself to one e-book daily and put the other $.99 into a “loose change fund” I’ve now doubled my ROI over my Cumbies coffee consumer. My year end bottom line will total 365 e-books AND $361.35 savings while my Cumbies cohort is out $773.80 and amassed mounds of trash.
Bad habits justified?
What would you do?
