How Much Money Can You Save By Brewing Your Own Coffee?

Have you ever wondered how much money you could save by brewing your own coffee instead of buying a fancy latte or mocha from your favorite coffee shop every day? I sat down one day and did the math, the totals might surprise you - they might even scare you (at least they scared me once I realized how much money I was dumping into my gourmet coffee addiction).

Keep in mind I'm not advocating that you should quit going to your favorite coffee shop all together. I haven't. And I probably won't. But I do put all of this into perspective, and often times choose a home brew instead.

So here's how to calculate how much money you can save by brewing your own coffee.

Step 1: Add up the total amount you spend at coffee shops throughout the week.

For those of you who keep good records, this is probably easy. For the rest of us who fly our finances by the seats of our pants, you might have to approximate. In my case, I buy at least one big latte every weekday at my corner coffee shop. By the time I throw in a tip, the total is about $5. And since I do this pretty much every day, my weekly total is $25.

Step 2: Do some simple math.

Now that you've got a number from step one, multiply it by 4 to get a monthly total. In my case I multiplied $25 by 4 for a grand total of $100! That's $100 every month that goes straight to the coffee shop.

Sure this is all just an approximation, but it's a good starting point.

To take it further, you can take your monthly cost (in my case, $100) and multiply it by 12 for an annual cost. That comes out to $1,200 per year for me! Whoa!

Step 3: Determine the cost of home brewing.

I've gone ahead and done some basic math (it wasn't hard, but for the sake of this blog I'll skip my details) and found that each cup of Folgers coffee that I brew costs about three cents. Yup, that's it. A measly $0.03. Feel free to use this number yourself, or round up to a nickle or dime if you really dump lots of beans into the filter or buy expensive brand name beans.

Then you can take that number and multiply it the same way we did in the earlier steps. In my case, it would cost $.15 per week, $.60 per month and $7.20 per year. Granted this is on a cup-by-cup basis, which means you're only brewing one cup at a time. If you're like me and brew an entire 8-cup pot every day, your costs will go up eight fold. Still, it only comes out to $57.6 per year.

Step 4: Determine how much money you can save by brewing your own coffee.

This is easy, just subtract the numbers you got in step three by those you got in steps one and two. In my case, $1,200 - $60 (rounded) gives me an annual savings of $1,140!