Cutting My Cousin's Coffee Budget by Two-Thirds
My male cousin was driving me out to a family event in the 'burbs when he complained about being broke. We crunched some quick numbers right there in the car with the help of a pen & pad and my cell phone's calculator. The calculator said he should've been saving $1,100/mo since February when he had a significant change in his finances. However, he's only managed around $700/mo. I told him, "You have a $400/mo leak somewhere. What else do you spend money on?"
Lottery tickets and coffee.
The lottery tickets are never more than $8/mo, so we ruled that out right away. Coffee was a different story. My cousin buys sometimes as many as four (FOUR!) large coffees per DAY. This is on top of the coffee he makes at home. We estimated his total expenditure for coffee is $300/mo!!!
This same cousin has just recently kicked smoking, so I wasn't about to ride him about this. I could see he felt really ashamed and despondent about how much he was spending on coffee, so I said, "Listen, drink as much coffee as you want, but make it at home. Don't buy it."
When I got home, I looked for the biggest and best thermos I could find. I found it on Amazon: the Thermos Nissan 61 Ounce Stainless Steel Bottle for $30.69. I rang him up, and he bought it. He decided it would would cut him down to buying maybe one coffee per day. If he can get his coffee habit down to $100/mo, I think he'll be very happy.
I know he still has $100/mo trickling somewhere, but we've managed to plug the leak by 50 percent, so I'm calling it good.
Lottery tickets and coffee.
The lottery tickets are never more than $8/mo, so we ruled that out right away. Coffee was a different story. My cousin buys sometimes as many as four (FOUR!) large coffees per DAY. This is on top of the coffee he makes at home. We estimated his total expenditure for coffee is $300/mo!!!
This same cousin has just recently kicked smoking, so I wasn't about to ride him about this. I could see he felt really ashamed and despondent about how much he was spending on coffee, so I said, "Listen, drink as much coffee as you want, but make it at home. Don't buy it."
When I got home, I looked for the biggest and best thermos I could find. I found it on Amazon: the Thermos Nissan 61 Ounce Stainless Steel Bottle for $30.69. I rang him up, and he bought it. He decided it would would cut him down to buying maybe one coffee per day. If he can get his coffee habit down to $100/mo, I think he'll be very happy.
I know he still has $100/mo trickling somewhere, but we've managed to plug the leak by 50 percent, so I'm calling it good.
Trackbacks
-
5/29/2010 5:07 PM
CHICAGOCHEAPSITE.COM wrote:
I thought we'd already explored every false spending move possible on this blog, but then my cousin, the coffee drinker, showed me his special way of wasting money. It was new to me: -
5/29/2010 5:05 PM
CHICAGOCHEAPSITE.COM wrote:
I thought we'd already explored every false spending move possible on this blog, but then my cousin, the coffee drinker, showed me his special way of wasting money. It was new to me:
Comments