Thrifty TipThursday...Making Your Tea/Coffee @ Home

I know I'm definitely going to out on a limb when I write about this week's thrifty tip...making your own coffee/tea at home. This is Seattle...land of coffee...land of coffee stands every 50 feet...Starbucks on every corner...and I just said "making your own coffee/tea at home". (Hold the phone...)

Let's be brutally honest here...I don't think I'm going to be in the "in crowd" this week after some of my friends read this back here in Washington, but you can potentially save some big buckaroos. Please just hear me out. I'm not asking you to give up your caffeine just make it at home for goodness sakes.

The value in making your own coffee/tea at home (even one day out of the week) is astronomical in terms of money saved! The average cup of coffee in Washington, of course bearing on the size and how many extras you partake in, is probably fair to say $4. I personally make a cup of tea (OK...two on those especially tired mornings, but I reuse the tea bag) every morning in the comfort of my home all within in my budget.

I purchase 80 bags of Irish Breakfast Tea for $3.99 at Trader Joe's (equals out to .05 cents a tea bag), splash an inch of 2% milk from our local milk man (one 1/2 gallon costs $2.35...this gets a bit harder, but lets say I could use a splash, a 1/4 cup, 128 times out a carton = .02 cents), and then a shake of stevia extract also purchased at Trader Joe's to sweeten the deal. (this one is very difficult because of its powder form, so I'll just say another .07 cents)

So in conclusion my tea made at home costs...(drum roll please)...approximately .14 cents compared to the $4 at the coffee stand. Enough said. Know I'm not saying it isn't fun to splurge on coffee at Starbucks now and then, but from a cost stand point you really now can see the dollar and "sense". Just think of what you could get for $960 at the end of a year! (5 cups of coffee each week at $4)

If you having a hard time making your monthly budget and you're sipping a coffee from your favorite coffee stand right now...you might just know now where to find an extra $4 from this little math lesson. And hopefully you'll understand why here at the Little Blue Bungalow I drink my .14 cent tea at home in my travel mugs that Drew grabbed at Goodwill for .99 cents. Ah yes, a thrifty life is a beautiful thing.

From inside the little blue bungalow,
Katie Jean