Happy April to all my FIRE Flower blossoms 🙂

Spring is in the air, and I can smell it already! I have been in a fantastic mood because of it lately.

I can officially declare our transition to Baltimore complete (with the exception of the sale of our condo). We are fully unpacked, we have new routines, and we have really settled into life. Included in that is getting back to writing quality FIRE posts so let’s goooo!

Today I am going to talk about: COFFEE

I have an affinity for coffee. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a cannot-live-without-it person, but I am certainly a my-day-is-better-with-it person. Fine, sometimes I even just like to hold a cup and smell it!

We decided to use our move as an excuse to upgrade our coffee game. Previously, we had a Nespresso machine for coffee at home and would occasionally grab coffee out. For me this would be about 2-3 lattes a week from a local coffee shop.

When we moved, we donated the Nespresso, and we bought a Breville Bambino espresso machine and a Figment coffee pot. The upfront investment was $577. Which I tucked into a corner of my brain and tried not to think too hard about the long-term ROI on what was a pretty expensive purchase. But today I’ve decided to unpack these numbers from the back brain corner and see if we have made not only a daily pleasures upgrade, but also a FIRE plan upgrade!

Let’s dig in:

Our original monthly coffee expense:

• $50 – Nespresso pods
• $83 – 9 Lattes @ $9.19 / Latte tip included

Total Expense: $133

Next, we need to dive into the makings of my at-home vanilla lavender oatmilk latte (yeah, yeah lavender is perfection and now you understand why my original lattes were so expensive haha also I always go oatmilk for the cows so there is that too). To help us normalize, I do drink more lattes per month now that I can make them myself, so let’s bring the volume up to 15 lattes per month.

• $18 – Bag of locally roasted espresso beans. This lasts about a month, so $1.20 per latte.
• $6 – 64 oz oatmilk at 8oz per latte, so $0.75 per latte.
• $8 – Lavender buds – yep you are reading that right, I make my own simple syrup yummm 🙂 it only takes one tbls per batch so that’s $1 per batch and a batch lasts a month, so $0.07 per latte.
  • Crazy to think about the upcharge I normally pay for this! This post is already blowing my own mind!
• $13 – Vanilla. I use 1 tbls, so that’s $3.25 per batch, so $0.22 per latte.

Drumroll please…..

The cost of my homebrewed (and sincerely just as good as my favorite coffee shop) is $2.24

This saves $6.95 PER LATTE!! A 76% COST REDUCTION!

Our current monthly coffee expense:

• $20 – hazelnut beans we order online because our daily drip tastes are basic af
  • This alone makes the switch from Nespresso to brew pot a win (yay!)
• $34 – 15 Vanilla lavender with oatmilk homebrewed lattes @ $2.24
• $20 – 2 Lattes at local coffee shops. What? I like the vibes. And a caramel iced. LOL.

Total Expense: $74

That is a 44% total monthly cost reduction!!

And I am actually able to consume MORE coffee for LESS money without a decrease in quality!!

Monthly cost reduction is dollars is $59 – which means we can ‘pay off’ the initial investment of $577 in 9.8 months. So by the end of the year we will recoup the machine costs and have positive ROI going forward. We will be sippin’ pretty in the coffee business my dudes.

If there are any FIRE Flowers reading this that make their own syrup too – I’d love to know your recipes!

I had fun putting this post together; I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it!

Talk again in a couple months! Bye!