I love coffee shops and bakeries more than most other places on earth and while I don’t know the street names even blocks from my house, you can drop me anywhere on the planet and you will probably find me in the closest adorable cafe to where I landed and I’ll have a latte for you as well.
But lately I’ve been drinking my coffee at home which has made me realize what I already knew. I spend A LOT on coffee. Even at home, we buy fancy beans or Nespresso which is often .70-$1 a capsule. Still a savings from coffee shop coffee, but it can get spendy if you’re drinking multiple cups a day.
Recently, I was in a rush to get things together for my quarantine in Canada and I didn’t think I would have a Nespresso machine available so I wanted instant coffee for my trip. On Amazon there was a pack of Nescafe that was around 10 for $10 that I could get next day shipping and I bought it thinking that I was paying a premium for needing something speedy.
When my coffee arrived, I found out it wasn’t 10 coffees for 10 dollars but 10 boxes of 5 coffees which ended up being 50 coffees for $10 making each cup about 20 cents. 20 cents! This was 50 cents a cup cheaper than my Nespresso. And multiple dollars cheaper than my usual coffee shop cup.
This made me realize that there are always places where we can find a bit of savings in our lives and maybe if we can find these savings, we can try investing them so our savings can work for us. In this case I am going to use my coffee savings for investing in the stock market.
How much money would you have for investing if you reduced your monthly coffee splurges?
And this brings me to a recent poll I did on my instagram.
Because I’ve been into learning about investing lately, I took a class called Investing 101 put on by Lindsey Bell from Ally as part of a Create and Cultivate conference. Lindsey mentioned at one point that nowadays 26% of females invest in the stock market. I wondered if my instagram audience would reflect that poll. Over 50 people took my poll and I learned that 65% of the people that took the poll are investing, which makes me feel like more and more of us women are getting into investing nowadays.
I used to be part of the non-investing group until recently, but now with the accessibility of online trading apps, it is becoming a lot easier to be able to dabble in something like the stock market in a non-intimidating way. There are a lot less fees associated with investing so many of the upfront costs that might also be a barrier for most people are not there anymore either. I use Robinhood and I have been for nearly a year and a half. I put the money that I would normally spend on coffee in a month in an investing account that I use to funnel into my trading account.
Because I would theoretically be spending this money on coffee I count it as 0 so if I lose it all, it’s money that would have been consumed anyways so I wouldn’t be using it on other things. But even just seeing the money I might have spent grow in the investing account that I haven’t turned into trades yet is a good reminder that I don’t need to get my coffee out all the time. We still go out to coffee shops, but we have reduced this activity to more of a splurge or a treat and we’ve been making coffee at home or on the road ourselves more often instead.
How to start investing if you aren’t doing this already
So maybe the amount you might save if you reduce your coffee shop splurges is $10 a month. The class I took from Create and Cultivate showed what would happen if you invested $20 a month and over a 10 year time period it added up to quite a lot of cash. So maybe even $10 is a good start. There are many stocks available for under $10 a share and there are some places that even allow fractional shares of more expensive stock if you are unable to buy a whole share.
Lindsey mentioned Investopedia and Kiplinger as good resources for learning about investing in the stock market. A friend, Gina, also sent me this resource from Fool about Index funds because of my Instagram poll. And in our home we consult a financial advisor and I have also gleaned a lot of information from the Fidelity and Vanguard websites too. My husband and I are currently looking into getting custodial accounts for our kids so they can start learning about investing as we learn more about it too.
Since I’ve been investing, I’ve learned that even if I make mistakes investing $10 once a month on a day that I make my own 20 cent coffee at home, I’m creating a habit of doing something that I probably need to know more about. It is at least worth learning a little bit more about investing so that I don’t waste the earned income my savings might be able to make.
It always baffles me why we work so hard to make money if we don’t know how to make that money work for us. And when I hear people wanting to make money blogging or make passive income or even save more money, I think we need to start thinking about investing first so when we finally make income from the things we do, we also have the ability to make that money grow.
Are you also interested in investing? What inspired you and how did you learn? And are you also trying to make more coffee at home as well?
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
One thought on “How a $10 package of Nescafe coffee can help you save money to start investing in yourself”
Comments are closed.