No money topic is too big or too small. Welcome to the Mouthy Money Podcast,…
Read More →Five ways to spend all of your money on coffee
I know what you’re thinking: ‘I don’t need help with this one, I do it all by myself.’ But I still think I’ve got more skin in the game than you do, so without further ado.
1. Find a hipster coffee shop near your office
This is because nine times out of ten they’ll be marginally more expensive than the coffee you get at chains. Take for instance, a flat white from Pret. That’ll set you back £2.25, whereas you could pay up to £3 for a flat white at a hipster coffee joint. What’s that extra 80p for, I hear you cry? It actually goes towards a massive, nationwide refurbishment project planned in 2020 for all hipster coffee joints. You’ll have noticed these places have exposed brickwork and bare lights. This is because they don’t have the money to finish decorating and tonight, they Need You To Help Them Build.
2. Feed your addiction so frequently that your happiness on any given day is in direct correlation to your hipster coffee intake
Key to spending £60 a month on coffee (£1,095 a year) is the need to drink coffee every day. The best way to do this is start strong. Most coffee places will charge you more for an extra shot of coffee, about 30p or something. Take them up on this! You will feel incredible for 10 minutes at the beginning of each day before your co-worker asks you whether you are ‘busy today.’
3. Lose your loyalty cards on a regular basis.
Get new ones, lose them again, get new ones etc. The fun is in the fumbling with your wallet at the counter and the promise of a new and unmarked loyalty card once you realise you’ve thrown the other one out. Loyalty cards are just bits of paper at the end of the day. A man who clings to possessions is tired of life. Also, loyalty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway. A man tied to one coffee shop is the kind of man you wouldn’t want to talk to at a pub because that kind of man will be an insufferable bore.
4. Pick up some of those fancy nuts or protein whatchamacallits
If you get a chance to be upsold take it. Upselling is a term the managers of coffee shops use when they mean ‘try and sell the customer something else with their coffee.’ The very best hipster coffee joints pop five or so Brazil nuts into a small little see-through package for £3. The mark up is about 500% on this, so just make sure you do not miss out.
5. Drink your coffee only out of a paper cup.
Scream loudly if anyone attempts to make you buy a plastic, reusable coffee cup with promises of 10% off your next coffee. It might be 10% off, but liquid gold tastes really good in a paper cup. Really good.
I paid £3.50 for a small black americano at a Starbucks outlet in Holiday Inn Sutton last week – they probably didn’t pay tax on it either. If there was a price list showing I would have known to go somewhere else
Also beware the ‘mug mix’ – ask for a black americano and the answer will be ‘is that a medium or a large’? They never ask if you want a small one