#25 no more coffee to go

Today I wanted to share a bit on one of the first efforts on my list…Number 25 - No ‘coffee to go’ for one year (this by default also includes tea, ice caps, smoothies etc). It seems like a fairly typical new years resolution and so I started on January 1^st . I’m not a huge coffee drinker –I always have one cup of coffee in the morning and then usually a tea in the afternoon.

I lowered my morning coffee spending last year when I moved to our main office at work.  We have a company coffee fund you pay into and then you can drink the office coffee and it is usually decent coffee. I still bought the occasional coffee in the morning but certainly not everyday. So you might ask ”why would that be hard to give up?” The problem came last Spring when I discovered CHAI tea.  How I had never had it and how I lived without it is beyond me now. It became a new vice and I found myself heading out at lunch or mid afternoon to buy a chai tea at Tims almost everyday.  That starts to add up at $1.60 a cup 5 times a week.  That’s 8 bucks a week on tea. If you count the odd time I’d buy coffee in the morning too - I was easily spending 500 bucks a year on “to go” coffee and tea. That seemed RIDICULOUS

When I started planning my list and all the things I wanted to do I thought one thing to do would be to cut something out. Coffee and Tea seemed like the logical choice. (believe me the irony of living on a budget (#27) while doing all these fun things is not lost on me!)

I’m allowing myself two exceptions:

If I am visiting the city I’m allowed to treat myself to a specialty coffee. We don’t have Starbucks or Second Cup where I live so it is always a treat when I’m in the city.  You can’t make that stuff at home and its not often I get to the city so this will be pretty minimal over the course of a year.

If I have to be on the road early for work I’m allowed to grab coffee- The better choice would be to make one at home but sometimes the logistics of that don’t fall into place. (ie: I rarely have milk in the house and why brew a pot for one coffee- even if it’s a small pot a lot gets wasted)

I’ll put the $10 I save each week into savings and it can go toward something on “the list.”

I’m about a week in and it has been too cold and snowy to go out at lunch thus making it easy to forgo the afternoon treat. The real challenge will come on days when I’m already out and heading back to the office or on nice cool fall days. I’ll make a tea at the office but it is just not the same. Wish me luck!

What are your New Year resolution’s?