What Is a Waste of Money for Others Is Far From a Waste of Money for Me

Why it pays to figure out what you want to spend your money on.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Whenever there is a need to cut costs, it is cited as an overpriced pleasure, which turns out not to be because we don’t realize it and really enjoy it.

When I first started thinking about money, I used to grab a latte at the coffee shop near where I worked almost every afternoon.

Then I started doing the math.

Let’s say four times a week, that’s $2.40 per cup of coffee is almost $40 a month. Wow, that’s a lot of money, I thought, wondering what it would be like to save that money.

But now I didn’t want to give up afternoon coffee and I thought about how I could do that, at least reduce the costs for that and not carry my money for overpriced coffee every day.

So, I would need an espresso machine in the office and would have to have espresso on hand.

I would also need a milk frother. For milk, I would need a refrigerator, which was only available in the office kitchen. I would have to make my coffee before 4 pm because the kitchen is locked. Also, I didn’t really like to use the office kitchen, as once a mouse walked towards me there.

In the weeks that I thought about a coffee solution and envisioned the above scenario, I continued in my coffee shop — with surprising effect. Unconsciously, I began to realize all the things I appreciated about my mini afternoon trip.