Substance abuse for thrifty individuals
I bought a coffee maker a year ago in an effort to avoid spending money at coffee shops. Instead, since I consume the majority of my coffee at school and work, it’s been sitting in my cupboard ever since. But now being the poor grad student that I am, I decided to unpack it and take it to my office at the University to save gobs of money.
Downstairs in the ICT building, Ploughboy refills my (16 oz) coffee mug for the price of a small coffee—$1.54—a price of 77 cents per cup. This is by far the cheapest way to buy coffee on campus.
How much does it cost to instead make a cup of coffee myself? The local Superstore sells coffee beans for $1.79 per 100 grams, and I use 3 tablespoons of ground beans to make 4 cups of coffee. But how many grams are in a tablespoon? According to the International Coffee Organization, finely-ground coffee has a density of 25 lb per cubic foot. Using the magic of Google, I calculated that each cup of coffee costs me less than 8 cents to make.
The least expensive coffee on campus is nearly ten times more expensive than making my own. If I ever forget my mug and need to pay the full price for a paper cup then the cheapest alternative is The Coffee Company in MacEwan Hall which sells 16 oz coffees for $2.00, and the difference becomes closer to 13-fold.
Are there any other trivial-to-make foods or drinks that cost an order of magnitude more to buy out than make yourself? This sounds like an interesting project.