Coffee. Quite a lot of us need it to get through our working day.
Frankly most of the staff here at MoneyHospital would struggle to get anything done without their caffeine impregnated intravenous shot most days...but that is a whole other story.
And even though we love coffee, by crikey it's expensive isn't it? To be honest, you would be better off buying shares instead of coffee!
Where do you buy your daily coffee? Is it part of your daily ritual to buy a large coffee from one of the many fashionable chains like Starbucks, Costa Coffee or Café Nero?
Quite a few people at the Money Hospital buy a pricey coffee each morning and afternoon instead of getting the equivalent from the in-house brewing machine, with the excuse being because it "tastes better".
That isn't always the case. The in house coffee here is freshly made on the spot from a Philips Senseo machine and according to the coffee aficionados, is the equal of the Starbucks / Caffe Nero equivalent.
So it seems that for many of you, the real motivation for buying your coffee is its fashionable status. It's the accessory no self-respecting, twenty-something trendy can be seen without these days.
But when you do your sums, you realize that the amount of money that you can end up spending on coffee is quite frightening. Almost as frightening as the buzz you get from the coffee in the first place...
Ok, lets assume you are earning somewhere around £18,000 a year and taking home around £1,150 a month.
If you had two large coffees each working day, this amounts to £136 a month. And that is over £1,632 a year.
Even if you only bought one coffee for each working day of the year you are still looking at roughly £800.
When you take off important things like Council Tax, rent or mortgage, food, clothes, utilities etcetera, this is a staggering percentage of your true disposable income.
Now try saying this slowly to yourself in front of a mirror: "I spend over £1,600 a year on coffee".
So are you crying or laughing...?
Now of course, there's more to life... and all that and for all we know, you are perfectly able to spend this kind of cash without batting an eyelid. But judging by the record levels of personal debt around, we suspect not.
Let's assume, (and humour us here) that you are actually able to go 'cold turkey' and give up coffee for good...
Now take your coffee money that you have kept aside and drip feed it into high yielding shares paying 6% a year.
(You can do this via the Motley Fool Sharebuilder at £1.50 a month, and re-invest the dividends.)
After five years, your investment would be worth almost £10,000 if the shares remained at the price you originally paid.
Take your coffee cold turkey forward for another 5 years and now we're really talking at £22,600! The figures are a simplified hypothesis, but you get our point.
Extrapolating this forward and you are around the age of 20 right now, you could amass over £63,000 by the time you're 40, simply by refusing to buy into the trendy brand mentality in one small area of your day-to-day living, even if the shares had never budged at all.
Of course, you could be less lucky with your shares, but judging from the past performance of the stock market, your luck is more likely to run the other way and the saving is even better.
It may be true that 'a little bit of what you fancy does you good,' but a little bit of prudence can help you out too!
And you probably get less headaches and buzzing sensations every morning if you get rid of the coffee....
How much do you spend on coffee each month? More importantly, could you actually give up coffee for good?
Why not let us know in the comments?
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