--- Title: Corraling My Coffee Habit Subtitle: Overthinking it? Maybe. But that should surprise no one! Date: 2017-02-23 20:10 Tags: [coffee, finances] --- Because we buy good coffee and good coffee is expensive, and because we're trying very hard to save for a house, I've been thinking about how to corral that particular budget line. For a bit of context, we use [YNAB][YNAB], and we have two ways we spend money on coffee: going out to coffee shops, and as groceries. Perhaps surprisingly, it has been the latter of those two which has been giving us trouble: that second cup of coffee every day---you know, for the pick-me-up in the early afternoon---adds up in a hurry, especially when you're buying [Counter Culture] or [Blue Bottle] or the like. [YNAB]: https://www.youneedabudget.com "You Need A Budget" [Counter Culture]: https://counterculturecoffee.com/ [Blue Bottle]: https://bluebottlecoffee.com/ So I decided this week to make one small tweak to our budgeting flow which should help stem this tide of coffee a bit. Namely: we now have an allocated amount of coffee per day, and if we go past that, a corresponding amount of money moves from our coffee shop budget into our grocery budget. Here's how that works in practice. Our last bag of Counter Culture cost $17.61. I allot myself 8 ounces per day. On Tuesday, I drank an extra 6-ounce cup in the afternoon. The bag is 12 ounces of coffee beans, which is 340 grams. A 6-ounce cup, made the way I make it, uses 11 grams of beans. So then I did a little math: `(11 / 340) * 17.61 ~= 0.57` -- so I moved \$0.57 from my coffee shop budget to my grocery budget. I did the same with the extra 4-ounce cup I had yesterday and the extra 2 ounces I had in my cup this morning. Is this budgeting done in excruciatingly minute detail? Yes. Is it helpful to me? Also yes. Do I recommend it? Not unless you're in the same ballpark of obsessiveness as I am!