Paid $6.50 for a regular latte this morning and honestly had to laugh. At this rate I'm spending more on coffee than on lunch most days. Is anyone else just making coffee at home now? Any tips for a good cheap setup or beans that don't break the bank?
Making it at home really does pay off fast. A basic setup is cheap: a French press or a moka pot runs about $20–35, and a decent bag of whole beans from the grocery store ($10–14 for 12 oz) makes roughly 20 cups, so well under a dollar each. A cheap burr grinder helps more than fancy beans. For milk drinks, a $15 handheld frother gets you surprisingly close to a café latte.
Same here — I switched to making coffee at home about a year ago and it honestly pays for itself so fast. My local place pushed lattes past $6 too, and I just couldn't justify it anymore. I got a cheap handheld frother and now my homemade lattes taste close enough that I don't miss the cafe line.
If you still want the occasional café drink, a few chains have app rewards that knock a free drink off every 8–10 purchases, and ordering a plain drip coffee or an americano instead of a latte usually saves $2–3 a cup. For home, cold brew is the cheapest way to get smooth coffee: coarse-ground beans steeped in the fridge overnight, no special equipment beyond a jar and a strainer.
Same boat here — I started doing the math on my cafe visits and it was honestly scary. I got a $20 French press and now I make lattes at home on weekdays, cafe only on weekends. Makes the weekend one feel like an actual treat again.
Reading this thread made me do the math on my own habits too, and it's honestly scary. I've been paying delivery fees on top of cafe prices, so I made the same switch to home brewing a while back — a basic setup pays for itself in a few weeks.
One more trick if you buy beans: whole-bean bags on sale and a basic burr grinder beat pre-ground coffee on taste, and the beans keep longer. Even a mid-range bag works out to well under a dollar per cup at home, versus $5–7 at the café, so a weekend café visit stays a treat instead of a daily cost.