You’ve heard this many times
before:Stop buying coffee! Make your own! You are wasting hundreds of dollars!
– Literally every financially-savvy person out there
But what exactly does that mean? How is it that you are wasting hundreds of dollars just by buying a $4 dollar from Starbucks?
Let’s break this down.
When you stop buying coffee and start making it yourself, you won’t magically find hundreds of thousands of dollars in your bank account.
If that’s your expectation, brace yourself to be highly dissapointed.
How to Make Money by Brewing Your Own Coffee
Let’s say that you go to Starbucks every day before you go to work and grab a Tall Skinny Vanilla Latte for $4 (includes the tax). This price also depends on the location of your Starbucks! It’s higher where I’m from.
You do this every weekday (5 days a week) which equals $20 per week, $80 per month in total.
Now, let’s say that you decide to make your own coffee at home instead, and move those $80 per month to an investment account that gives you 5.5% interest rate per year (minimum).
You invest $80 per month for 20 years (240 months) and when you check back in 20 years, you find out that you have $34,850.29 when you ONLY deposited $19,200 in total for those 20 years.
See the calculator below. Simply click on “calc” and it will do the math for you:
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(feel free to play around with the calculator and use the numbers that correspond to your lifestyle)
Because of the magic of interest, those $19,200 that you invested every month for 20 years racked up $15,650.29 in interest! That’s FREE money!
You literally made your money work and grow for you.
You won’t rack up thousands of dollars by just giving up on buying coffee; the only way that money will grow is if you do the math and decide to put that money work for you instead of spending it on made-for-you comfort.
This simply math should be used for everything you spend money on. This includes your lunch!
If you buy lunch every day and spend $10 every weekday, that turns into $200 per month.
$200 that you can save by simply making your own lunch.
Those $200 per month can be deposited automatically into a savings account that has a yearly interest rate of 5.5% (minimum) for 20 years (240 months).
In total, you’ll deposit $48,000.00 BUT you will have $87,125.58 due to the free $39,125.58 you’ll make in interest.
What Investment Accounts Offer a 5.5% Yearly Interest Rate?
Certified financial planners and other professionals might disagree with me on this one, but I stay away from conventional savings accounts.
The national average interest rate for savings accounts is 0.05%.
That is nowhere near 5.5%.
Because I care about serious growth with high interest rates that I can count on, I avoid savings accounts that offer less than 5% of interest. Anything less than that is offensive to every hard-working American.
Realistically speaking, what can you accomplish with 0.05% of yearly returns, especially when you might not have millions of dollars in there?
Instead, I prefer tax-deferred accounts, especially a Roth IRA.
Roth IRA Yearly Returns
Roth IRA accounts have an average annual return of between 7% and 10%.
You can only deposit a maximum of $6,000 into a Roth IRA account per year if you are under 50 years old, so I highly recommend you invest your coffee money there OR, if you can, max it out.
You can open your Roth IRA using many banks. I prefer Fidelity because they have the best customer service team I have ever spoken with, it is easy to set up, and they guide you every step of the way.
Other Accounts. ie. AnchorUSD
There are a lot of safe account out there that are rarely spoken about in which you can deposit money and earn interest with.
In fact, you can earn interest ON your interest.
One of those accounts is AnchorUSD.
AnchorUSD is both IBM and Stellar backed, so its credibility and safety is evident.
AnchorUSD is a trading platform where you can “Trade, buy, sell, and earn on Stocks, and Digital currencies 24/7,” as they state on their site.
What I love the most about Anchor is that I can earn up to 8% interest yearly on my money by simply keeping it there.
Interests are paid out daily which allows you to see how your money is growing.
I can also earn interest on Cryptocurrencies.
I love how I can invest in stocks and crypto commission-free and with no fees, all while watching my money grow and work for me.
Is AnchorUSD insured? Read their answer to that question below.
There is so much you can do with your money to make it work for you.
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For now, make your own coffee.