Forget rising rent prices and stagnant salaries, if there's one thing making people brankrupt it's their daily Pret coffee. Think I'm full of BS? Let's do the maths. If an average cup of coffee is around £2.50 and you buy one five days a week, that adds up to £12.50 a week, £50 a month and £600 a year. Madness.
The thing is, you can totally make decent coffee in work and save yourself a load of cash in the process. I even worked out roughly how much your daily coffee would cost you if you buy a packet of ground coffee (I based it on the Sainsbury's Fairtrade Colombian Coffee, £6.25 for 454g) and use two heaped tablespoons in a three cup cafetiere: 22p a day, £1.10 per week and £52.80 a month. Start doing that instead of your daily cafe visit, and that's a very respectable saving of £547.20 per year, give or take. Think of what you could buy with that?! Now we've established that you're pretty much sitting on a goldmine, here's all the different ways to make yourself a good ol' cup of Joe at work, on the cheap.
The Cafetiere Method
For this you'll need to get yourself a cafetiere, obv. A three cup one is an ideal size (when they say cups, they mean espresso cups) so this one from Argos is perfect and only £5.99. Make it using two heaped tablespoons of ground coffee (the general rule is a heaped tablespoon of coffee per 200 ml of water, FYI), give it a stir and let it stand for three to four minutes with the plunger in the top, ready to go. Once the time's up, get plunging. Alternatively, this cafetiere mug is genius because it's all-in-one, the only downside is that you can't put your milk in first. Boo.
The Filter Method
Messing around with paper filters is just a faff, so get yourself one of these coffee drippers that already have one built in like the LeXpress Coffee Filter, £4.99, which even comes with a handy spoon.
Instant Coffee That's Actually Nice
If you can't be faffed with any of that and you just want decent instant coffee, there are some options. Some instant coffees are actually really good like the Nescafe Azera Americano Instant Coffee, £3 and Kenko Millicano, £4. Espresso powders are a good alternative too like the Nescafe Espresso Instant Coffee, £3.99 or the Carte Noire Expresso Instant Coffee, £3.80. If you're into your vanilla or toffee flavourings, Beanies do loads of different flavours of instant coffee so you can still get your fix.
Nail the Milk
This will sort the amateurs from the proper coffee drinkers because milk is very important. Firstly, using hot milk is non-negotiable - heat it up in the microwave but not for too long otherwise it'll develop a gross skin on top. I also swear by putting the milk in first, and then the coffee - it's creamier and makes any coffee, even instant, taste 1000x better. To go extra profesh you can make your milk all fancy and frothy. If you've got a a cafetiere, wash it out, put the milk in, pump the plunger and it'll froth it up. Another way to do it is buy a milk frother, you know, like the ones you always get in hot chocolate kits from your Grandma. In fact, you probably already have one lurking somewhere. If not, IKEA do one for £1.
The Best Ground Coffees That Won't Break The Bank
And just to round things off, here's our favourite ground coffees that are all under £4 AKA a bargain.
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Picture: Sophie Davidson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.