The Convenience Tax | A 365-Day Savings Challenge

For the last three days, my daughter has brought me a coffee from the store. One day she treated me, no strings attached. The other two days I’ll need to pay her back for, and count them against my savings to keep this blog honest.

This morning I asked myself why I crave these store-bought coffees. It’s more than just convenience. That’s clear given the fact that each day before she brought me a coffee I had already had one I made at home and they were delicious. Is it the paper or plastic cup? Is it the special way the ice is made for the ice drinks? I caught my brain starting to spiral into “I should order custom paper cups with plastic lids so I can replicate this at home, I should get one of those ice makers that makes the ice just like Starbucks for my iced drinks.” Then I stopped myself and asked what’s really going on here. This isn’t just about overspending. It’s bigger than that. There’s the waste, there’s the health impact, and there’s the question of whether I’m dealing with a need for ritual or even something more like an addiction.

Let me start with the waste, because it actually makes me a little sick when I think about it.

Every single day, I’m contributing another paper or plastic cup and another plastic lid to a landfill. That’s daily. I’ve been pushing my husband about his K-cup habit. I’m on him about that waste. I’ve told him a regular coffee maker would be so much better for him and the environment, thinking about all of the plastic pods going into the trash every day. Meanwhile, I’m doing the exact same thing, just with different packaging. I mentioned in another post how I’ve been eyeing a Nespresso maker, and the only thing stopping me from selling my espresso maker is the aluminum pods, are they actually as recyclable as they say? But here I am in daily contradiction to how I feel about these things.

The health piece is where the stakes are highest. I usually get a mocha, and I looked up what’s really in that cup: 230 calories, 31 grams of sugar, and 42 grams of carbs. 31 grams of sugar—that’s roughly 7 and 3/4 teaspoons of sugar. In one coffee. My family has a devastatingly strong history of Type II diabetes on both sides. I have two aunts I’m very close to, and right now they’re spending their last days together in a care home—side by side—and diabetes is a huge part of why they’re there. The ravages of it, combined with obesity, have taken so much from them. So far, I’ve been lucky. My numbers have been good. But that luck doesn’t last forever, and once the damage happens, you can’t undo it. Every mocha I drink is a choice to increase that risk. Every day I’m making that choice anyway.

Then there’s this question: is this just a really, really strong morning ritual—something I can identify and gradually reshape into something better? Or is this an actual addiction that I need to face head-on and break? There’s a difference. A ritual, I can work with. A ritual can be redirected. But an addiction? That requires something harder. That requires me to look at what I’m really reaching for when I reach for that cup.

I need to read what I just wrote here and really sit with it. I need to meditate on it. Really take in what I’m saying and what it means about who I am and what I’m choosing, day after day.

What kind of example am I setting for my kids? For my grandkids? For my husband, who I keep asking to do better? Can I be the strong one? The one who actually makes the hard choice instead of just talking about it? That’s the real question I need to answer.