Fresh out of college and wealthy from my $36k teacher salary, I stopped at Starbucks for peppermint hot chocolates whenever I felt like it. “Whenever I felt like it” typically meant around three days a week. When I was rushing, which was a lot since teaching meant waking up before 6 a.m. even though I have always been able to keep my morning routine to below 15 minutes, I sometimes also ordered a breakfast sandwich to go with the hot chocolate.
Luckily I quickly figured out these small habits were costing me a lot of money. However, I still value and love hot chocolate. I also value a good hot chocolate, meaning not a powdery mix of mostly sugar mixed with hot water instead of milk. This brought me to two facts that helped my hot chocolate budget:
I could get a peppermint hot chocolate from Starbucks once a week without breaking my budget and still prioritize imminent savings goals like rugby nationals and medium-term savings goals like graduate school. This meant just a hot chocolate, not the Starbucks breakfast sandwiches, which I do not particularly value.
If I was too rushed but needed another hot chocolate, 7-Eleven had a deal where I could get $1 (not good quality) hot chocolate when I brought a reusable cup. 7-Eleven was also located next to the high school where I worked, so I could gauge whether I needed a hot chocolate during my first period class and run out to acquire one during my second period prep in an emergency.
Still, throughout my two years teaching, I really just bought hot chocolate rather than figuring out an alternative. This was a period of my life when I was teaching full time, obtaining a master’s degree in education, applying to and preparing for my future master’s program in Security Policy Studies and the move to DC that accompanied it, playing rugby for a nationally ranked team that attended D2 Nationals and serving on its executive board in my second year, attending required Teach For America events, and training for my first Ragnar (meaning, generally learning how to run for the first time in my life). I was lucky that I figured out how to save two years of Washington, DC rent in those two years by living a relatively frugal lifestyle, but I lacked the financial focus to pinpoint additional areas of savings that could also provide additional joy.
Becoming More Resourceful
Moving to DC meant moving back to a place that actually experienced winter and where everything was more expensive. It was time for me to figure out how to prepare hot chocolate—actual good hot chocolate—at home. I experimented with different hot chocolate mixes that mixed into milk rather than water and discovered which had enough chocolatey taste to keep me from frequent Starbucks visits.
Learning to make my own hot chocolate made the once-a-week, and often less, visits to Starbucks a sustainable habit. I kept my hot chocolate mix at the office at multiple jobs so I could prepare delicious cups to sustain me through my morning work tasks. I had a mug warmer for my office desks that would keep a large mug warm so I could sip the hot chocolate all morning long. It all worked, and it likely would have kept working in this same manner if my routine stayed the same.
However, I also loved experimenting with some hot chocolate mixes that were a bit pricier. I would not use these mixes on regular work days: I saved them for weekend days at home when I could set my own schedule and enjoy the deliciousness because using these mixes on a daily basis would cost approximately half a Starbucks trip. With frugality the goal, this was an unsustainable habit. However, I started to crave these alternatives because I knew better existed than my typical work mix.
Becoming Better than Starbucks
When COVID-19 shut down the world, or more specifically my office (which had the first COVID-19 case in Virginia and therefore started its shutdown the week before all the offices closed), I indulged in my more expensive hot chocolate mixes a bit more often. Some of the fancier hot chocolate mixes require melting chocolate into milk on the stove rather than just heating the hot chocolate in the microwave. In an office, this does not work. While teleworking, making stovetop hot chocolate while in a morning meeting is an efficient use of time.
After a couple weeks of indulging in fancier mixes with my extra work from home time, I finally came to the conclusion that would change my hot chocolate consumption and financial commitment to hot chocolate in a big way: I could make my own hot chocolate without a mix on the stovetop! While the world was baking sourdough bread, I began perfecting the ratio of ingredients to make my own hot chocolate on the stove each morning.
Making my own hot chocolate is less expensive than buying any hot chocolate mix (even the not-so-good ones), and the hot chocolate I make is now better than the hot chocolate I get from Starbucks. Over time, I have also learned how to make the hot chocolate a bit healthier with tricks like using raw cacao instead of cocoa powder. Now I save money, use purer ingredients, and enjoy more delicious hot chocolate than I can buy from the comfort of my home.
Slow Down for Quality and Savings
When talking to a family member about how I make my hot chocolate on the stovetop each day, he commented that he would never use the same method because it was too much work. I get it. Dedicating 20 minutes to creating the perfect morning treat is not for everyone. However, this same family member was also commuting about 20 minutes to work each way every day. (For the record, he has a job where he likely would not have to commute each day, but “the culture” encourages commuting, and he has opted to attend work in person.) I have no commute 99% of the time and would rather spend 20 minutes making hot chocolate on the stove than 40 minutes commuting.
Removing the details of my life that made fast and on-the-go more important qualities of my favorite treat than tastiness ultimately brought me to a place where I maximized tastiness and saved money in the process. I doubt this would have happened if I never slowed down and still worked in an office four days a week.
Regardless of what your “hot chocolate” is—that simple something which brightens your day or week—chances are if you allow yourself the time and space to consider what could make it even better, you may find a way to make it more enjoyable while also saving yourself money.
Right now, I have the stovetop hot chocolate I made this morning next to me in a giant two-cup mug on a mug warmer. It is fueling my happiness on a cold winter day and helping me survive returning to winter after a couple weeks island-hopping in the Philippines. It tastes so much better than that mix I used to keep in the office or that 7-Eleven hot chocolate I used to consume while teaching. And it is less expensive than both. That is a win-win.
Comments