- Lifetime Beer Cost
- Credit Card Payback
See Also:
Lifetime Coffee Cost Calculator
The Costs are Staggering!
Small Choices - Big Results
The quality of our choices are magnified over time, and this calculator definitely bears witness to that fact. Even a small amount of money wasted on depreciating assets like coffee have a huge opportunity cost over time. Getting ahead financially is very simple, if you want to learn, you have to make a change in your life now! Get out of debt, purchase proper insurance (especially term life insurance) for you and your family, and get on the road to financial success.
Many people are surprised at the size of the nest egg built up just from the cost of a few beers or cups of coffee per week. I assumed a 10% real rate of return and a retirement age of 65. The numbers you see here on this page would be something similar to what you would see with investing in good growth stock mutual funds sitting in a Roth IRA. The stock market has averaged a 12% rate of return over the long run, and many good mutual funds with long track records have long-term rates of return higher than that.
Getting Out of Credit Card Debt
The coffee cost calculator actually underestimates the opportunity cost of the cups of coffee because many people buy such purchases on a credit card. Remember, if you have a balance on a credit card, you finance every purchase you make at the interest rate of that credit card (actually the credit card you own with the highest interest rate), even if you don't put that purchase on one of the cards. This is because the purchase could have been used to pay down that piece of debt, so the actual cost of the money is the interest rate of that highest credit card.