☕ What if you invested $5/day instead of coffee?
Point the money you would have spent on coffee into an investment instead, and watch what compounding does to it over the years.
Results
Balance by year
| Year | You put in | Growth | Balance |
|---|
Other amounts each time
| Each time | You put in | Balance at the end |
|---|
An estimate only. It assumes the same return every year, interest worked out daily, your money going in each time you would have spent it (spread evenly across the term), and no tax, fees or inflation. Real investments do not move in a straight line: returns vary, they can be negative, and a bad decade is possible. Coffee, on the other hand, is a reliable daily joy — the point here is not to shame the flat white, just to show what the same money does when it is invested instead.
Why use this calculator?
Small regular spending is the hardest kind to notice: nothing about $5 a day looks like a decision, and thirty years of them looks like a house deposit. This calculator does not ask you to give anything up — it takes the habit exactly as it is, points the same money at an investment instead, and shows what compounding does with it. It is the clearest way to see that the argument about small purchases was never about the five dollars; it is about the thirty years.
The long view on small spending
Coffee is a useful unit of measurement for small spending, and a few facts about both are worth knowing:
- Coffee is not the second most traded commodity in the world, however often the line is repeated. What is true is narrower: from 1970 to about 2000, coffee was the second most valuable commodity exported by developing countries, behind oil, and the claim has been quietly inflated ever since.
- Instant coffee was invented in New Zealand: the food chemist David Strang produced it in Invercargill in 1890.
- The world grew about 11 million tonnes of green coffee in 2023, and Brazil alone grew 31% of it.
- On this page’s defaults — $5 a day for 30 years at 8% — $54,750 of your own money becomes $228,588, a multiple of 4.18, and $173,838 of that final figure is growth rather than money you put in.
How does this calculator work?
The habit is turned into money going in, and the balance grows every day:
balance = (balance + money in) × (1 + rate ÷ 100 ÷ 365)
The return is worked out daily rather than once a year, because that is how an investment account moves, and the money for each purchase goes in when it would have been spent — spread evenly across the term, so the totals line up with what the habit really costs.
- Two a week for 30 years is 3,120 purchases, and the balance at the end is what you would have instead of 3,120 coffees.
- The deposits land evenly rather than all at once at the start of the month, which matters more than it sounds: money that goes in earlier earns more of the growth.
- "Every $1 you put in becomes" is the final balance ÷ the money you put in: at the figures the page starts with it reads about 4.18, so the growth is more than three times everything you contributed.
- The effective yearly growth is (1 + rate ÷ 100 ÷ 365)^365 − 1, which is the daily rate with a year of compounding folded into it.
None of it is a forecast. Every year here has the same return, and no investment has ever done that.
Frequently asked questions
What return should I assume?
The page starts at 8%, which is in the range a broad sharemarket fund has averaged over long periods before tax and fees. It is an average and not a promise: the same fund loses money in plenty of individual years, and a bad decade is possible. Run it at 5% and at 10% as well — the spread is the honest answer to what the future holds.
What about tax and fees on the investment?
Neither is included. Tax on dividends and on the gain when units are sold, plus any fund or platform fee, all come out of the result, so the real figure is lower than the one here — usually by a fifth to a third over a long term. The comparison still works as long as you know it is the flattering version of it.
Does it include inflation?
No. The balance is in the dollars of the year it is earned, and a dollar thirty years from now buys less than a dollar today. At 3% inflation the spending power of the final figure is roughly half of it over that horizon, which is the honest way to read a number this large.
Should I actually stop buying coffee?
That is not what this says, and the page is deliberately not a lecture: a coffee is one of the cheapest pleasures available, and the point of the calculation is the thirty years rather than the five dollars. If the habit is one of the good parts of your week, keep it and find the money somewhere you would not miss it.
What if the market falls after I invest?
The page cannot show that, because every year here has the same return. Real returns vary, they can be negative, and someone who invests at a high point can wait years to get back to where they started. The arithmetic of small regular amounts is the part that is reliable: buying the same amount every period means buying more units when they are cheap.
Does it matter when in the period the money goes in?
Slightly, yes — money in earlier earns more, which is why a deposit at the start of a period beats the same deposit at the end. The purchases here are spread evenly across the term, which is the fair description of a habit that happens all year rather than only on the first of the month.
Can I use it for something other than coffee?
Yes, and that is where the page earns its place: a daily takeaway, a subscription, cigarettes, a round of drinks on the way home. Put in what one costs and how often it happens, and the arithmetic does not care what the habit is — only that the money would have gone out anyway.
What does the share button actually send?
The sentence on the result card and a link to this page, and nothing else. The site sends nothing anywhere by itself: the button hands that sentence to your own device’s share sheet, or puts it on your clipboard when the device has no share sheet to offer. What you do with it after that is between you and whichever app you picked.