I guess that is why I am fine with the Keurig, I just like a simple coffee, a little sugar and half&half. My days of buying $4 coffees are done.
Funny story. About 7 years ago, I was up in arms about my wife's coffee habits. She was spending an average of $6 a day on fancy Italian coffee drinks at one of the chain coffee retailers. It was costing us close to $150 a month... for COFFEE.
One day I said, "if I were to figure out a way to make coffee as good at home, would you give up the buying coffee at that place?" She doubted we could make coffee as good at home, but agreed to try. So I first bought a smaller espresso machine. It made good coffee, but was very time consuming because you had to wait for the water to heat up, grind the beans, tamp them down, froth the milk, etc, etc.
Didn't work. She went back to the coffee shop within a month. So I sold the original espresso maker on eBay and went out on a mission to buy an easy-to-use Italian coffee maker. I ended up spending around $900 on a refurbished machine from Italy. It was a 60 lb behemoth that took up a good chunk of countertop real estate. But it was simple. All you did was put a coffee cup under the spout and push a button (you still had to froth the milk separately, but it was a much easier setup). Voila!
When I told DW how much it cost, I thought we were headed for a divorce. But after I explained how much it would save us over time, she conceded that maybe it was a good buy.
Over time, we learned how to make all of our favorites drinks at home. We still have that machine and it still works great. And over the 7 years we've owned it, I estimate we've probably saved somewhere around $9,000 on coffee drinks.
But the best part is that a couple of months ago we stopped in at the place that was once her favorite coffee shop and bought a couple of those expensive drinks she used to love. My wife took one sip and said "Hmm. Not as good what we make at home".