Start an office coffee club

Want to save a minimum of £480 a year? In that case, never has forming a good relationship with your colleagues been more important.

Many office workers spend at least £2 a day on takeaway coffee, or £10 a week over 48 working weeks. If you spend your coffee money on frothy frappucinos with flavoured syrups, you are probably bound to keep buying them. But fans of the Americano (the coffee formerly known as “coffee”) take note: there is absolutely no need for a barista to make these for you.

Instead, club together with workmates and buy a large cafetière (around £15) and a bag of ground beans. The FT Money team has been trialling this system, and one of our caffeine addicts admits to having saved at least £5 a day by not purchasing the four cups of joe they would usually buy from the canteen.

Another advantage of an office coffee club is that you are not going to cafés and being tempted into buying a sandwich or pastry. Paul Lewis, the FT Money columnist who also presents Money Box on BBC Radio 4, calculated in a recent article for us that the average daily coffee and pastry costs £4.25. Stop spending this much every working day, and you will save nearly £1,000 a year.

A coffee club with colleagues will also appreciated by lower-paid staff. Generous managers often buy rounds of takeaway coffees for their underlings. This is nice, but can cause people on a tight budget to worry they are obliged to repay in kind.