Expensive Cup of Coffee

The Most Expensive Cup of Coffee in the World.

How much do you pay for your daily indulgences? Are you considering cutting out your daily espresso because it costs so much? Before you start groaning about paying out $4 for a cup of your favorite luxury coffee drink, take a peek at the latest Mercer’s Cost of Living Survey. Each year, Mercer’s measures the cost of about 200 items in 143 cities around the world to come up with their international “Most Expensive Cities in the World”, a guide for expatriates living abroad.

Nathalie Cosntantin Metral, a research manager at Mercer’s office in Geneva, Switzerland, said that the coffee prices represented in the survey are probably for the most expensive coffee in any particular city. “We collected the prices for a cup of coffee in bars and cafes of international standard,” she said. “And those places are very expensive.”

The results?

Moscow, seventeen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, now serves up the world’s most expensive cup of coffee – at least if you’re talking about the standard cup of joe and not some of that fancy cat-poo variant. You’ll hand over US$10.19 for a single cup of brew.

You won’t do much better if you head out across Europe. That same cup of coffee will cost you $6.77 in Gay Paree, and $6.22 in Athens, Greece. In New York City, you’ll average paying about $3.75, about three quarters the way down the list for coffee priciness. The cheapest cities in which to support your daily coffee habit are in South America and Africa – Buenos Aires and Johannesburg, at about $2.36 a cup respectively.

Want a bit more expensive coffee trivia? How about this one, of particular interest in these days of spiraling oil prices? Starbucks coffee costs about $1,280 per barrel. Or this one, for those trying to save money – deposit that $3.75 daily in a savings account at just 3% and save $1.050 toward your vacation or house down payment.

What’s the difference between buying at your local coffee shop and brewing your own? That, of course, depends on your brand of coffee, but the savings are considerable. Think about what you could do with an extra $1,000 next year at this time.