Do You Have a Tea Budget?

I order teas online once a month, but I can buy tea when I can find it locally anytime. Its the benefit of being retired. Its really the only thing I splurge on.

For the most part my cupboard space is my measure of getting new tea- my finances are often in proportion to it (i.e. almost always tiny lol). My “staples” are the 1st to get repurchased. Of course this isn’t always a hard rule as even if I had the room I couldn’t afford certain teas.

No tea budget. However my tea tastes have changed so much, all the flavored ceylon I bought no longer interests me as much. So I’m thinking about pairing down my collection to just the tasty work horses. English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Straight China black, Irish Breakfast. Maybe keeping one or two lighter teas on hand for the afternoon. ;)

I DID have a tea budget but I haven’t been following it. I’ve gotten carried away! I am about to reset and start fresh. Deep breath! I’m getting back on the horse :) As Cole Porter once wrote “My will is strong, but my won’t is weak” :) :) :)

Ideally, I’d have about 10-15 tins of tea around, plus whatever samples and emergency tea bags are floating about. I’d finish something before I bought something else.

I just looked at my cupboard and if I take away the herbal tea bags I have listed, I have 30 tins. That’s 50% over my most generous estimate of what a reasonable cupboard looks like!

I’ve been spending quite a bit of money on tea over the past two or three months but I consider it"start-up" funds. I’m still “auditioning” a lot of teas; I am still learning a lot about them—the different types, the different regions that produce tea.

I think that I will settle down to a steady cast of characters and that will make my tea budget predictable and not as high as my former coffee budget was.

I have an allowance – an amount that I’m allowed to spend on frivoulous things without worries or impacting the household budget in anyway. Tea comes out of that, but so do video games, eating out, and other various entertainment expenses.

Right now I’m trying to save up to upgrade my computer, so… I’m not buying tea. Much. Really. ARGH!

Like Doulton I am in start up mode. I tend to dive into new interests whole hog and expansively, and some (my boyfriend included) would say excessively. But not to the point of financial irresponsibility. And it typically calms down after a while when the novelty wears off. Applying that here, I can see myself splurging for a while mostly on samples that sound too interesting to pass up, then once I’ve tasted them not feeling compelled to revisit them again unless I really love them, and zeroing in on a stock of favorites. They may be more and more varied than my coffee purchases but I expect that since I’m drinking less coffee now that I’m drinking more tea it will balance out.

I try to enforce a tea-budget, but I still tend to go “window shopping” anyway, which is bad enough because I am usually never able to resist picking SOMETHING up. I’ve been much better recently, though! I’ve stayed away from all of my regular teashops. Although that didn’t stop me from picking up a few different bagged teas from local stores. But I don’t regret it.

I don’t have a set budget, but I tend to buy in spurts. One month I’ll go crazy, and then I’ll get embarrassed and give myself a time out (I’m currently on a time out!)

Also, like many others here, how much I buy depends on how much storage space I have. I guess it’s good that my cupboard is so small! Right now, I’m trying to get rid of a lot of samples before I order any more tea.

To save money, I frequently look for swaps and troll the Take it Away! thread. Yes, it is true that Steepster makes me buy a lot more tea, but it also made swaps available. So really, I’ve just broken even. At least that’s what I tell myself…

No I do not have a tea budget but judging from my mailman’s face each day I think maybe I should start to self impose one. :)