• Best Burger – Burger King
• Best Fries (or chips, plonkee) – Arby’s
• Best Chicken Sandwich – Wendy’s
• Best Salad – Wendy’s
• Best Kid Toys – Chick-Fil-A
• Best Value – Wendy’s Dollar Menu
• Best Coffee – McDonalds Burger King
• Cleanest – Chick-Fil-A
• Fastest Drive-thru – McDonalds

Maybe someday I will share my “worst” rankings.

Unfortunately, my job for the last twelve years has compelled me to eat fast food far more frequently than the average person. I almost hate to admit it, but I probably eat at McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Arby’s, Hardee’s or Subway, 100 to 150 times a year. No joke.

On an somewhat unrelated note: I shared that our grocery budget is sometimes supplemented by gifts from out of the blue. Today, we opened the mailbox to find a $50 McDonald’s gift card that was sent to us by a family friend. Not the healthiest option, but sometimes fast food is the only option when on the road with our kids. We are thankful for the help.

I have come to enjoy my Saturday posts, not just because they involve one of my favorite subjects: coffee, but because they are little more laid back – and fun! Today’s post is not necessarily fun, but rather more reflective.

I have mentioned on a few occasions that we are moving across the country. It will be the longest move of my life and the first real move of our married life. In three weeks, we will be loading up a 22 foot moving van and heading for the state of Colorado. We still aren’t exactly sure what we are going to do with our current home, housing costs are a bit more where we are headed, my new job does not include a huge raise and who knows where the economy is going – yet I am confident that this is the task that God has for me right now.

The past few months have been filled with some level of uncertainty as I was faced with the following decision: stick with the “sure thing” or step out and try something new. The job that I am leaving is comfortable. I am confident that I could meet it’s demands for the forseeable future and barring a major mistake, I could have had a reasonable chance of continuing in this occupation until retirement. The city that we live in is comfortable and we are getting by on my current salary. On the other hand, my new position comes with a small raise, but also with a great deal of uncertainty. The job itself will require a great deal of creativity and energy, to say nothing of uprooting my family and moving them out west. Furthermore, my new job requires a high level of performance, there is a standard to meet and if it is not met, I could find myself unemployed after a period of time.

So why have I chosen uncertainty over comfort? I think the answer to that question is passion. I can’t wait to start my new job, I can’t wait to tear into it and start solving problems. I am unproven in this field, yet I am utterly convinced that this is what I was born to do and I cannot always objectively explain why.

I am more confident in walking the thin ice of this new job than I am in continuing to work a job that I have handled without incident for the last five years!

This experiment, this step of faith could end poorly for my family and I. Mrs. Rocket and I have discussed and are prepared for the idea that we could be making a mistake, yet I know that I must take this opportunity or risk living with regret. No individual who accomplished a great task, was ever guaranteed a positive outcome. Sometimes they took a flying leap into the dark and left the rest to Providence. Reward does not come without risk of failure.

But failure does not necessarily mean that the original decision was a mistake.

Photo by jilicaanvi.

I am an occasional coffee drinker. I adore the stuff, but I usually save it for a special occasion. My spouse, however, was a HUGE diet soda drinker, specifically diet Mountain Dew. He’s addicted to the caffeine high, and with two small children who keep us on our toes, I couldn’t really blame him.
About a month ago, in an effort to lower his caffeine consumption, my spouse switched from diet soda to coffee. He doesn’t like coffee all that much, so he only drinks it for the caffeine, versus the diet soda which he loves and will keep drinking all day just because. It has cut down his overall intake significantly and that’s a good thing all around.

So now we have coffee in the house all the time. Last summer, I had won 4 lbs of gourmet “Gimme! Coffee” coffee from a giveaway at ProBlogger, and I had put them in the freezer for when we had company who would appreciate a good cup of coffee. However, now that my spouse is drinking coffee 5 days a week, I pulled out a pound of Gimme! Coffee’s Kenya to share with him, because why buy coffee when you already have some for free? (He had been drinking a Dunkin Donuts Cinnamon Spice Blend his brother gave him for Christmas.) The next day, I ground up some of the Kenya beans, and sent my spouse on his way to work with freshly ground, freshly brewed, extraordinary coffee. And believe me, it is extraordinary. I don’t think I have had coffee this good in my entire life.

I eagerly awaited my spouse’s return from work to see what he thought of the coffee. Certainly, he would love it and I would be a hero for winning such great coffee! Well, he came home, and broke the news to me that in fact, he didn’t like it at all. But, it was free so he was willing to drink it – maybe I could mix it with some of the Dunkin Donuts blend he liked so much to dilute the taste.

WHAT? We are talking $14/lb coffee and you want me to dilute it so you can’t taste it? Uh – no. I’ll keep my coffee, thank you very much, and you can keep drinking cheap coffee. In fact, we had some coffee from Aldi’s in the freezer from the last time my parents visited (they love that stuff) and I gave it to my spouse and he liked it BETTER than the Kenya. So I’ll buy the $1.99/lb coffee for him then. And hoard my Kenya til it is all gone. I told my mom I would share it with her when she visits this spring. Otherwise, it is mine.

Don’t waste good coffee on those who can’t appreciate it. There’s a limit to what frugality entails. Even if it was free, it is better to just buy some cheap coffee for those who don’t care so you can enjoy the good stuff. Keep it for yourself.

Paid Twice, I could not agree more. This story reminds me of that promiscuous character, Elaine, from Seinfeld who screened her boyfriends to see if they were “sponge-worthy”.

We save our favorite coffee for those who will appreciate it.

Almost three years ago, my wife joined the Gevalia coffee club. I think she paid $18.99 for a new coffee pot and two half-pound bags of coffee. It was a pretty good deal, we got a little coffee and a coffee maker with a timer and the “pause and pour” feature. Gevalia is a subscription club where you agree to purchase a certain amount of coffee each month - of course the money is direct debited from your credit card and the coffee is delivered whether we need it or not. Mrs. Rocket cancelled the subscription within the thirty days and we enjoyed the coffee and kept the coffee maker. The coffee was good – the pot worked and everything was hunky-dory.

Lately, however, the coffee pot has started to show signs of old age and we had begun starting to discuss how or if we should replace it. Then, this week, we received a flyer in the mail from Gevalia that said, “We missed you so much, we’ve sweetened our offer.” And the new offer is pretty good – a new coffee maker and a pound of coffee for five bucks! The other great thing is that they now allow you to choose how often the coffee is delivered. This is great because part of the reason that we didn’t stay with the club the last time is that more coffee was delivered each month than we could drink or afford. This time around, we chose to have coffee delivered/charged only every 12 weeks. If we decide to keep our membership, we will only pay for the coffee we drink.

It is sometimes a challenge to be a frugal coffee drinker, but deals like this don’t hurt!