From the morning brew to an evening cuppa, tea is part of the daily routine for many Britons – so much so that we get through 62,046 cups in our lifetimes, research has found.
And yet the habit will only cost us £6,622 if we drink a typical 2.1 cups a day over the an average lifespan of 81 years.
Milk is the most expensive element of a good brew, costing 12p a day, or £43.80 a year. That’s £3,548 over a lifetime.
Meanwhile, teabags cost about 4p each, which comes to 8.4p a day. That will set you back £30.66 a year, or a total of £2,483 over 81 years.
Electricity to boil the kettle costs 2p a day, which equates to £7.30 each year, and £591 over eight decades.
These give a total spend on tea of £6,622, which works out at a cuppa costing just under 11p a time.
Clare Roundacre, 44, of St Albans, Hertfordshire, said paying £6,622 for 62,046 for a lifetime of tea-drinking was a ‘bargain’.
She said: ‘Having a cup of tea first thing in the morning is one of life’s great pleasures, and so is having one with a biscuit while watching the telly.
Drinking a cup of tea will only cost us £6,622 if we drink a typical 2.1 cups a day over the an average lifespan of 81 years
‘I’m no coffee fan and I hate fizzy juice, and I don’t drink alcohol, so a cup of tea is very, very important to me – and it barely costs me a thing.’
Bosses at Uswitch, which conducted the study, found we boil our kettles for around 108 seconds to make ourselves our 2.1 daily cups of tea.
Over a year that works out at 10 hours 57 minutes and over a lifetime 887 hours – or just under 37 days.
A spokesman for Uswitch said: ‘Make sure you only put in the amount of water you need, as heating excess water can waste a lot of electricity.’