Making flat white's might be flat out expensive

While we were traveling down under, we both really started to enjoy flat whites. Very tasty stuff. Laura and I have talked a while about getting an even fancier coffee machine - we've got a good drip machine that I use when we have a bunch of people over, and I use a french press the rest of the time for making a single cup. So, I started to look around for an espresso machine that I can make the flat whites.

Holy crap are they expensive.

An entry level one can easily be 500$, or north of 1k$ without even trying. For comparing the cost of making a flat white yourself to buying one, a "caffè latte" is the closest thing that I can find that they serve at starbucks and it costs about 3.25 $. How long would it take to pay off a thousand dollar machine, not including cost of coffee, milk, power or cleaning?

Cups per week	Weekly cost	How long to pay off a machine
2	6.50	Almost 3 years
4	13.00	1.5 years
14	45.50	22 weeks (5.5 months)

I think that you'd have to be drinking a lot of coffee or steamed milk before it became worth it financially to get an expensive machine.

That's not to say that we won't get a fancy machine at some point. There is something to be said for drinking fancy coffee in your pj's.