Little Things

One thing that has been the hardest for me on this journey is cutting back on the little things that we love. One of my big downfalls is Starbucks Coffee. Going through the Starbucks drive-through is my happy place, it can change my mood in an instant, and is almost a spiritual thing for me. My Starbucks drive-through attendant knows me, knows what I want and I have yet to have a bad experience. BUT . . . . it costs me $4.20 every time I drive in. And Yes, there are some really bad days where I have visited twice and upped my daily total to $8.40, those days are bad and we won't speak about them anymore. But the fact is, in order to go to my happy place every single day it costs $29.40 a week, $127.40 a month, and $1,528.80 a year. That's a lot of money, and I don't know if you have heard about it, but there is something called the Latte Factor. Now for me, it happens that my Latte Factor is actually a latte, but for my husband it's a sausage biscuit at Bojangles or a Diet Sun Drop soda from any local convenience store. Most everyone has something; it's those tiny little items that we get almost regularly that if we took that money, and invested it, instead of spending it on our lattes, sausage biscuits and sodas, would be worth so much more money.

When put into the Latte Factor calculator, if I invested my $4.00 at an annual interest rate of 6%, in a year I would have $1,527.60, in 5 years, I would have $8,723.97, and in 20 years I would have $56,929.38 - You get the point. So when they say, "A little bit goes a long way," . . . It's Totally True!

With that said, I have not had a Starbucks Coffee drink since July 12th, and while I will probably allow myself to indulge once a month, for now the daily coffee drinks are coming directly from my home coffee pot into my beautifully eco-friendly stainless coffee mug, and I'm saving gas too!

Use this link to determine your Latte Factor and how much money that you could be saving:

http://finishrich.com/lattefactor/