The Latte Factor

So even if you haven’t heard the term “The Latte Factor”, you’re familiar with the concept. Basically, it’s the idea that those small, daily, “throwaway” expenses, which aren’t much at the time, add up to a significant amount of money over the course of the year. This was one of things we looked at/talked about when Todd and I went over our budget plans and trimmed the fat.

We’ll use my own spending as an example. When Todd and I began coming up with our plan to save money and get a handle on our finances, we began looking at places where we could cut expenses. The first thing I thought about was my own daily coffee run. Now, this is something that’s easily dismissed, after all, it’s just coffee, right? Add to that the fact that I don’t go in for those fancy, schmancy frappe-latte-no whip-extra skinny kind of beverages. I drink straight-up dark roast without exception.

We are fortunate/unfortunate enough to have a Starbucks very close to our home. Most days we’d stop there on the way to work so I could pick up my venti dark roast. Yum. Failing that, I would grab a coffee from the shop in our work building. So most work days, I would grab a coffee. Weekends are a totally different beast, and would often buy at least 2 coffees both days of the weekend as we were out running errands.

Why, yes, I *AM* a caffeine addict. Thanks for noticing.

For the sake of argument, let’s just say that I was buying only one Starbucks venti dark roast coffee every single day of the year. At $2.82 a pop it’s a small price to pay for a delicious cup of liquid awesome, amiright? Throwaway spending that I wasn’t even thinking about.

Hold up a minute.

$2.82 x 365 = $1,029.30. On coffee. Coffee that I will fully admit I don’t even really love all that deeply. $1,029.30 that I wasn’t even thinking about.

Immediately I knew what I had to do. As much of a caffeine addict I am, I knew that the daily visits to Starbucks had to be put to an end.

So this is my life now:

My favourite bag of Just Us! dark roast costs $10.99 at the grocery store (less if it’s on sale!) and a carton of coffee cream runs me $2.82, both of which last two weeks. My handy dandy calculator tells me that this means I am now spending$356.06 per year on coffee, resulting in a savings of $673.24 per year. ON COFFEE. On plain, un-fancy, straight up dark roast coffee.

For a small bit of effort every morning I’m not only saving money, but I’m actually having coffee that I love. It’s a winner all around if you ask me.

What about you, friends? In what ways have you made small changes to daily habits to save money?

Until next time,

~Kelly