Home Depot recently changed the brand of coffee that they serve in their stores from a premium brand to a more generic one. Because of Home Depot’s sheer size, implementing the change across the company’s 2,000 plus stores equated into a $500,000 a year savings for the company. While $500,000 is not a huge amount of money for the Fortune 500 behemoth, it is nothing to sneeze about either.
This is just one example of how one little daily change in our spending habits and patterns can lead to huge cost savings in our own lives. While we cannot replicate small decisions like changes in coffee over thousands of stores around the globe in our own lives, we can make small changes to the things that we do and buy every day to see our own huge savings.
David Bach wrote about people finding their “Latte Factor” in his book, “The Automatic Millionaire“. Bach says that we can save thousands of dollars each year by cutting out expensive unnecessary consumer purchases. Don’t get me wrong. I am a huge coffee drinker and fan of Starbucks. I love my double lattes as much as the next guy, but it can get very expensive if you buy them everyday. A latte at your local coffee house costs about $4. If you stop at the coffee shop before work everyday, that is $20 a week, $80 a month, or $960 a year. And, that also assumes that you do not buy a muffin with your morning coffee.- How many people smoke or chew tobacco? A two pack a day habit can cost you about $135 a month for three cartons or $1,620 a year. The same thing can be said about dip. A can of dip costs about $4. If you dip a can a day, then that can add up to over $1,400 a year.
- It costs an average of $6.97 per day to eat lunch at a restaurant as opposed to eating at my desk. It costs $1.26 per day to bring a brown bag lunch and eat sandwich. These calculations are based on very scientific numbers…my own grocery and lunch bills.
- Energy drinks can cost you a ton of money too. Today in the grocery store, I was blown away when I saw that a case of 24 cans of Monster energy soda costs over $50.
Brewing your own coffee at home or smoking only one pack a day instead of two will leave you with almost $1,000 to invest every year. These are just one or two examples of ways you can make small changes in your life to help you find more money to save and invest. There are things that we can all do to spend less and save more. Saving small amounts help you develop good habits so you can invest larger sums later after you get the hang of it.
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