What’s my vice? None other than Starbucks. I never really gave much thought about going to Starbucks on the way to work in the morning and plunking down four bucks for a venti mocha.

But it was not just the morning. I would also get one around lunch time. And if it was one of those slow days I would get yet another. At an average of four bucks a pop, that is twelve dollars spent per day.

Do the math over the course of a week, and then over a month, and then over a year. It is amazing how quick it adds up.

It finally registered for me when I was looking at my bank statements online and saw this pie chart for my expenditures last year. There was this relatively small slice of the pie that was there nonetheless – it was Starbucks. Sure enough, over the course of 2006 I managed to spend over $2,200 dollars just buying mochas! Needless to say I was displeased when I realized this. Think of what you can do with an extra $2,200 a year. Four bucks here, four bucks there, and damn – the little things DO add up, painfully hehe.

Empowered with this knowledge I have since started scaling back. I went down to two a day a couple of weeks ago, and now I am doing about 1.5 a day averaged out. Hopefully by next spring it will be an occasional “treat” as opposed to a staple of my diet.

Here is a sample of what last week looked like:

So yeah, take my advice. Sometimes making a seemingly small change can make a big change down the road. Money saved from less mochas will lead to a new laptop for me

–Jon