The New, New Year's Resolution

-Tiffany Vongpukkeaw, January 2010

Forget about promising yourself diet and exercise or a leaner, fitter you. It's hard enough just passing up all the delicious food around the holiday season. Do we have to get ourselves up and running in the freezing cold too?

After this rocky financial year, who wouldn't appreciate more money in the bank? In fact, it could be as much as $1,895 dollars more, to be exact. It's easier than you might think...

I give you... the $5.00 coffee

With delicious flavors, smells, gifts, pastries to lure you in, it seems everyone has fallen for Starbucks. With the patented white and green cups everywhere in sight, you were bound to get pulled in eventually.

But what you likely didn't realize was that, while you were enjoying that coffee, the money you could have saved could have bought you a new flat screen HD TV or that all-inclusive vacation you've dreamed of your whole life.

First, coffee is not a bad thing. Many of us can't get moving in the morning without it. But, depending on your location, you may spend as much as $5.00 on a cup of coffee from a gourmet coffee shop. If you're a regular coffee drinker who drinks at that coffee shop daily, 7 days a week, you're spending around $35.00 a week on coffee. That still may not sound so bad. But, if you're a 7-day-a-week kind of coffee drinker, you're probably a year-round coffee drinker as well. $35 per week multiplied by fifty-two weeks per year, totals $1,895.00

In just one year, you would have spent $1,895.00 on coffee! Can you think of a few other ways you might have spent this money this year?

We found a great coffee calculator to show you the effects of buying store bought coffee every morning. To see what your specific choice costs you each year, visit http://www.hughchou.org/calc/coffee.cgi

Now, go ahead and enjoy your coffee while you read on!