My name is Denise and I’m a 29 year old single mother of two. I just started reading START LATE, FINISH RICH and the challenge was to come online to share my Latte Factor.

Like some others in the book, I thought it would be hard, because I don’t generally drink lattes and since I’m a single mother, I consider myself to be somewhat of a penny pincher, so I knew I’d have to get creative to find where I could save the extra cash.

Way to Save #1: I currently have a monitoring alarm that $12.95 per month with a basic home phone service (that I only have for the alarm) for approximately $27.05 that’s $40 a month, $480 a year. So I looked on my alarm service’s website, because let’s face it, that is an essential and after the one time fee installation of a wireless receiver I can get wireless monitoring without a phone for only $10 more a month. That takes my $40 per month to $22.95 per month, which is only $275 per year which has me saving $200 a year.

Way to Save #2: I have an iPhone. Now I’m not paying as much as I know some people are but I just found out I’m not paying as little as I could either. I can switch my service to a prepaid cellular service for only $45 per month, only $540 per year when I was paying $88 per month, $1056 per year which means I’ll save $516 a year.

I know that isn’t quite as much as $5 per day but I had to find some way to save. I had to find the silver lining for MY situation. It doesn’t ‘seem’ like much but believe me in my situation it is. And as a result, I’m confident that I’ll continue to find more ways to save!

For now, though, I’m going to finish reading. Thanks for sharing this information!