David,
I wanted to let you know about my personal success with the latte factor. We used to go out to eat 3-4 times a week- $105/week. This took a lot of time to cut down on, but I realized we were spending nearly $5500/year to eat at restaurants and another $100/ week at the grocery store because I was too tired to think of and cook meals each night. Now I sit down each saturday morning and make a meal plan for the week, run to the grocery store and can feed my family of four breakfast, lunch (we bring it to work)and dinner for seven days for about $80 per week because I just look at the week’s plan and know I have everything I need to make dinner that night.

Although it takes an extra 10 minutes once a week, it’s all automatic every night. No more wasted food and money. Because of this and a few other things I have looked at in our spending we are able to afford a nice home in a good school district (that has gone up in value over $50K in less than a year), take annual vacations, save in a 401K, IRA, money market, and two 529’s. We have no credit card debt. I now look forward to our future instead of dreading it.