Surprisingly enough my “Latte Factor” turned out to be items purchased for home improvement projects. I am a die hard DIYer and took great pride in professing that I did not spend money on clothing or starbucks or even spas. Especially to my girlfiends who went shopping secretly and hid their bounty in the trunk of their cars until their husbands left the house and they could bring them in the house undetected! But as it turns out my fix came in cruising the aisles of my local home improvement stores.

Planning projects to improve and beautify my home was exciting and I loved hearing the accolades of visitors as they praised my latest project. The trouble was that I was continually buying items for new projects when I’d not even finished prior ones. Similar to going to the grocery store without checking the pantry first, I was purchasing duplicate items because it had been so long since I’d thought of the project initially that I’d forgotten what I had accumulated so far. And every single packed to the gills storage space I had was proof of that!

After analyzing my spending using the Latte Factor spreadsheet and coming to grips with the ugly truth I made a promise not to purchase items for new projects until I’d completed ones I’d already purchased the materials for. What I found was that the high I got from buying the materials for the new projects was NOTHING compared to the sense of accomplishment I recieved when one by one my old projects were completed. Not to mention that since I already had what I needed on hand, I actually had time to really make a dent instead of spening time on driving to the store and getting distracted by other things.

That was almost a year ago and David, I am here to tell you that after completing quite a few projects and throwing away or donating unused items I finally have storage space again and most importantly about $200 a month back in my pocket that I’ve been using to pay off credit card debt.

Thanks for making me take a look at ALL spending because I would have continued to be in denial since I wasn\’t wasting money of what I considered to be the traditional “wasteful” things !