Money won’t buy you happiness, but mismanaging it will buy you unhappiness.  Sometimes modifying some small habits can make a huge difference.  That $4 per day coffee may not seem like a lot as a percentage of your gross income, but it could be a big figure as a percentage of what is left over after all your other expenses.

For example, if you make $4,000 per month that coffee is 3% of your spending.  That is actually a fairly big number compared to the value you are getting for it.  But how much do you have left at the end of the month?  A few hundred dollars?  Zero?  Negative?  Now that $120 looks even bigger.  You can have some treats but be very careful with what you buy often.

Via How Much Are Your Habits Costing You? – The Simple Dollar.

Those Constant Money Drains

It is probably okay to splurge occasionally, but what we’re focusing on here are the constant money drains that you may not even notice. These daily or weekly habits could be costing you in a big way, while not really adding value to your life, which is why it is important to identify them and figure out a way to reduce their impact.

To see how much some of the most common habits cost, let’s look at a few different scenarios:

Example 1: John smokes a $5 pack of cigarettes every day. Over the course of one week, he will spend $35. In one year, he will fork over $1,820. And during his first decade as a smoker, John will spend $18,200!

Example 2: Mary refuses to brown-bag her lunch and instead spends an average of $10 to eat at a restaurant with her friends each workday. Over the course of one week, she will spend $50. After the first year, she will spend $2,600. And if she keeps it up for a decade, Mary will spend $26,000!

Example 3: Amy pays her credit card bill late every month, resulting in a $35 late fee. After the first year, she will have spent $420. If she continues this habit for a decade, she will have flushed $4,200 directly down the drain!

Read the entire article.  There is a lot of wisdom there.

Also read the Bible :-).

Hebrews 13:5–6 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”