The Starbucks fix – the daily habit of enjoying our favorite Starbucks drink can cause serious damage to any budget. Financial gurus call it the “Latte Factor”, the way small daily charges add up to cause significant financial harm. Unfortunately, this Latte Factor doesn’t just apply to Starbucks.

Are you one who just can’t refuse a daily stop for your favorite Jamba Juice smoothies? Do Dunkin Donuts hot chocolates beacon daily? Are you an addict for a daily fix of Krispy Kreme donuts?

Just consider a $4.20 Starbucks drink purchased once a day will cost you $126 a month. That’s nearly $1529 a year! Add an overpriced $1.99 muffin to your tab and you’re looking at a total yearly bill of $2253! That daily Jamba Juice smoothie will set you back $118 a month, or $1432 a year!

So how do we keep our daily food cravings from damaging our financial health? The simple answer is to spend less at our favorite Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, or Jamba Juice. But this is easier said than done. Here are a few tricks to help out.

Cut the frequency, increase the enjoyment. A simple fact of life. The more frequently you partake of any experience, the less enjoyable each individual experience becomes. If we purchase our favorite Starbucks drink just once a week, that one drink would taste extremely delicious. But if we had that same drink with every single meal, we’d probably become downright sick of it (not to mention have one heck of a caffeine rush).

Imagine how much more enjoyable your favorite Starbucks latte or Jamba Juice smoothie would be if you had it just one time per week, compared to drinking it every day. While once a week Starbucks trips would probably take more will power than humanly possible, consider this alternative. Visit your favorite coffee shop every other day, instead of daily. The days you go without increase anticipation and make the days you do buy your favorite drink that much better.

Cut out the “accessories”. Do you always buy an overpriced blueberry muffin with your Starbucks latte? How about a donut with your Dunkin Donuts hot chocolate, or apple cinnamon pretzel stick with your daily Jamba Juice smoothie? By eliminating these “accessories” you can instantly cut your costs by a third or more.

Buy yourself a gift card. Most coffee shops, restaurants, and fast food places offer gift cards. Buy a gift card for yourself every month and limit your purchases to that one card. When the card runs out so does your Starbucks fun for the month. This does several things. First it forces you to stick to a Starbucks budget. Knowing you have a spending limit will help you ration your Starbucks spending.

Second, purchasing a gift card highlights the large sums of money you are actually spending on your drinking habit. Smaller amounts of money spent daily barely register. But when you have to lay out a large some of money to purchase your gift card, you’ll realize how much your habit is actually costing you. Paying $120 for a gift card has a much bigger psychological impact than does paying $4 a day for 30 days.

In no time at all you’ll get tired of spending a hundred or more dollars per month to satisfy your habit. By using a gift card you can slowly decrease how much money you spend. Simply reduce the value placed on your gift card each month. Start with $120 gift card. The next month buy a card worth only $100, and so on.

Employ the envelope system. This is very similar to the gift card method in that each and every month you set aside a certain amount of money that you’ll spend only on your Starbucks or Jamba Juice habit. Set this cash aside in an envelope. When the cash in the envelope is used up, your Starbucks habit is done for the month.

The envelope system does the exact same thing as the gift card system – it sets you on a budget and shocks you into realizing how much money you’re actually spending on your food habit.

By taking a few simple steps to gradually reduce your Starbucks habit, you can literally save hundreds of dollars each and every year.

Have you ever wondered about those huge green Coinstar machines located in your local supermarket? Well for many, these machines are a ticket to putting loose change to very good use.

Loose change is everywhere. Quarters sitting on the dresser. Dimes and nickels hiding inside the couch, and jars of pennies sitting in the corner of the bedroom.

In fact, its estimated that the average home has nearly $90 in spare change just sitting around. The problem has generally been finding a way to easily convert this change into more convenient currency.

Most banks will no longer allow you to deposit loose change. Others force you to sort and roll the coins into coin rolls yourself. Some banks charge absurd fees for allowing you to convert your coins into cash. Not to mention the dirty looks that many customers receive when they try to cash in their coins.

That’s why Coinstar machines were seen as such a great idea. The large green coinstar machines allow you to convert your loose change into paper money. You simply dump your coins into the machine’s metal basket and sit back as it counts your change.

I have to admit it is exciting, in a juvenile kind of way, to listen to the clinks and clacks of your coins rolling around the inside of the Coinstar machine, or to watch the digital display count up as your coins are counted. When the machine is finished, you receive a redemption voucher which you take to the grocery store cashier to obtain your money.

The problem with the coinstar machines is that the fees for this convenient counting service are quite expensive. Coinstar takes 8.9% of what it counts as a fee!

For every dollar of change Coinstar counts, you receive only 91 cents back. Let Coinstar count $10 worth of change and you’ll get a redemption voucher for only $9.11.  Because of this I only reluctantly used the service in the past.

Now, however,  I use Coinstar more than ever. Coinstar now allows you to cash in your coins for gift cards or gift certificates from leading retailers including Starbucks, Amazon.com, Circuit City, iTunes, Borders, and AMC movie theaters to name a few.

Best of all, when you use this option you are not charged the 8.9% fee. Dump $18.33 worth of change into the machine, for example,  and you’ll receive an Amazon.com voucher worth $18.33.  Dump change into the machine, select the AMC Theaters movie card option, and the machine will spit out a movie card with an $18.33 credit on it.

With Coinstar machines, families can now use that average $90 that’s laying around their homes to purchase something useful.  To find a Coinstar machine near you, visit their website at www.coinstar.com