Managing Your Money: Little things cost a lot

* This is an article from azcentral

Managing your money
$2 every time you use the ATM. $1.50 every time you dial 411 to get a phone number.

$2.65 for a tall cappuccino, skim, at Starbucks. $1.25 for a Diet Coke in the machine at work.


$1.50 for tolls to get to work. $1.50 to get home.

And now McDonald's and other fast-food restaurants are accepting credit cards. So you're paying interest on your Big Mac.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Can you hear the money leaking out of your wallet?

The "micro-dollar industry," as author David Bach calls it, has "perfected the art of separating you from your money." But in such small amounts that you barely notice.

"I love Starbucks. I go to Starbucks. But if people go twice a day, they're easily spending $300 a month on coffee plus biscotti," says author Ben Stein. "That would pay for a downpayment on a house by itself."

He seems amazed.

You will be, too, once you start keeping track of all the money that drips, slides and sometimes pours out of your wallet. As part of USA TODAY's Financial Diet, we're asking five families to do a series of financial exercises. The first is to keep track - for one week - of every penny they spend. On gum. On lunch. On drinks with friends after work.

"The way you find your money," says Bach, "is you find your 'latte factor,' " says Bach, author of "Start Late, Finish Rich." It's a metaphor for what you are spending on little things.

"The secret is that $5 or $10 a day can really add up. When you tell someone they should save $2,000 a year in an IRA, it seems overwhelming. But when you break it out, and it's only about $5 a day, they can handle it."

Do you smoke? "In New York, it's $7 a pack. If you smoke a pack a day, that's $210 a month. At a 10 percent return, that $7 a day invested over 40 years is $1.328 million," he says.

He seems amazed.

"It's not that Americans are running out and buying big screen TVs everyday," Bach says. "It really is the little things."

So how do you get a grip on spending too much on little things?

First, see where your money is going. "Track your spending