Do you know why I'm drinking way more water and way less coffee these days? Here's a shocker, it isn't to save money!
One day, I looked in the mirror and noticed this skin hanging down on my neck. Yep! I think I'm developing "turkey neck". Where did this come from? It really just crept up on me. Anyways, I am downing the water and nixing the post-morning coffee. Because water can help your skin's appearance to improve if you're on the dehydrated side. Hey, I'm willing to give water a try. It's monumentally cheaper than a neck-lift.
But, I'm not buying bottled water. I understand that not everyone has decent tap water, readily available. And if that's the case, I'm not knocking your choice to drink bottled water. But for me, we have good-tasting tap water in our area. And the price can't be beat. We pay less than half a cent for a gallon of water, here. If you triple that, to account for wastewater fees, it's still just 1 1/2 cents per gallon, or less than a 10th of a cent for an 8 ounce glass.
I do use a filter for our drinking water. It's installed in the fridge. I replace these every 9 months, at a cost of about $25 a replacement. That works out to $2.77 per month, or about 9 cents per day. We are all drinking a lot of this filtered water -- including myself, perhaps as much as 15 glasses per day, on average. So, dividing the cost of the filter by the water consumed (in glasses), each 8 ounce glass of water costs about a half-cent to filter. Our "complete" cost of drinking our filtered tap water, then is still under a penny per 8 ounces. In comparison, Wal-Mart sells Aquafina bottled water in a 32-pack of 16.9 oz bottles for $13, or 2.4 cents per OUNCE. That's 19.2 cents per 8 ounce portion, roughly 20 times what it costs to drink filtered, tap water from home. Oh wow! That's ridiculous!
Do you know what's really mind-boggling for me? During the recent recession, bottled water consumption did NOT drop off significantly (the figure is about a 3% cutback in bottled water consumption for the years of 2008-2009). And it's not surprising that Americans drink the most bottled water of any country in the world.
I used to think it was a sort of status-y thing, to be seen carrying around your bottled water, like carrying around that Starbuck's cup. Now I just think it's a mindless consumer thing.
So, I may be improving the appearance of my skin. And I'm certainly helping my body and not hurting it, by drinking more water and less coffee. As a bonus, I'm saving money, as tap water is way cheaper than coffee. Time to go fill up my glass!
