FiveCentNickel recently discussed his biggest financial vice (eating out), and encouraged other bloggers to examine their own spending habits.
By far, our biggest vice is beverages. While we prepare meals in our own kitchen most nights, we’re both rather hooked on flavored beverages – soda, juice, iced tea, milk, coffee, you name it. We probably spend nearly $10 per week, or $500 per year, on beverages alone. The ocassional bottle of wine doesn’t help much, either.
But that’s not too horrible, you might add. It’s only $10 per week – that’s less than the cost of a night out. Consider this: Our food budget is only $45 per week. We spend 22% of our budget on drinks. Yikes!
I really wish we could drink tap water, but we have a sulfur problem and filters don’t completely remove the smell. We can cover the smell with drink mixes, yes, but I just can’t take any icy glass of water and chug it. Shudder… it’s like drinking raw eggs.
I have been making some progress. We’re focusing on sales, and try to drink what’s on sale for the week. The Husband loves Mountain Dew, but will drink the generic brand of soda on occasion. We also stock up on drink mixes, and try to focus on “healthier” mixes that don’t have sugar as their main ingredient.
Finally, I’m experimenting with new water filters. We haven’t hit one yet that works completely, but I’m highly motivated. Aside from financial concerns, I’d love to brush my teeth in sulfur-free water.
Although this won’t help with your tooth brush have you thought about getting one of the 5 gallon water “dispensers” like you see in offices? They would be a lot more economical than soda and smaller amounts of water.
[...] responses were downright humble in comparison. Stacey at Just Getting Started isn’t happy about the $10 a week she spends on beverages. She wrote: “Consider this: Our food [...]
Hi Stacey!
I don’t know what your entire budget is, but I’m doing my $30 a week budget so that I can nickel-and-dime my way out of debt, not necessarily because I’m cheap or in less fortunate position.
My suggestion is to look into Kinetico (http://www.kinetico.com/). I’ve heard that in addition to being good at removing the bad stuff from water, they also have systems that use less salt. From what I was told, it can soften and purify water with 1 bag of salt per year; Even with a family of 2, we were using at least 2-3 bags a month when we were renting a place that had well water similar to yours.
That can make a huge difference in the price of having soft, drinkable water. I don’t know the cost, but it may well be worth the investment!
Thanks for the suggestions, Jane and Thirty Bucks! I will look into both of these ideas when we return from vacation.
My grandparents have a salt-based water softener, but they don’t have a sulfur or iron problem. I need to ask them what other “problems” the system can solve, and their experience with it.
My parents had a HUGE problem with sulfur-water… for them, the solution was to rig an aerator to oxidize all the sulfur out of the water. That might not be an option for you, but I know a lot of our neighbors have a peroxide-injection system that does basically the same thing, but you have to have it professionally installed.