Do you drink a lot of water? Are you looking to save a little money? Let’s take a look at one way to save some money on your drinking water.
Water is an important source of hydration. We should drink 6-8 eight-ounce glasses each day. Sometimes, it’s easy to just grab a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. Or, if you’re on the go, you can buy a bottle at a convenience store or vending machine.
Let’s look at the cost of our water
For this example, we’ll look at the cost of one bottle of water per day.
Average cost of a case of water is $5.00. If there are 24 bottles of water in the case that means each bottle cost 20.8 cents each. If you drink one bottle of water each day for a 30 days, that costs $6.24. If you drink one bottle of water each day for one year, that costs $75.92. Yikes! And that’s only for one bottle. Let’s take it one step further. Assuming you have four people in your household, that’s $303.68.
| Case of bottled water | $5.00 |
| Average cost per bottle ($5.00/24) | $0.208 |
| Cost to drink one bottle of water – 30 days($0.208 * 30) | $6.24 |
| Cost to drink one bottle of water – 365 days ($0.208 * 365) | $75.92 |
| Cost to drink one bottle of water365 days – family of 4 ($0.208 *365 *4) | $303.68 |
Now, let’s take a look a bottle of water purchased at a convenience store or vending machine. Let’s assume the cold bottle of water cost $1. If you drink one bottle of water each day for a 30 days, that costs $30. If you drink one bottle of water each day for one year, that costs $365. For a family of four, it would total a staggering $1460. Do you see where I’m going with this? It’s very expensive to drink water. So what can we do about it?
| One bottle refrigerated water | $1.00 |
| Cost to drink one bottle of water – 30 days($1.00 * 30) | $30.00 |
| Cost to drink one bottle of water –365 days($1 * 365) | $365.00 |
| Cost to drink one bottle of water365 days4 people in family($1 *365 *4) | $1460 |
One solution is to filter your tap water and keep it available in your refrigerator. How much will this cost? I use a Britta pitcher, and change the filter once every two months. The initial cost of the pitcher was $17. The filters are $5 each. I also bought a 4-pack of Rubbermaid Chug bottles for $12. So, each bottle cost $3.
Each night, I fill the bottles, and keep them in the refrigerator for easy access. We can just grab one and go. It’s easy and economical. If we factor in the cost of the pitcher ($17), filters for one year ($30) and the bottles ($12), it comes to a total of $59. This serves 4 people one bottle of water each day of the year.
| Pitcher (1) | $17.00 |
| Water filters (6) | $30.00 |
| Water bottles (4) | $12.00 |
| Total cost of supplies | $59.00 |
How much will we save?
In this example, a family of 4 would save $245 by not purchasing bottled water.
We would save $1401 by not buying refrigerated bottled water from a convenience store or vending machine. That’s a huge savings.
Did I mention the cost will get lower in year two? Since we already have the pitcher and bottles, the cost is only $30 for the filters. Truly amazing.
Give it a try, and let us know how much money you will save. 🙂