Time to whip out the water bottle more and the credit card less....

Water really is a pretty miraculous substance. Just for fun, I looked up some interesting facts about water. Some of the ones that I thought were the most interesting were these: Of all the water that is on our earth, humans only use about 3/10 of ONE PERCENT. That's right. That's a TINY little bit. Our earth has a ton of water!! Our bodies are also made up of about 75 percent water....and that is why we can't go for very long without it! Also, drinks besides water are made of almost entirely WATER (that one's pretty obvious...but good to remember when you read the next part of this post). Water also dissolves more substances than any other liquid on this earth. Go read the other facts form that link that I posted at the beginning of this paragraph! They are interesting!

Now, here's what this post is really getting at. If YOU want to be a healthy, green, fiscal machine, you need to start drinking more water and cutting out the other mostly-water-but-not-as-healthy drinks in your life. Don't even get me started on soda and soft drinks...you already KNOW you shouldn't drink those. And if you don't, go read this article about what it does to your body. I am not telling you to never drink it again, but having a soda once a month should be PLENTY. This also saves you money--why pay extra money at the grocery store for something that is practically water anyway but with a LOT of added stuff that is incredibly bad for you?
As far as fruit juice is concerned, skip the juice and just eat the fruit!! This article very succinctly puts why fruit juice isn't as healthy as eating the fruit itself. For those of you who don't click on the link, I'll sum it up. When you drink fruit juice, there are a lot of things that you are missing out on health-wise. For example, the edible skin of a lot of fruits doesn't exist in fruit juice and this is one of the healthiest parts of the fruit, especially for its fiber content! Fruit juice also (generally) contains little-to-no pulp, which is also an excellent source of nutrients and fiber within a fruit. Finally, when you drink fruit juice, you are getting more sugar per calorie than when you eat the whole fruit, so it has a more drastic effect on your blood sugar. Aside from these facts, fruit juice is just really expensive! Here in Springfield, we get charged a flat monthly water-rate fee. So, I can use as much water as I need (and as is available) in that month without getting charged any extra. Our water fee happens to be about $16 dollars a month. If you buy a decent bottle of fresh-squeezed orange juice at the store, you'll pay at least $4 for it, so I can pay for my whole month's worth of practically unlimited water supply for the same price as buying one jug of orange juice every week! I don't know about you, but I don't think that 1/2 gallon of orange juice is going to hydrate my body, flush my toilets, and wash my hair for an entire week. So, DRINK MORE WATER.
Lastly, as far as milk goes, it takes an incredible amount of water by the time the whole process is said and done to produce a gallon of milk, not to mention the fact that dairy really isn't that great for you anyway. Don't agree? I guess you still need to watch the Forks Over Knives documentary on Netflix, then. ;) Milk is also pretty expensive.

Now, I completely understand needing to "change it up" every once in a while, and I do that myself! Dallin and I buy Almond Milk nearly every week because we both refuse to use water with cold cereal (blech!!!), and we have the very rare soda when we go to Firehouse subs once a month or less. Other than that, we both are just content to primarily drink water most of the time. You will feel so much better if you start doing this, your spending will go down, and consequently your savings will increase. Have you opened that Roth IRA with Vanguard yet? If not...it's time to get going! Dallin and I gleefully spin in circles every time we see our money working for us without us actually having to do any work. So, jump on the bandwagon, don't put the soda, juice, or milk in your cart, and start feeling better and saving money!!!

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