Drink to Your (Financial) Health

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If you're looking for another way to trim your budget, don't overlook your beverage spending.  My husband and I used to routinely drink a glass of wine with dinner, and that was costing us $2-$10 a night, depending on how cheap or expensive the bottle was, and that's assuming we didn't partake in a second glass of wine.  Weaning ourselves of that habit was tough- we had grown accustomed to "rewarding ourselves" with the wine after a long day at work. Finally we to terms with the fact that spending $60-$150/month on wine was not a reward that we wanted to live with.
We couldn't bear to go cold turkey and switch immediately to water, so we first replaced wine with soda.  It's an admittedly poor choice nutritionally, but we saved $30-$120/month, which felt really good.  It was at that point that we noticed that not drinking wine not only benefitted our wallet, it also made us feel fresher and more alert both that evening and the next morning.  All those years of drinking wine and we had no idea that our after-dinner sluggishness and next morning grogginess was due to drinking one measly glass of wine each night.
We probably would have continued drinking soda with dinner indefinitely, if it weren't that our young daughter, then 3 years old, started showing interest in drinking soda herself.  It felt hypocritical to tell her that soda was "only for adults," because the reality is that it's no healthier for adults to drink than for children.  I realized that I wanted to set a good example for her and start her on a healthy path for life, so we held our breath and switched to water with dinner.  It wasn't nearly as painful as we expected.  We "fancied up" the water by serving it in a class pitcher and offering the following options: w/ice, w/lemon slice, w/cucumber slice.  Water is a refreshing and classy beverage, and I'm proud that we've been able to incorporate it into our dinner routine.  Not to mention I love that we're saving $60-$150/month.  I should point out that we still drink soda and wine on occasion, but we save it for parties and dinners out so that it feels special and doesn't impact our grocery budget.


Have you ever saved money by switching beverages?
 
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