Three bad habits to ditch that cost you big time

If you’re going to ditch bad living habits, you may as well get rid of the ones that cost you the most money first. Following are three bad habits that cost the planet and you a lot over time.

Ditch water bottles and buy a filter: You can buy a recyclable water filter along with a nice stainless steel reusable water bottle for pennies of what bottled water will cost you over a lifetime and you eliminate a major landfill contributor – the plastic water bottle. Not to mention, you’ll have fewer toxins in your body because stainless steel, unlike plastic won’t leach chemicals. Triple play! Annual savings, even if you buy the world’s best water bottle and a basic filter is about $300 if you drink one bottle worth of water a day, but if you drink as much water as you should (eight 8oz glasses 64 oz a day) you’d be saving about $700 per year and that’s factoring in bulk bottled water.

Ditch paper towels: Cloth napkins, old cloths to clean with, and actual hand towels can save you scads over daily paper towel use. Annual savings of switching to cloth about $83, but over ten years you’d save about $800.

Ditch toxic cleaners: Making your own green cleaning products will cost you very little. You’ll need some essential oils, baking soda, and lemons. Not a lot of money. Maybe about $40 per year. If you buy the following monthly (general household spray, toilet cleaner, kitchen cleaner, tub + tile cleaner, and glass cleaner) if these are cheap $3 each you’d still be paying about $180 a year, and that’s fairly conservative compared to what research says people spend on cleaners. For example, The U.S. market for natural household cleaning products sells about $100 million annually, but this represents just one percent of the total household cleaners market. So you likely spend more than $180 annually. Still, if we go with a conservative figure, annual savings are about $140.

Above are totally rough but fair estimates of what you can save by ditching just three bad habits. Annual savings if you ditch these three bad habits – about $900, in ten years that’s a savings of about $9,000. What could you do with an extra $9,000?