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Do you know that years before people were not even using water filters at home and were used to drinking tap water directly?   They would stores the tap water in large containers and use it for drinking as well as cooking purposes.  Falling sick on account of water carried disease were very few and far in between.  Slowly, as the population started growing everywhere, water filtration quality at the source started suffering and people were compelled to buy water filters and employ them for consuming clean drinking water.

Slowly, people started realizing the importance of using filtered water.  The water that they were using for bathing contained lot of chlorine and other chemicals which started slowly discoloring the bathing area and it would look unsightly.  It made people wonder if this was effect of hard water on the bath room tiles, what effect would it have on the skin, hair and overall health of human beings.  This was the beginning of introduction of shower filters for the bath room.

OK. ooma phones system in. Check. What’s next? Still haven’t disconnected the cable TV yet and that would be a quick $75 dollars a month savings. Plus consider the time I spend watching it, would I’m sure make me  a “better” person.  What other ways could I reduce expenses without going that route?

One of the ways is watching our food bill shopping. The amount of junk food the average person eats is incredible.  Personally we’ve cut out most of it already. We’re shopping at Costco and Trader Joes. I’m not going the route of coupon cutting out, just to go buy brands of foods that I don’t eat and don’t want to eat or use.  Maybe the paper towels would be an area to look at. I’m going to do some research and get back to you. In home shows I always pass that Sham-Wow guy pitching the towels that last forever. Maybe there is something in using them after all.  What does a roll of paper towels run and how often do we go through them?  I feel a consumer study coming up! Stay tuned!

Bottom line. Working great!  I’ve used the ooma service from a week or so now and haven’t had any problems. Calling them today and ordering the premium service for $99 a year which gives me one free “porting” of phone number. That normally runs $39 dollars to change your old phone number over to the ooma service.  I’ve got two phones to do so I’ll pay an additional $39 dollars, however that is peanuts compared to what I’m spending now per month.

Voice quality is excellent, I haven’t heard any echos and I’ve asked my caller their opinion on the voice quality and each of them  have said that it was. I  figure the savings per year at $850 plus. Certainly  not chump change! I’m now looking for my next way to cut expenses. Hint, cut the cable and put up the digital rabbit ears! Stay tuned!

Reducing household expenses part 2! In my last post I talked about “ooma” the phone system that you can purchase outright from Amazon and others for right around $210 dollars. Well I got the system last night and I have to tell you, I was ready to throw in the towel and keep my original phone service.  (One line cox and another line Vonage).  I had a frustrating time trying to get it configured with my router.  So I did what you should always do. Go watch TV for a little while and get a good nights sleep and attack it the next day. Still no luck. OK, I’ll call tech support. The tech was very patient with me and walked me through the whole process and within  10 minutes or so I got the “blue light” (this means its working) and made a few call to some friends. The sound was great. No complaints. Now all I need to do is have my old numbers assigned to my account. This either costs $39 dollars or for a years worth of their premier ($99.99) they include one phone number transfer. I’m going to use it for a few days and then order the service and start the process of changing the numbers.  To be continued……….

Need to reduce your household expenses in these tough time? There are a lot of ways to do that. One of them is how much our phones costs. We have several phones in our home. One for the general household, one for our home based business and several cell phones. The cell phones are another matter,but the other lines we can do something about. The home one runs around $40-$50 dollars a month and that one is through Cox. The second one is through Vonage and runs around $30 dollars a month. That is a total eight hundred and forty dollars a year. That is a significant amount of money.

Then I heard about ooma. What is ooma?  It is a device that you buy outright and then do don’t need to pay any more for telephone. Cost on Amazon is currently $200 dollars. There are plenty of review on their site, so you can get a good idea of what people think about the service. We are going with the premier service which includes a lot of other features and we can use both of our phones. It costs $12.99 a month or $99.99 for the year  for that service. We are going to be able to use several numbers. Phone quality is suppose to be excellent. Stay tuned, I’ll give you a report after I’ve installed the system. Looking forward to the seven hundred and forty one dollar savings per year.

Man, are we cutting back! In this tough economic times our family is looking at every way we can to reduce expenses. One of the expenses that we were able to save a lot of money was switching our phone system over from Cox and Vonage (two lines) to ooma VoIP system. After purchasing the home unit, you get free phone calls for life. We picked the deluxe  version that runs $13.00 a month (we had two phone lines to contend with). We are saving around $80.00 dollars a month just on  that switch.

Another thing we did is stopped buying bottled water. This was something we got into as a habit. But when you start to add up the cost per gallon of water and the inpact that it has by disposing plastic water bottles in our landfills, then it too made good  sense to do. These are just a couple of  ways to reduce your monthly expenses. We are look at the cable TV bill next.  Heck, we can watch shows for free with streaming video online.  Can you think of a few more?

The convenience of using a water filter that is under the counter is that you will no longer have to make those runs to the grocery store to pick up a case of bottled water.  Also there will be no more worrying about whether, or not you are going to have time to take the plastic water bottles to the recycling center, thus saving you some gas money.
Another reason why a under the counter water filter is convenient is because it will reduce your cost of paying for water bottles that you may never use again.  Along with the cost of the water being included into the price of the bottled water, the cost of the bottle is added in there also.  So buy using an under the counter water filter you are reducing the cost of having to pay for the bottle, along with reducing planetary waste.  This comes along when you don’t reuse the water bottle, or recycle the bottle.

Need to add a faucet to your stainless steel sink for your water filter? The easiest way is if the sink came with a spray washer for dishes. Then you can remove that and replace it with the faucet that comes with the water filter kit. Don’t want to do that?  Then you need to drill a hole in the sink

Don’t worry, it’s not a scary as it sounds and you’ll only need a few tools. Most of the faucets require you to drill a hole that is 7/8 of an inch or 1 inch in diameter.  By far the easiest way is to use what’s called a “step drill” that you can get at all of the home improvement stores or the hardware store. They look different than a regular twist drill bit. They kind of look like a pyramid. As you push down with the bit it keeps drilling larger and larger with each “step”. The advantage of using a step bit is that with a twist drill they sometimes get caught while drilling and can distort the area around the hole, making it not smooth or level.  After you drill the hole the rest is easy, just drop the faucet into the hole and tighten and away you go!

Tough time right? Everyone is looking to save money and be more efficient in their lives. One of the best things we can do for ourselves, our family, our environment is to quit using bottled water and go to a countertop water filter fitted to our home. First, we are doing are environment a great service when you realize the incredible amount of plastic water bottles disposed of every year in our landfills. Next is the quality of water that we get in those bottles. The standards of filtration for bottled water is no stronger than you water coming out of your tap, however the standards of water filters are much stricter.

We choose the Aquasana brand for a reason. One is that they are incredibly simple to install either as a countertop system or a under the counter. They also have a Aquasana shower filter that gets rid of all of the chlorine in the water. What a nice way to take a shower.  However, back to the counter top unit. The entire unit only costs 99 dollars and is a advanced twin cartridge system. Replacement cartridges are only 48 dollars bringing the per gallon of  water cost to less than 10 cents a gallon. Now that’s savings for both the environment and your pocket book.

In recent years there has been an explosion in reports and studies about the safety of our tap water. Many people are no longer able to trust that the water that they get from a faucet is safe to drink, especially those with small children. This is why today many new top of the line faucets and refrigerators come have dynamic  filters pre-installed. For those of us with older homes there are also many options, there are a wide variety of undercounter water filters. Undercounter filters are a way for people to ensure the safety of their water without having to buy an entirely new faucet. You can keep your old faucets because these filters install easily on your existing plumbing, you don’t even need a plumber. These devices are hidden away under your sink unlike filters that attach to your faucet head. These inexpensive filters literally pay for themselves in on time because you no longer have to pay for overpriced bottled water or water deliveries. If you are tired of watching your money go down the drain or having to leave the house when you need drinking water, then an undercounter water filter is the right answer for you.