Frugal Living: Cirkul Water Bottle

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I'm sure most of you have seen an ad for this project or something similar to it. It's a water bottle that you can put filters in and change the flavors etc. The whole mouth spout etc is attached to the filter and is disposable. So that's pretty nice. I had one a couple years ago when they first got "big" or "popular" and the kids used it and it got ruined or lost or something. So I've wanted one for awhile, but didn't want to spend the $20 that Walmart had them priced at. When I got my original one it was $5 for the starter set from the companies website. That was the water bottle and two flavor thingies. However I got paid yesterday for an article, and got a nice little bonus for a little writing contest they were doing. So when we went to Walmart, Chris basically forced me to pick one out and some flavors.The starter set or whatever you want to call it that I picked up was $14.99 on sale at Walmart. IT came with the 22 oz plastic reusable water bottle, comfort grip lid and two flavor cartridges. The two flavors that it came with are Mixed Berry and Fruit Punch. The berry one is fit sip and the fruit punch one is life sip. The different kinds of sips you can get are supposed to target different areas of health or health benefits. I also got two more flavors with it when I got it they were $4 or $5 each. I got a Sweet Tea flavored one and a strawberry kiwi one. The Strawberry Kiwi flavored one is in the water bottle- it's a GoSip, which means it's got stuff in it that is supposed to help you maintain your energy level. I am pretty excited about trying to Sweet Tea. There's over 100 flavored available and they range from sugar free or Stevia based ones to iced coffee flavors and everything in between. They have several different collections like I mentioned earlier that appeal to literally anyone. I knew there were a lot of different flavors but earlier I looked on the website and was amazed at how many there really was. There's a collection called Life Sip which have a lot of B vitamins in them. The Life Sip flavors also have zero calories- which I have never really cared much about calories- but I know it's important to some people. Fit Sip are the flavors that have electrolytes to help keep you going if you are exercising or whtever. Go Sip, which is the collection that the flavor that I currently have in the bottle is from. Which are the energy enhanced flavors. Gateway are all the tea flavors. I should be able to try the sweet tea one by tomorrow afternoon. I have been drinking the strawberry kiwi one since we got the bottle yesterday. There are a bunch of other categories as well even one that has cutesy animal names to encourage the little ones to start drinking more water. @porwest and I talked about the price of bottled water a couple weeks ago. I think @moffittjc was part of the conversation as well. I have drank a lot of different brands of water either by themselves or with flavoring. Propel and I have a long relationship as well as me and Vitamin Water, but the problem that I have with those are they can be $1.99 to $4 a bottle and I don't know who has that kind of extra money but that's A LOT of money to sink into being healthy. Each flavor sip thing that you get for the Cirkul is around $5 and it is equivalent to 6 or 7 (give or take) bottles of filtered and flavored water. There are ten different flavor "strength" settings so if you do less flavor obviously the flavor filter will last longer , and if you make it stronger it won't last as long. So for $5 bucks for about six 22 ounce bottles of water. I tend to think thats pretty frugal. Yeah the investment for the bottle at the beginning is a little higher than just going to get a Dasani or whichever water you drink- but you also get the equivalent of approximately 12 bottles of water with the flavors that come with that initial purchase. So you're even saving money there. So I still consider it a frugal purchase, plus it helps me drink more water so that's a win win. I have talked to some people who said that's about the same price as a Brita filter. Which may or may not be true. It has been a LONG time since I have bought a Brita pitcher or filter. Plus this one is flavored, and the fact that it's just a water bottle instead of a whole pitcher- makes more sense to me. Yeah I know the second half of this post got a little off plot, but I left in the middle of it and went to get some pictures of the sunset and then smoke a little marijuana because my doctor has actually told me with all my stomach issues he would like me to make use of my medical card and smoke to settle my stomach, help with the pain and keep my appetite as well. So I went and got stoned in the middle of this post and it may of effected my ability to make sense. LOL. Oh well. So what say you? Has anyone else jumped on the Cirkul or flavored water bottle bandwagon?