Gifts That Save Your FRIENDS Some Money

Dec 6th, 2010

A Filtered Water Bottle.  It purifies regular tap water while you drink from it, and they go for about $15 at Target.  Your present could save the average person who buys one bottle of water a day hundreds of dollars a year.

The Belkin Energy-Saving Power Strip.  TVs and computers suck up power even when they're turned off.  And unlike normal power strips, the Belkin Energy Saver prevents it from happening.

-It costs about $40, which is a lot for a power-strip.  But it can reduce your electric bill by about that much every year.

An Electronic Thermostat.  They cost $30 at Home Depot, and they're programmable, which means the person can set it to automatically adjust the temperature when no one's home.

According to the Alliance to Save Energy, replacing an old thermostat with a PROGRAMMABLE one can shave 10% off an average person's heating or air-conditioning bill.

A Half-Decent Coffee Maker.  If the person you're buying a gift for goes to Starbucks every morning, a nice coffee-maker can save them in the high hundreds over the course of a year.

You can get a cheap coffee maker at Wal-Mart for around $15, or a nice one for about $100.

The Roku.  It's a little box that plugs into your TV and lets you watch thousands of HD movies online for free.  They start at about $70 and go up in price.  But if the person loves watching movies, it'll help them save on rentals.

Just make sure it's not a waste of money, because if the person has a Playstation 3, an Xbox 360, or a Wii, they can already access the same movies.  And the BIG catch is, they need to have a Netflix account to watch most of the free stuff.

Reader's Digest / Quick & Simple