Reducing the estimated 38 billion plastic water bottles discarded each year will obviously have a huge environmental impact. Those environmental benefits may be leading this effort to switch from bottled water to tap water, but the finances of making the change should also not be overlooked.

Cindy Crawford has joined the effort by teaming up with PUR Water Filtration Systems (PUR) to promote a limited edition Thirsty for Change water bottle. The aluminum water bottle is manufactured and sold by SIGG, the Swiss Engineered Water Bottle company. The idea is to reuse the bottle and fill it with filtered tap water instead of buying bottled water. The Thirsty for Change website claims that PUR filtered water is 1/10 the cost of bottled water, which will save an average of $600 per year. Filtered tap water is being promoted because PUR is the co-sponsor of the initiative but depending on where you live, you may be able to drink unfiltered tap water to save even more.

Any reusable bottle will allow you to make this change, but if you order the limited edition Thirsty for Change water bottle, all proceeds from the sale will benefit Procter & Gamble’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program, which helps reduce water-related disease in many developing countries around the world.

Personally, I use a Nalgene bottle that cost about $10 less than the SIGG bottle.

Postage rates will increase on Monday, May 12th. I previously covered why Forever Stamps are a Losing Investment. For the next few days, it does make sense to buy enough forever stamps to cover a few months worth of your postage needs. You can buy forever stamps at $0.41 each through Saturday, May 10th and they will be valid for first class mail that would normally cost 42 cents after that date.

Richer by the Day is once again listed in the Fire Finance Top 100 Personal Finance Blogs. Traffic on Richer by the Day increased from 2352 visitors in February to 2502 visitors in March. Based on Sitemeter data, this blog was ranked 57th in the latest rankings. Thanks to all of my visitors.

The IRS has released the schedule of when economic stimulus payments will be issued for most taxpayers who filed their 2007 return by April 15th. I say most because a few taxpayers will get their payments later than this schedule, regardless of when they filed, due to the complexity of the amount of their economic stimulus package payment. The schedule is based on the last two-digits of the filer’s Social Security number. For joint filers, the SSN of the first person listed on the 2007 return will be used. Taxpayers will get their economic stimulus payment in the same form as they used for their 2007 return, either direct deposit or paper check.

The schedule is as follows:

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I finally got around to creating my blogroll, which is located on the sidebar below my category list. Rather than just add the blogroll, I thought I’d share my rationale behind adding each of these sites. There are a lot of other good sites out there, many of which I read. I’ll probably add more of them to my blogroll as time goes by, but the ones below mostly have specific reasons for being included.

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Today, I will make my first post in a new series called Freaky Financial Fridays. For these posts, I intend to argue the opposing view to my personal opinion or a piece of generally accepted financial advice. My goal is not to show how ludicrous the opposing view is, but rather to try to make genuine arguments in favor of that view. Personal situation greatly influences which course of action is best, so it’s likely that some people will find this information applicable. Even if you do not, looking at things from another angle may help to strengthen your own opinion. I intend to write a post for this series a few times a month. If nothing else, this series should prove to be entertaining.

This month Richer by the Day made it’s debut in the FIRE Finance Top 100 Personal Finance Blogs. Rankings are based on page views from a variety of sources. Using Sitemeter, Richer by the Day was ranked number 52 and using Quantcast it was ranked number 82. Either way, I’m excited to be listed in the top 100 and hope to improve my rank in the coming months. I’m proud that this blog, which was only started a few months back, has already achieved such success. That success can be mainly attributed to my readers, whom I sincerely thank for their patronage. If you haven’t yet done so, please subscribe to my feed through RSS or email to stay up to date with the latest posts.

The Carnival of Everything Finance 15 was released today. My post, Financial Rules of Thumb Stink, was included in this event.

My favorites from the other entries were as follows:

Is “cheap” the new “green”? posted at Early Retirement Extreme
Living frugally doesn’t mean we should buy junk. I’ve noticed a lot of good material coming out of Early Retirement Extreme. The site is definitely worth a look.

6 Reasons to Live and Work in Rural America posted at Cubicle Dropout
I was glad to see telecommuting on this list

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A recent statement by US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has renewed the debate about the existence of the penny. In an interview, he said that the penny is worth less than any other currency and that he’d like to get rid of it. So today I’ll discuss the pros and cons of keeping the penny.

Supporters of the penny suggest that getting rid of it would mean higher prices, as retailers round up to the nearest nickel. Since it’s common for items to be sold for prices ending in .99, rounding to the nearest nickel would cause prices to go up (to the nearest dollar). This argument is countered with arguments that sales tax and multiple item purchases would reduce this effect. This only holds true if totals are rounded, not individual prices. The reason why retailers use .99 pricing is

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The third Money Hacks blog carnival is now live on My Dollar Plan. My recent post Is Prepaying Your Mortgage a Mistake is part of the event.