I spent a staggering amount of money on alcohol
We all know how good alcohol is at sneaking up on us and, over time, seriously damaging our physical and mental health.
Another sometimes barely perceptible way it really hurts us is in our wallets, however.
I say barely perceptible because spending $15 on something isn’t really jarring in any way.
If you buy a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer, what’s the big deal? It’s just part of the grocery bill, right? What’s ten bucks here and there?
A staggering cost over time
The issue is that, if you’re a daily (or almost daily) drinker like I was, the compound effect of those little bad decisions add up to staggering dollar amounts over time (just as saving just a little bit of money every day can make you quite wealthy).
Say you spend $10 (it’s just ten bucks, right?!?) on a cheap bottle of wine.
Now say you spend that $10 every single night of the year.
Just 365 days later, you’ll have spent $3,650 on alcohol alone! That’s a nice little vacation somewhere hot in the winter! That’s a year of monthly payments on a decent subcompact car!
I imagine if you’re reading this piece, your cost of drinking is even higher.
The number above doesn’t even take into account restaurant visits, binge-drinking on holidays (or during particularly difficult points in life), or the higher daily intake that I know a lot of people have.
Last week, I wrote about my absolute favourite quit drinking book. It’s called Alcohol Lied To Me by Craig Beck. Follow the link in the previous sentence to find out more about why it really appealed to me and kicked off my own sobriety journey.
Anyway, one of the exercises that Craig has the reader (or listener — I prefer audiobooks for quit drinking content) do is actually put some thought into how much they’re drinking over the course of a year and try to accurately calculate what the habit is costing them.
As I mention in the piece about discovering Craig’s audiobook, I listened to the whole eight hours or so on multiple flights back from Las Vegas. Ergo, I did this exercise at cruising altitude, somewhere above 30,000 feet.
I still have the note in my habit tracking app. Here’s what I wrote.
Annual cost of drinking
Regular drinking: 325 days x $12 = $3,900
Restaurants: 32 x $25 = $800 (in retrospect, this was probably a low-ball estimate)
Holidays/parties = $250 (this was almost certainly low)
Vacations = $200 (again…)
Total: $5,150 per year
I drank almost every day for more than 10 years.
It hurts to even write down how much money that would add up to, so I’m not even going to do it!
You get the picture though. Drinking is costing you life-changing money.
And I had what a lot of people would consider to be a normal, acceptable intake (doctors would disagree)!
In his book, Craig writes about how he fancied himself a wine connoisseur and would down two expensive bottles a night.
In return for his habit, he’d have to tell his kids there would be no vacations or expensive activities because they “didn’t have the money.”
What are you saying no to because you’re drinking too much?
Alcohol costs way more than you think
For me, my greatest regret is the investing I could have done over that time.
One thing we don’t always consider when adding up these numbers is opportunity cost.
What was $5,000 really costing me 10 years later? Well, I would have invested in an RRSP account, which allows Canadians to defer taxes and results in a nice refund when you file.
Had I put that in an RRSP, I would have now had $5,000 invested in a tax-sheltered account and about $1,900 in extra capital to reinvest. Again, I think $5,000 per year was probably an underestimate in retrospect.
We’re now at $6,900. What could we expect as a return on that? Let’s say your investments returned 10 percent per year, compounded.
I listened to Craig’s book almost exactly 10 years after the market bottomed following the 2008 crash, so my return actually would have been significantly higher.
The total? $17,896.82.
Picture the crying emoji guy and you’ll have a good concept image of my face right now. And that’s just for one year.
If you’re looking for reasons to quit alcohol outside of the obvious health benefits, I’d urge you to do the math for yourself and really think about what you’re not experiencing because of what your habit is costing you.
It might be just the push you need to make a change. I know it was for me.
Friends, thank you so much for reading this piece all the way to the end. If you enjoyed it, please do give it a clap (you can give more by holding down the button) so other people can find it!
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