Beer Money

Posted on 2003/07/25 11:10:25 (July 2003) by john.

How much have you spent?

For some reason or other, I was reminded earlier of an episode of Sex and the City where the main character (whose name eludes me, honest) wanted to buy a house and needed to find a deposit. She realised she had no savings, and, whilst out shopping one of her friends (the lawyer one I think) asked her how many pairs of shoes she had. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like one hundred pairs of shoes, each costing one hundred dollars. It added up to 10,000 dollars, which could have paid for the deposit on her house.

I thought about this, and wondered if I could come up with any parallel for myself. Clearly being a bloke I only own about three pairs of shoes. I've got one pair of smart shoes, one pair of casual shoes, one pair of old knackered shoes, and a pair of sandals for the beach. That's four at most. I've hardly bought any clothes for the last couple of years either - I realised yesterday I only own two decent pairs of jeans, for example. I've not spent a huge amount on gadgets and PC bits recently either, so far this year I think I've only bought some ram and my ADSL router.

I think you can see where this is going (and the title is a bit of a clue). Apart from the mandatory payments (rent and bills), the largest part of my monthly expenditure is food and drink. Well, the food part is more or less unavoidable, although I do spend more than perhaps I need to at the supermarket, and maybe I eat out a fair bit. I'm going to ignore that bit for now though. What I really want to nail down is beer money.

Last week I was a bit shocked when I managed to spend almost 60 quid in a single night at the pub. It was a works do, and so that money basically went in three large rounds. I think I probably bought one more round than I really had to - and, as this was at the end of the night when people are seemingly less shy about asking for expensive drinks, I really got stung. Still, it's pretty rare that I manage to spend that much on drinks alone. Having said that, most weeks I'll go out on average maybe twice, sometimes more often, and so recently I have probably averaged say, 50 quid a week on alcohol.

Being a good law abiding citizen, I've only really been drinking seriously since I was 18, in fact, I more or less only started when I went to university. The first year or so I was a bit slow, but then there was a period after that when I probably spent even more per week than I do now. So, give or take a bit, I've probably averaged that 50 quid a week for the last eight years. Especially if you take into account all those "miscellaneous expenses" incurred by drinking - late night taxis, entrance fees to clubs, crisps, nuts, kebabs, out of court settlements for damage to other people's property... that sort of thing.

What we're looking at then, is eight years, let's say fifty weeks in a year to make the maths easier, at fifty quid a week.

That's 20,000 pounds then.

Shit.

But you have to consider the effect on your lifestyle if you hadn't spent that money. Would you have sat at home (albeit somewhere you owned!) and done nothing instead?

Posted by tom at 2003/07/28 09:42:53.

I always wonder, when I hear "size of a cow" if I have been drunk a thousand times yet. I bet I have.

Posted by Graf at 2003/07/31 13:32:03.

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