It’s Beer ‘o’ Clock
With this being Friday and all, I figure it’s a good time to address a tricky issue. A place where the Good Life we advocate here at MMM comes into direct conflict with optimizing your spending. That place is BEER, and other recreational drugs of your choice.
Mr. Money Mustache definitely enjoys a good brew. And a good jug of wine occasionally too. And a strong Espresso in the morning. And even a pipe packed with Colorado’s Finest Medical Marijuana if it should happen to present itself. I admire those who choose to abstain completely from these substances, but for me it is worth a certain amount of money and health risk to experience the altered states of consciousness that bring Introspective Voyages, Creative Breakthroughs and just plain Really Good Times. But only in a mathematically determined moderation that ensures that the Good Times will never cause Bad Times.
Let’s focus on alcohol for this article, since it’s the habit that most commonly gets out of control among humans. What is the maximum amount you’re allowed to enjoy? How can this be had without compromising health or early retirement?
Mr. Money Mustache, while possessing no medical qualifications of any sort, is still going to tell you what to do:
I think that a beer-and-wine-loving person should consume no more than what is required to get good and drunk, once per week. Preferably much less, but hopefully we can all agree that if you actually care about your health, you should not get drunk more than once a week.
So, about 6 drinks is your allowance. 6 beers, or 6 glasses of wine, per week. You can space it out all civilized-like with your dinners, or you can have a bender tonight. You’re also allowed “rollover beers” if you don’t use them all up in a given week. If you shop wisely, you can get this amount of good quality drinks at about $1.50 per serving, so your total drinking budget is $9 per week.
This is still a hell of a lot of money, $6912 over ten years with compounding, so I encourage you to optimize it further and drink less. But it is a budget that will keep you from destroying yourself and/or burning off your Money Mustache.
But for some of you, Nine Bucks is sounding a little bit challenging, isn’t it? What if you’re sitting in Las Vegas or a Cruise Ship, and the stupid drinks are $14.00 each?
The answer is simple: You don’t get suckered in by shit like that, ever! As an MMM reader, you have learned to love and appreciate each of your dollars, your employees that will work for you for life. So the very idea of anyone trying to steal fourteen, or even four of them, for a beverage that is only worth a maximum of $1.50 should be offensive to you! When I go to a restaurant, I’m there to marvel at the skill of the chef, making me food that might take many hours to produce at home. That has value. There’s no added value in somebody taking a beer out of a fridge and handing it to me. So why do they think that service is worth a 200-1000% markup?
If you do decide it’s worth $4.50 for a pint at the expensive brewery downtown, that’s half your budget used up for the week. So you have to weigh the options and decide if you’d rather have three wonderful cold ones on your own patio with your friends, or settle for a single in the restaurant. Don’t forget tax and tip.
Back in my university days, cash was short enough in my town that people actually thought about their alcohol spending. I remember the pre-parties that would be had before going out to the pubs, so that fewer drinks would need to be purchased there. I remember secret bottles stashed in pockets and plenty of similar fun that also kept students from having to resort to student loans. But even back then, I could see the savers and the spenders beginning to separate, when some of us would bring a $10 bill for the night’s bar tab and come home with $7, and other people would drunkenly blast out $100 of their borrowed employees in the name of a good time. Some of those hundred-dollar nights are surely being paid back by thirtysomethings to this day, who complain how hard it is to save for a house downpayment and take care of student loans at the same time. Talk about a long hangover!
This article is just to remind you that there’s more than one kind of good time out there, and the Good Times that you get from being free of monetary worries for life are way, way better than the good times of buying a lot of drinks in a bar.
And with that thought, I think I’m going to head out to my back yard and use up about half of my weekly budget right now.. Cheers!
Update! After writing this article, I went on to start brewing my own beer for further fun and profit. You can read about the results in the articles called: “A Mustachian Microbrewery is Born“, and “Brewery Update: Beer ready, Critics Raving!”
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Mr. Money Mustache is a family man living in the United States who retired from work, relatively wealthy, at about age 30. After several years of retirement, he noticed that his still-working peers were envious of his lifestyle. They were making more money than he ever had, yet they were somehow still broke. So he decided to write this blog to educate the world on how it is done.
There’s also the alcohol content to consider. That $2.50 lite at 3% is a worse deal than a 7% Belgian at $4.00. While I have fond memories of nickel night at the downtown bars on Thursday night, I try to forget the following Friday mornings.
I also try to observe a 6 beer limit each week to preserve my waistline and my liver. When I go out for dinner, I’ll ask what is on tap. If they have something I don’t have at home made by a local brewery and it is less than $4, I’ll probably buy it.
I love beer and fermenting stuff, so I brew my own for around $20 per case.
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Now, this is a topic I can fully support! We do love our beer and pre-partying is still alive and well in my 40-somethings frugal crowd. Great job on this, no heckling today from Sarah, who certainly admires yo’ mad rhymes!
We like cheap beer for long days on the water but will spring for good draft on a special night. Your idea of 6 per week is a good rationing approach–I’ll try not to use them all up at Happy Hour tonight.
I whole-heartedly agree with you. This is something we’ve been doing in my house for a while. I prefer to ration out the week, my husband prefers to drink his whole weekly allotment Friday night. We both win. Unfortunately it would seem alcohol is a little more expensive here in Canada. I’d argue your $1.50 drink is more like a twoonie up here. Steve is right – brew-your-own is another way to enjoy more alcohol while keeping more of your precious employees!
Yeah!
I will be launching into a brew-your-own extravaganza because of the inspiration from all of you today, and from another friend who emailed me also in response to this article.
The results, including time expenditure, cost savings, and beer quality evaluation, will be the subject of a revealing article later this summer.
Peach Fuzz: Note that in Canada, you should definitely do the pretend-to-brew-your-own-wine service offered in so many retail stores now. The wine quality is amazing and it works out to $3 a bottle or so – even better than US pricing!
Yes! Brew your own! Leave the amateurs to their bars, let’s all get toasted in the comfort of our own couches! My husband has gotten extremely good at brewing my favorite, an IPA with strong Imperial Stout tendencies. And we’ve gotten good at saving yeast so that is another cost we’ve eliminated. And despite living in a desert, our landlord pays for all water…so beer is getting very close to $0 for us :)
I’ve brewed several types of beers the last two years, and I see the savings vs. going out and buying beer at bars / restaurants. If I can make some really great beer, and save some time and money, and enjoy it at home, then I am happy. You can get good beer for $9, but a $9 jug of wine is going to require some skill. And $9 “medical” marijuana? Maybe if it was legal in the USA, prices would be like in Amsterdam – definitely doable on $9 per week.
Glad to hear it!
Good quality Marijuana is actually much cheaper than alcoholic drinks on a per-serving basis because of its potency. Based on a large-group experiment that ran for several days during a recent snowboarding trip, I determined that it takes about 50 cents of MJ to keep a large adult male entertained for an entire evening.
I subscribed to your blog after reading your ERE post. I am looking forward to future posts.
I can’t believe no one asked you your favorite beer?
Ahh.. thanks for asking! My favorite beer is currently the one in the picture for this article – Upslope Brown Ale from Boulder, CO.
My all-time favorite, weighted in units of yum-years, is probably Shiner Bock from near Austin, Tx.
Thanks MMM, for addressing these critical items that all too often get short shrift from PF bloggers! After all, we’re talking about living the Good LIfe here!
For us non-drinkers, I’ve actually made money with a night out on the town by being the designated driver.
1)Around here, bars USUALLY will give the DD free soda (a couple of times even free food! Although that didn’t happen often)
2)Friends will usually pay you a small ‘delivery’ fee, since they feel they are saving money on a cab
Also, I’ve been baffled by the amount of money people will spend on alcohol in ONE night. How they think that is a valid use of their well earned money is beyond me….
You can often save quite a bit by watching the sales around town, too. At least where I live, the on-sale items seem to cycle every so often, so if you have a favorite, you can “stock up” to hold you over until the next sale comes up.
Mail-in rebates or unadvertised or “manager’s specials”, can net you a few dollars here and there, as well.
At many places, the store will price match other stores, so you can consolidate all the trips to different stores to get the best deal into one convenient trip to a single store.
It’s worth the few minutes to flip through the weekly ads in the paper and find the best buys on beverages, just like you’d shop around for anything else.
http://liquorliker.com gathers sale prices on beverages and can quickly tell you where the best deals are at any given time. While the sale data is rather limited now, I use it all the time to find out where to go to get the most savings where I live.
Hmmm… i may have to conduct a large group snowboarding experiment of my own! Fifty cents for a night of mind-expanding entertainment? I’ll take it!