At the time of my last drink of alcohol I was flat broke. My net-worth was definitely in the red. I had no positive balances in any of my accounts and I was heavily into my overdraft. I also had bills and debts coming out in all different directions.
Which was funny because I was picking up a decent paycheck from my day job and I had no dependents – hell I didn’t even have a mortgage. In theory I should have had lots of money being tucked away into a savings account each month.
But I didn’t.
Instead I had an increasingly larger balance on my overdraft each month. An overdraft that had finally reached its limit. In fact I think if I hadn’t quit drinking then and there that I might not have been able to afford to carry on anyway. I shudder to think what I would have done in that scenario.
Thankfully I did quit when I did.
The thing that always got me was even though I was drunk I thought I had a grip on my finances. I would always sit down and budget my money, planning out how much I needed to live and pay my bills (and therefore how much I had left over for booze).
But somehow come the end of the month I would have overspent and would be more and more in debt.
And it wasn’t because I was buying more booze – well it wasn’t just because I was buying more booze. No it was because of all the incidental costs that come up.
All of the little things that you pay for when you are drinking that you wouldn’t have paid for sober.
The Hidden Costs of Drinking
Let’s look at them shall we?
Contents
Ubers/Lyft & Taxis
“While I may be a drunk I am a responsible drunk.”
Is what I told myself when I was jumping in and out of taxis. As long as I was not driving my drinking wasn’t a problem.
For sure not driving when drunk was responsible. But the drinking was not. And the damage the steady stream of taxi fares did on my wallet was also not responsbile.
Just two £10 (About $12) taxis a week is over a grand a year. And I for sure took more taxis than that.
Eating out (Or taking away)
Who can be bothered cooking when they are hungover?
I know I can’t. I think I honestly would rather starve. In fact sometimes I have done just that. Just lay in bed getting hunger pains instead of getting up to cook something.
So what inevitably happens?
Yep. I order food to be delivered.
Is this food cheaper than eating my own food?
Hell no.
In fact it is probably at least 3 times more expensive than anything I could have cooked for myself.
And that is just when I am hungover.
When I am drunk I am even worse. Ordering stupid amounts of appetizers to only have a bite or two.
Waking up with an 18″ pizza next to me that is not even a quarter eaten and some old fries that are cold and horrible.
Just a waste of money – and extremely unhealthy (obviously)
Drunken Purchases
Who hasn’t bought a canoe at 3 o’clock in the morning after coming home from a night out?
So maybe you didn’t buy a canoe but I bet there’s something you did buy. Something dumb that you wouldn’t have bought sober. And likely a lot of ‘something dumbs’.
A lot of the time I wouldn’t even remember what I had ordered until it showed up at my door.
Late Fees
I’m pretty forgetful at the best of times. Throw in a constant drunk or hungover cycle and things are bound to get missed.
Most things are on direct deposit or auto-pay these days so late fees are slowly becoming a thing of the past.
But when I was still drinking I had a couple things that I paid yearly (water bill is the first one to come to mind) that were not on direct deposit.
Miss one of those bills, and then ignore the chasers. Big late fees to come. Or worse a court summons.
Health Care Costs
One particularly for my American friends.
Slips, trips and falls. Those are the most common injuries.
I had a friend who broke her leg falling upstairs while she was drunk. Yeah up the stairs. Broke her leg.
But it’s not just the accidents that cause trips to the hospital. Getting into fights when drunk is very common.
And that’s not to mention the long term damage that alcohol abuse does to the body. In the longer term a drinker is going to require a lot more medical assistance than their non-drinking counterparts. And unfortunately this is going to cost you.
Decreased Career Opportunities
Much harder to quantify. But just think about it objectively.
Do you think your career has been impacted by your drinking?
Do you think if you didn’t drink you would be further along with your career goals?
I know that I definitely missed out on some promotions in work due to my drinking. And to be honest I don’t blame my managers at all. I was definitely not doing my best work while I was getting drunk every night.
Secondary Habits
Smoking, Gambling, Drugs.
Those are the big 3 vices that go hand-in-hand with alcohol addiction.
I only smoked when I was drinking. Once I quit drinking I realised that I didn’t enjoy smoking and very soon thereafter I had quit smoking.
That was a good chunk of change being saved every day. Especially in the UK which normally resides in the top 5 most expensive countries for cigarettes
Gambling was also a big expense for me when I was drinking. Now I am not going to sit here and tell you that I quit gambling entirely, because that is not true. However when I stopped drinking my gambling dropped off significantly.
When I was drunk – due to the lower inhibitions – if I was betting I needed to bet big. Otherwise there was no thrill to it. I just didn’t care about the bet if it wasn’t “go big or go home”.
Now though without the booze I am able to enjoy gambling responsibly. A couple of quid on the weekend sports does me fine.
Missed Work
We spoke about how we are more likely to be overlooked for promotions due to our drinking. But there is a more direct employment cost.
Time spent off work.
How many “sick days” have you taken because you were hungover?
How much overtime have you missed out on because you chose to go out and drink instead?
These missed opportunities are direct drinking expenses. If you were not drinking you would have made more money.
Takeaway Exercise
How much do you (or did you) spend because of drinking?
If you use a banking app you should be able to easily pull up your bank statements.
Go through each and every payment you made while you were drinking. Obviously anything spent directly on alcohol is to be counted. But you should also look at any other purchases and ask yourself:
“Would I have spent this if I was sober?”
If the only reason you spent the money was because you were drunk then add it in.
If you overspent because you were drunk (ie. you would have made a purchase anyway but at a lower price) then add in the difference between what you did spend and what you should have spent.
Now add them all up:
Alocohol Purchases + Drunken Expenses + Overpaying When Drunk = True Cost of Drinking
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