I am all for saving money

[trinityvixen]

This is a decent list of obvious to not-so things to do to save money. But this one is just in denial about something:

STOP DRINKING

I quit drinking for a month, and by a rough estimate, I saved probably $300-$350. Maybe I'm kind of an alky, but even people who drink moderately can save money by cutting down on drinking, or just drinking at home. Also, buy the cheap stuff. Booze tastes exactly the same with any mixer in it. Like, you probably won't notice the difference between Pinnacle vodka (12 bucks a bottle in WA, where I live) and Ketel One ($27 a bottle) if you're putting cranberry juice in it. Just a thought.

Just a thought: when you can drink half the cost of my rent in booze each month, you're not kind of an alcoholic. You're such an alcoholic that you're coming out the other side of sobriety. I live in New York, home of muchos expensive alcohol, and I'd have to really work to drink half that much money in alcohol. With your average mixed beverage being $10 in this city, that's still 35 standard drinks, or at least one a day. Jay-sus.

On the subject of alcohol, though, here are a few things I've learned from various booze aficionados that can always save you money:

1) If you're mixing the drink with anything really sweet (daquiry mix, etc.), it doesn't really matter whether you buy top shelf or bargain basement booze. So go with the cheap stuff.

1a) Unless you get SMASHED OUT OF YOUR SKULL, which you should not do but rarely, in which case better booze does, occasionally, protect you from the worst of a hang-over. Buy Georgi for your every-other-day-at-most martinis; save the Grey Goose for a special hitting-a-brick-wall-at-sixty-miles-per evening.

1b) People who drink alcohol straight are doing it to get drunk 9 times out of 10. Ergo, it STILL shouldn't matter what they buy so long as they get a buzz.

1c) People who drink alcohol for the taste are probably drinking Scotch anyway, and are obviously richer than me so any advice on saving money is pretty much falling on infertile ground there.

2) You are not the dudes from Sideways. Buy cheap wine. $10 and under makes for entirely tasty, drinkable wine. Most of my favorite wines are $5-8 for a full liter, if not 1.5.

3) Buy bigger. If you like a lot of margaritas like some people I know, it's just always better to buy by the liter and above. It doesn't go bad. (Not if you drink it fast enough!)

4) Beer is cheap for a reason--it tastes like shit and requires roughly a full six pack to put you in a nice buzzed state. You'd be better off paying the same $15/case for some quality rum and having enough booze to satisfy you through your next umpteen drinkings.

Okay, so that last one is my editorial as far as the taste thing. But it's true--beer and wine coolers are pretty expensive. If you want something like a Mike's Hard anything, it's easiest to buy the bottle. (And much less messy at parties.) But if you're on your own, get some flavored vodka/rum and pour it into ginger ale. Same exact thing, more alcohol, less expensive.

Comments

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

1c) People who drink alcohol for the taste are probably drinking Scotch anyway, and are obviously richer than me so any advice on saving money is pretty much falling on infertile ground there.

Or beer or wine.

4) Beer is cheap for a reason--it tastes like shit and requires roughly a full six pack to put you in a nice buzzed state. You'd be better off paying the same $15/case for some quality rum and having enough booze to satisfy you through your next umpteen drinkings.

You obviously don't drink the right kind of beer. Get some nice 10% ABV stuff and you'll feel just one (and enjoy it while you're at it).

ALSO: I don't know about there, but here the bargain basement is $15/case Keystone/Natural Ice, where a case is 30 cans. It's also 5.9% ABV (50% more than "light" beers) and basically tastes like seltzer water.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Or wine, you're right.

The only beer I "like" (as in, is-not-a-punishment-to-drink) is Guinness. But I'd take just about anything else before that. Beer is just bitter burps in liquid form.

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

There are many not so bitter beers. You probably would've liked the porter I made, for example (it tasted like a chocolate malt). You also might like the Belgian witbier style (more sour than bitter). Wheats also tend to be low bitterness (try a raspberry wheat).

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Me, I only like lambic ales.

At a $10-a-bottle price tag, I don't indulge much...

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

Lambics are a pain in the ass to make. One of the few styles I haven't even looked into trying yet.

[glvalentine.livejournal.com]

...$350 DOLLARS?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Just. How? It also sounds like he's drinking from home. Even $30/bottle would mean ten-eleven bottles a month. That's not "maybe" an alcoholic anything.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

I had a conversation with a coworker at my old job in which he was complaining about how much money he was spending. Another coworker and I were baffled that he couldn't save money, when we were pretty sure he was getting paid about what we were and we had no trouble putting money away.

Turns out he was going out to clubs most nights and getting hammered. Gee, no wonder he didn't have any money. We tried to explain the concept of, say, movie nights or inviting friends over for pizza. Or even just having your own booze in your own house instead of paying $15 for a martini. He stared at us like we were nuts. We gave up and told him to get used to being poor.

But yeah, I've known of people who spend that much or more. Partially, it's a sign of subsituting alcohol for social skills. Partially, it's a sign of being a pretentious idiot and picking bars that are two damn expensive.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yikes. I thought for sure I was closer to the mark with $10/drink, but it shouldn't surprise me that I'm not. I can't imagine going out every night. Every. Night!? Yeesh.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

I got the feeling the only friends he had were bar friends.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That's incredibly sad :(

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

It was. We were both really kind of taken aback, especially by his puzzlement that this wasn't how all 20-somethings in New York lived. He thought we were boring and too conservative. We thought he was nuts and sad.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I have, on occasion, felt bad that I don't do the go-out-and-get-smashed club life of a "proper" New Yorker. But that shit is boring, expensive, and boring some more. I don't regret having the money and not wasting the time.

[lizzatherussian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, for a while I assumed I was a reticent and boring person because I got easily BORED at clubs. (How can I get bored with all these loud things going on around me? I must be a boring person)- but now I get that maybe people who live this lifestyle are just trying to fill a gaping void.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

I am amused for a bit when dancing is involved. The clubs that are really loud, with a cover and overpriced drinks, yet have no dance floor? Totally baffling. I mean, it's fun to have some drinks with friends, but I can do that in my/their apartment. Plus, worst case, there's somewhere safe to crash if someone accidentally overdoes it or stays out later than they're comfortable traveling.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I just never like going places where you have to shout to be heard. I always shout (or so it probably seems), but I hate having to. Or having to strain to hear. That's the worst--how can you have fun if you're all just sitting there going "WHAAAT???" at each other?

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it's great if you're interested in sex ... and absolutely nothing else.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Still not interesting unless you manage to actually find someone with whom to have sex.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

If everyone around you is drunk enough -- and is as sex focused as you are -- I'm sure sex is easy to find.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I asked the guy at the liquor store if SoCo goes bad. He looked at me like I was nuts. Hey, it took me four years to drink the last bottle!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, it doesn't? Wine will go bad, but that's because of other stuff in it. But good to have confirmation on it--God knows I've got more than my share of bottles working on a few years' worth of sitting around.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

I take issue with you statements about beer. Cheap beer tastes like crap, good beer is quite tasty ^_^ Even cheap beer though can be enhanced with the right knowhow.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Beer tastes like carbonated ass. Good beer, cheap beer, it's mostly the same. There are few exceptions, and they are truly exceptions. None of which I'd trade my margaritas for.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

Fine, let me know when you have free time.... I shall "re-educate" you on beer ^_^ Good beer is a blessing, with equal levels of complexity as good wine (more so to me since grape based wines all taste like turpentine).

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I don't need to be "educated," dude. I know what I like and what I don't. You can't dictate tastes. If I could, I'd tell you that thinking that wine isn't tasty means you're broken. But I'm not saying that.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

Not educated, "re-educated" ^_^ Big difference. I've already pegged you as having certain leanings based upon certain comments you've made so far. I think you'd SO go for some good lambics ^_^

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. The beer you usually find at, say, sporting events or concerts is what I call "cheap American swill" - there are much, much better beers out there.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I've had "better" beers. Still not really interested. In a crowd of beer drinking, I can usually muddle through with something, but I don't like it generally.

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's an assload. Maybe the guy only drinks 30-year-old Scotch? Personally I'm just glad to have found Finlandia as an excellent price/flavor-ratio vodka for my screwdrivers.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Finlandia's not bad. Schmirnoff isn't either, if you have to drink vodka. But I'm a rum and/or tequila type myself. Jose Cuervo gold is best to do a shot of, but I can take just about anything cheap in my margarita. Since I'm usually drinking the latter, the cheaper option is best for me.

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

The next time you are out this way, allow me to show you the huge honking bottle of tequila we have in the liquor cabinet! We can make mixed drinks! :)

I love tequila! I once did 15 shots of tequila at a party (right before we moved to New York). I out-drank the big beefy guys I was drinking with! I was smashed, but they brought me gatorade the next day and let me sit in a chair and order them around while they moved my furniture. It was...amusing. The hangover wasn't very bad, actually. i was just a little dehydrated.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I've done tequila shots. They make the night go wwooooooogly. :)

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

I did the Brita experiment back in college. I took a bottle of decent vodka (I forget what, it was in the ~40 a bottle range) and a cheap bottle (~8) and ran the cheap one through a Brita pitcher 3-4 times. I conducted a blind taste test, and most people either couldn't tell the difference or picked the filtered cheap one as the 'premium' vodka. This was drinking it straight as a shot or sipping. There was, of course, no difference at all in the sex on a beach. This study proves that, well, the people who came to my parties in college were probably idiots, but also that maybe top shelf is not always all it's cracked up to be.

As for beer, I used to feel that way, that everything was really bad. Then I hung out with some beer snobs and I learned to appreciate it. Good beers have actual taste to them, so you might not like all of them but they have something, as opposed to the really cheap mass-market stuff that is incredibly watery. I often recommend Dogfish Head 60m IPA as a beer for people who don't really like beer. Or that do.

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

Ha! I had heard about (and mentioned in my reply) the Brita thing, but didn't know anyone who had actually tried it. :) You had taste tests? Fun!

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

The New York Times did a blind taste test of vodkas without actually tampering with them. They picked a bunch of the big name brands - Ketel 1, Belvedere, Grey Goose, etc - and at the last minute, threw in a bottle of Smirnoff just to have a bottom.

Smirnoff won.

Basically, their conclusion was that for alcohols that are supposed to taste like something, like gin or tequila or Scotch, it's worth considering getting "better" quality. But vodka's supposed to be practically tasteless as it is, and you're usually drinking it mixed with other stuff. Filter the rotgut so you don't make yourself ill, or just get Smirnoff.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I read that article. It was very enlightening. Enough of the comments on the article made it clear that it was worth filtering the vodka if not for taste than just to get the impurities away from your eventual hang-over.

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

Mythbusters did the Brita experiment. The professional Vodka taster could tell the difference, but the amateurs couldn't. Even the pro thought the multiply filtered crappy vodka was drinkable.

She (apparently) doesn't like bitter, so anything from Dogfish Head is pretty much out (they likes them their hops).

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

Personally, I LOOOVE wine.com, because I can get 90+ rated wines for under $20 (they have a search function for that!) and never have to talk to a human about what I am buying.

Oh, and you can apparently run cheap vodka through a Brita pitcher and end up with divine stuff, though Svedka is a nice affordable brand that doesn't suck anyway.

And Gin should always be the good stuff. Period.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I am not a gin drinker, so I'll defer to you there. Vodka doesn't have any taste to me with the amount-to-mixer ratio I usually use. (Haaaaate vodka anyway, it doesn't like me, so I avoid it if I can.) With rum, there are definitely flavors, so it's worth paying attention if the concentration is going to be higher in your beverage.

And congrats on your icon of the only beer I can stand. (That I can remember.)

[saturn-shumba.livejournal.com]

No. 4 reminds me that I should never hang out in dives ever again, where the social standard is to drink Old Style. Or *shudder* Schlitz.

Also I am guilty of No. 1b.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Drinking cheap beer happens to all of us. And drinking to get your drunk on happens either on purpose or by accident. Doesn't really matter which so long as you're a) careful, or b) surrounded by sympathetic friends.