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

[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).