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.

[glvalentine.livejournal.com]

...$350 DOLLARS?

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.