My 5 Reasons - Reason 1: Money

With fifteen days left I think I will post about my 5 main reasons for doing this and my 5 biggest foreseeable challenges, given the previous experience I’ve had.

Let’s face it, drinking is expensive.  I tracked all of my finances for two months last summer – every single penny.  I found that after my mortgage and food, alcohol was the next largest expense.  I challenge you to try the same thing and see what you come up with.  Do you want to guess what the next biggest expense was?  Gifts!  That’s right, at a time when I was supposed to be ‘pinching pennies’, I had given away almost 200 dollars in stuff to people for birthdays, weddings, housewarmings, etc.

Drinking out of the house is far more expensive than drinking at home, obviously.  Another negative to drinking out is the chance that you will go over the edge and start buying shots or rounds for people, sometimes people you don’t even know.  But even drinking at home isn’t cheap.  My wife and I will split a bottle of cheap wine for 6 bucks, or a 6 pack for the same price.  You trick yourself into saying that it’s only 3 bucks a person, which it is, but in my relationship 9 times out of 10 if I don’t spring for the wine or beer, she'll be just fine without it.  If you do this 15 times a month, you still hit 100 dollars – so that is a minimum.  Because we don’t always drink cheap beer, cheap wine, and we certainly don’t always stay at home.  I have never been hit with a DWI, and I do not drive drunk.  But in MN, you don’t have to be drunk, you just need 3 beers in your system to get a DWI, and that is going to cost you dearly.  Tail light out?  Been drinkin?  Whoops, here comes a $5,000 fine.

I am in a saving mode right now, at least I will be after Labor Day, because I just got done with two years out of work back at school.  I plan to start a family in the next year or so, and a number of other things. I can’t justify the substantial expense that comes with this activity.