Teetotal Up Your Savings By Dropping Your Drinking

September 30, 2014

With football season in full swing, my husband stocks up on his favorite Yuengling beer, the unofficial state drink in PA. A case costs around $18 and goes pretty quick with his two sons over to watch the game on Sundays. With 17 weeks in the season, that’s over $300 – which is a bit under what the average U.S. household spent on wine, beer, and other alcoholic beverages in 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as reported in a recent Reuters article.  That amounts to about 1% of the typical household expenditures but keep in mind that the average includes non-drinkers too so that means some households are spending WAY more than that already hefty amount on alcohol.

So would you give up alcohol to help balance your budget?  A recent Gallup poll reports that 64% of U.S. adults drink alcohol on occasion, with the average drinker enjoying about 4 alcoholic beverages a week.  This can get very expensive, especially if you do your drinking in restaurants or bars.

You might not even realize how much you spend so do the math before tossing back your next nightcap.  Even just cutting back can save you hundreds of dollars if you are a happy hour regular.  Let’s say you go out and have 2 glasses of wine twice a week at $5 a glass – that totals over $1,000 in a year!

Not only will becoming a teetotaler help your budget, it might also help with weight loss.  A glass of beer has about 100-150 calories, and a pina colada can be loaded with close to 500 calories, according to the alcohol calorie calculator from the National Institute of Health.  If you won’t give up drinking for your wallet, consider doing it for your waistline!