The Real Cost of Drinking: Are You Spending Too Much?

So how do you end up spending so much on drinking? It’s not all in the trolley.

The first cost is buying the alcohol. The cheapest way to drink, of course, is from home.

It doesn’t seem like much until you add it up. Even a month of not buying alcohol could make a big difference to your bank balance.

1 mid-range bottle of wine a night is £56 a week, but that is £2,912 a year. This isn’t even accounting for times when we buy more, like birthdays, Christmas and BBQ season.

In the end, you will be spending close to three or four thousand a year. No need to tell you this is £30,000 over ten years. Now I can’t speak for everyone, but that would be a life-changing number for me.

Take that same bottle of wine and drink it in the pub or a restaurant, and you are looking at £140 a week and over £7000 a year, and yes, that’s £70,000 in ten years.

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Lifestyle Costs

You paid for your drinks, but now you need a taxi home, which could be anywhere from a tenner to £30, depending on where you live. So, add at least £3,000 a year to your bill.

Maybe a takeaway because who feels like cooking after a bottle of wine? Again, about £3,000 a year is on the reasonable side.

These aren’t the only ones that think about every time a night out has cost you in entry fees, being over-generous at the bar and of course, drinking more than you should.

Drinking Disaster Fund

All these costs were familiar to me, but the strangest one my colleagues came up with was paying for alcohol-related mistakes.

Property damage was a big one. Wine stains on the furnishings, breaking in their own doors, smashed up glasses, plates, the list went on.

Missing work, meetings, and flight appointments can all cost a lot of money. They are hard to put a price on (apart from maybe the flights), but a heavy cost all the same.

Income Loss

Most recovered alcoholics realise after a while that everyone was aware of their problem. This includes your work, and you can find yourself passed over for promotion or losing out on performance bonuses.

The price tag depends on your job and salary, but these costs run into the thousands.

Personal Costs

One of the highest costs of alcoholism is relationships. Whether you are in a co-dependent partnership or your family has had enough, alcohol can drive families and friends away. The personal cost is not something anyone can calculate.

Financially, this has a penalty too. Divorce can be a huge expense, as well as splitting assets, moving home, and the tough costs of living singly.

Cost to People Around Us

It isn’t just our family that pays the price for our misuse of alcohol. Your community feels the brunt of the overuse of alcohol.

Drink driving is still a real issue in the UK, with 200 people killed in 2020.

There is the risk of destroying your car, losing your job, and legal complications on the financial side.

The Real Cost of Alcohol Addiction

Both the NHS figures and our private tally of the cost of alcohol use disorder show it is no small matter.

Paying the Tab: The Cost and Benefits of Alcohol Control, a great book, put it candidly: ‘we all pay the tab for cheap drinks’.

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Sources:

Reported drinking and driving: data tables

Heavy drinking costs the NHS £1.7bn a year