Am I Drinking My Retirement Savings Away?

I just read an article in the New York Times a couple days ago "Imbibers Add It All Up and Gulp".  With a finger pointed directly at me, the article asked ARE YOU DRINKING AWAY YOUR RETIREMENT DOLLARS? (OK, so maybe not those words exactly).

Interesting question though. I decided to do a little digging into our own drinking expenses.  The results--shocking!  It turns out we spend about $325 per month on wine, $175 per month on alcohol out (dinners, concerts, sporting events), and while I don't know this number exactly, I'll guess $100 per month non-wine alcohol (the hard stuff) at home.  That's six hundred bucks!  Over $7,000 a year!

I'm sure you are now inclined to recommend Alcoholics Anonymous rather than worry about the state of my finances.  So let me re-direct your focus to the issue at hand, retirement.  I'm 43 years old right now.  $7,200 per year socked away at 6% interest for 20 years is a nearly a quarter of a million dollars.  I kid you not.  Cutting back on this expense would surely guarantee that at 63 we would not be eating cat food for dinner.

But, alas, the obvious issue arises.  That 20 years wouldn't be nearly as much fun dry (not to mention just plain impossible for us to do).

But I do wonder:  when I'm not going to work every day, will this expense possibly decrease simply because I won't feel the NEED to drink as much?  Right now we have a (not-so) strict "no drinking" policy on week nights with the following exceptions:

1. If we go to someone's house for dinner,
2. If we go out to dinner at a restaurant, and
3. If we have people over for dinner.

(Note:  a bad day at work is NOT an exception, but you can also see how easy it is to get around that one--simply go out to dinner.  And I must admit that I have recently taken to just skipping that extra step and going straight to the bottle during this time of my growing impatience to reach the finish line at work.)

So, it will be very interesting indeed, to see how this budgetary item is effected by my upcoming retirement.

Comments

[Wicked in San Jose]

Well my dear....

Knowing you as I do, I know that much or most of those liquid $$$s were shared by you with your friends and families at your fabulous parties, dinners, restaurants and just plain having fun. So you don't have to go to AA just yet.

And all your friends do seriously appreciate your generosity and will try to feed you when you're 63.

I hadn't thought of applying my favorite subject (the miracle of compound interest) to wine $$$$. That is pretty scary!

Signed,
Wicked in San Jose

[Retired Syd]

Ahhh, so now you bring up the next logical question, do all our friends and family that have been sharing in all those liquid $$$$ need to join us in AA?

[Wicked in San Jose]

No No....Nobody is going to AA .....YET!!!!!!!!

[Cheryl]

It's a good thing you have good friends, Syd. :)

I haven't added up our wine expenses lately, but we have a wine cellar and couldn't even imagine a dinner out or a weekend meal without a nice bottle of wine.

Looks like you live in wine country, maybe you can start bottling some of your own!

bottoms up,
Cheryl

[Retired Syd]

Funny you should say that--we did go in with some of our friends on a ton of zinfandel grapes and made wine together. While it was a LOT of fun, the wine leaves a little to be desired. It's drinkable, sort of (actually it's really good for cooking the Thanksgiving turkey in--pour a couple bottles over the bird while you are roasting, the meat is juicy and the gravy is delicious.) Actually, my dad loves the wine--we bring it down to him by the jug.

I'm not sure it saved us any money, though, as there's still another barrel to be bottled and I think the group has lost it's steam!

[Debbie]

I've found some wonderful tasting wines in the $4-$6 range at Trader Joe's. That really helped cut our spending down.

[Retired Syd]

@Debbie: Turns out now that I'm retired I'm more worried about the calories than the cost. By the way, your knitting blog is beautiful!