One of the many fantastic things about grad school is that the undergrad party spirit lives on! Parties for holidays both real and made up, get togethers for successful defenses, Thursday night 'box socials'. In addition, as R. Black, one of the great lyricists and philosophers of our time once said,
It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend!
To top it all off, according to Miss Black, Saturday comes after Friday!?! Damn, how are we ever going to keep up with all of this without going broke?
As mentioned in the first post, this blog is about both happiness and wealth so here is the first post on actually saving some coin! Below are four of my favourite strategies for keeping the good times rollin without breaking the bank!
1. Moderation*
Blech!!! You get it. I get it. Let's move on to something we might actually do : ).
2. Make your own wine!
A few weeks ago, I realized that I was down to my very last bottle of wine. I quickly made my way to the local liquor store to pick up some reinforcements as there was a big weekend coming up. I ended up picking up a 26 ounce bottle of one of my cheap favourites - Canadian Club. $25.45. Not a bad price for booze in Canada eh? For years I thought the same. But as the cashier scanned the bottle and the price flashed up, the financial side of my brain cringed in agony while my liver hesitantly rejoiced thinking that it might soon get some rest. Here's why.
For $25.45, I could have made approximately 6.25 bottles of wine!
To compare apples and oranges, let's think about the alcohol content in 6.25 bottles of wine versus a 26er of rye. Assuming a standard 750 ml wine bottle and a 13% alcohol content, then $25.45 would purchase approximately 609 ml of alcohol via making your own wine. For the rye (750 ml @ 40%), the same amount of money only buys about 300 ml of alcohol. This means that if you make your own wine you can reduce the amount you spend by 50%!
Making your own wine can be incredibly easy since there are facilities that do almost all the work for you. All you need to do is add the active ingredient (i.e. yeast) and then show up a few weeks later to bottle it. The whole process takes only a couple hours of your time. It's great if you can get a like-minded group of friends together and make a few batches all at once. Since the batches tend to be large (e.g. 30 bottles) you can split the cost of multiple batches and get more variety. Plus, it's pretty damn fun to bottle, drink, and pretend you have the skill to assess the 'merits' of your latest vintages with your buddies.
Full disclaimer, I make the cheaper wine and this is the example I used above (~$4/bottle). The quality of this stuff is variable but is reliably equivalent to the cheaper ($9-11) bottles you might find at the LCBO. For those with more refined tastes, there are more "expensive" options. I have tried a $6 bottle before and it was pretty damn impressive given the price. Definitely in the territory of the $11-13 bottles at the liquor store. I can only assume an $8 bottle would be better still!
3. House Parties!
Simply put, house parties can be the best. I definitely try to seek these out or initiate my own whenever I can! You choose the music, the crowd, the drinks, and if you put in some effort you can conjure up pretty much any atmosphere you want. You also tend to meet, talk and laugh with way more people than at a bar. If the basic logistics are dealt with properly then the people you invite do the rest! House parties have the potential to be the PERFECT bar.
The PERFECT bar has cheap drinks and food. Regardless of whether you decide to make your own wine, you don't have to pay the typical bar mark-up which substantially decreases the cost of the night. However, if you do bring your own wine then the night is insanely cheap (e.g. $4-12). Additionally, the PERFECT bar has a free/safe place to crash if need be. Friends let friends sleep over ; - ). Or if you have the party at your place you don't have to go anywhere at all!
4. Avoid taxis whenever possible!
To see why you should walk or take public transit, let's do a quick calculation using the details listed below.
1) Taxi Fare = $4 + $1.60/km + $0.50/min (real fare rate from a popular city cab company)
2) Average car speed in a city = 50 km/hr (in most cities this is very fast if you include traffic and lights)
3) Average walking speed = 4.85 km/hr (according to Google maps)
We can now compute the effective wage per hour (i.e. savings per hour) you earn by choosing to walk a distance rather than taking a cab. The effective wage is plotted below as a function of the distance walked.
The asymptote of this curve is approximately $10.67/hr. This means that even if you were to "walk 1000 miles just to be the man to show up at her door", you would save a minimum of $10.67/hr which is similar to many grad student stipends (and Ontario's minimum wage). However, if all you have to do is walk two kilometers to get to the bar or back home then your effective wage is about $20/hr. Not bad! If you walk faster than Google's average person, 6 km/hr for example, then this number jumps to $25/hr!
Now of course one way to reduce the cost of cabs is to split them. You can divide all of the above numbers by the number of people to calculate the reduction in cost. However, this has seriously diminishing returns if everyone isn't going to the same location. Furthermore, there are a tonne of financially unrelated reasons to avoid cabs, particularly at the end of the night. Here are some in no special order.
A little exercise is probably called for since you just spent hours abusing your body by imbibing lots of extraneous calories
A walk can give you time to sober up a bit and make better anti-hangover decisions when you get home. For example, drinking water, eating food, or brushing your teeth instead of doing the 'drunk flop' as soon as you spot your bed.
If you're with a couple friends, the walk home can easily be the most hilarious part of the night!
.
.
.
.
So there they all are! If you have more ideas for saving cash while having a night out, let us all know through commenting on the post!
Cheers,
Tony
It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend!
To top it all off, according to Miss Black, Saturday comes after Friday!?! Damn, how are we ever going to keep up with all of this without going broke?
As mentioned in the first post, this blog is about both happiness and wealth so here is the first post on actually saving some coin! Below are four of my favourite strategies for keeping the good times rollin without breaking the bank!
1. Moderation*
Blech!!! You get it. I get it. Let's move on to something we might actually do : ).
2. Make your own wine!
A few weeks ago, I realized that I was down to my very last bottle of wine. I quickly made my way to the local liquor store to pick up some reinforcements as there was a big weekend coming up. I ended up picking up a 26 ounce bottle of one of my cheap favourites - Canadian Club. $25.45. Not a bad price for booze in Canada eh? For years I thought the same. But as the cashier scanned the bottle and the price flashed up, the financial side of my brain cringed in agony while my liver hesitantly rejoiced thinking that it might soon get some rest. Here's why.
For $25.45, I could have made approximately 6.25 bottles of wine!
To compare apples and oranges, let's think about the alcohol content in 6.25 bottles of wine versus a 26er of rye. Assuming a standard 750 ml wine bottle and a 13% alcohol content, then $25.45 would purchase approximately 609 ml of alcohol via making your own wine. For the rye (750 ml @ 40%), the same amount of money only buys about 300 ml of alcohol. This means that if you make your own wine you can reduce the amount you spend by 50%!
Making your own wine can be incredibly easy since there are facilities that do almost all the work for you. All you need to do is add the active ingredient (i.e. yeast) and then show up a few weeks later to bottle it. The whole process takes only a couple hours of your time. It's great if you can get a like-minded group of friends together and make a few batches all at once. Since the batches tend to be large (e.g. 30 bottles) you can split the cost of multiple batches and get more variety. Plus, it's pretty damn fun to bottle, drink, and pretend you have the skill to assess the 'merits' of your latest vintages with your buddies.
Full disclaimer, I make the cheaper wine and this is the example I used above (~$4/bottle). The quality of this stuff is variable but is reliably equivalent to the cheaper ($9-11) bottles you might find at the LCBO. For those with more refined tastes, there are more "expensive" options. I have tried a $6 bottle before and it was pretty damn impressive given the price. Definitely in the territory of the $11-13 bottles at the liquor store. I can only assume an $8 bottle would be better still!
3. House Parties!
Simply put, house parties can be the best. I definitely try to seek these out or initiate my own whenever I can! You choose the music, the crowd, the drinks, and if you put in some effort you can conjure up pretty much any atmosphere you want. You also tend to meet, talk and laugh with way more people than at a bar. If the basic logistics are dealt with properly then the people you invite do the rest! House parties have the potential to be the PERFECT bar.
The PERFECT bar has cheap drinks and food. Regardless of whether you decide to make your own wine, you don't have to pay the typical bar mark-up which substantially decreases the cost of the night. However, if you do bring your own wine then the night is insanely cheap (e.g. $4-12). Additionally, the PERFECT bar has a free/safe place to crash if need be. Friends let friends sleep over ; - ). Or if you have the party at your place you don't have to go anywhere at all!
4. Avoid taxis whenever possible!
To see why you should walk or take public transit, let's do a quick calculation using the details listed below.
1) Taxi Fare = $4 + $1.60/km + $0.50/min (real fare rate from a popular city cab company)
2) Average car speed in a city = 50 km/hr (in most cities this is very fast if you include traffic and lights)
3) Average walking speed = 4.85 km/hr (according to Google maps)
We can now compute the effective wage per hour (i.e. savings per hour) you earn by choosing to walk a distance rather than taking a cab. The effective wage is plotted below as a function of the distance walked.
The asymptote of this curve is approximately $10.67/hr. This means that even if you were to "walk 1000 miles just to be the man to show up at her door", you would save a minimum of $10.67/hr which is similar to many grad student stipends (and Ontario's minimum wage). However, if all you have to do is walk two kilometers to get to the bar or back home then your effective wage is about $20/hr. Not bad! If you walk faster than Google's average person, 6 km/hr for example, then this number jumps to $25/hr!
Now of course one way to reduce the cost of cabs is to split them. You can divide all of the above numbers by the number of people to calculate the reduction in cost. However, this has seriously diminishing returns if everyone isn't going to the same location. Furthermore, there are a tonne of financially unrelated reasons to avoid cabs, particularly at the end of the night. Here are some in no special order.
A little exercise is probably called for since you just spent hours abusing your body by imbibing lots of extraneous calories
A walk can give you time to sober up a bit and make better anti-hangover decisions when you get home. For example, drinking water, eating food, or brushing your teeth instead of doing the 'drunk flop' as soon as you spot your bed.
If you're with a couple friends, the walk home can easily be the most hilarious part of the night!
.
.
.
.
So there they all are! If you have more ideas for saving cash while having a night out, let us all know through commenting on the post!
Cheers,
Tony
*Some complex combination of my age and a concern that my mother will think I'm an alcohlic made me include this - it is not my favourite haha
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