Drinking Our Savings

My husband and I do pretty well for a newly wed couple. We don’t ever have to wonder if we’ll make this month’s rent, or have money for gas, or anything concerning money really. But I did sit down to re-do our budget (I got a new job) and found something that I find to be disturbing. I’m a waitress, and he works for a cellophane packaging company, yet between us, we make roughly twenty dollars an hour. I’d say that’s pretty awesome for two newly wed youngsters, neither of whom have gone to college yet. And with our bills as low as they are, rent is only $455 (O.O I know, right?!?!), the only utility we pay for is electric, which is fairly low, we don’t have to drive too far to get to work, and we only have one car which is totally payed off and pretty gas efficient. We ought to be banking!!!

But we’re not… that’s the disturbing thing.

Now, don’t think I’m complaining, we’re blessed to both have good jobs, getting along as well as we do in this economy, and I thank God for everything He’s done for us. I just want to know where our money is going every month. So I started thinking about little purchases we make everyday.

The restaurant I work at is privately owned, so my boss lets me eat and get sodas for free. I don’t buy soda unless I get a Caddy Shack Peace Tea at the gas station for a dollar. Which I do only a couple times a week. Maybe less. I don’t buy snacks throughout the week, we don’t go to movies much, we only go out to eat every so often and it’s always somewhere cheap.
So then I looked at my husband’s spending routine. He doesn’t buy snacks either, but he does eat lunch. Which is understandable. He works twelve hour shifts some days, starting at five a.m. He eats at the restaurant I work at and spends about $7.25. … wait a minute… seven times five… *calculating* that’s $36.25 a week. Wait, but then he gets a coke, so that’s another $1.55 a day… add those.. that’s $44. But then, he also gets a Monster Rehab every morning, and those suckers are at least $2 a pop. So that’s another $10 a week. That’s putting us at $54 a week just for his lunch and a Monster. What does that come to at a monthly rate? Oh, somewhere in the vicinity of $216. Wow. That’s almost half of our rent. But he’s gotta eat lunch, and there’s NO way I’ll ever get him to give up his Monsters, so what to do?
Now, I asked him, and they have both a refrigerator, and a microwave in his break room, that means I could send him with a sandwich, or macaroni and cheese, or hamburger helper, and he could have that for lunch. Macaroni and cheese (which he LOVES, by the way) is less than a dollar a box if you get Walmart brand. So let’s say he eats a box a day for lunch. That means we’re now spending $20 a month on his lunch. At most. So then let’s say we buy a case of coke so he can take one for lunch, that’s about $4 for twelve cokes, so that’s about $8 a month. So we’re sitting comfortably at $28. But now, we get to his energy drinks. I can get them in a 4-pack at our local general store for $6.50, So that makes them roughly $1.63 each. So that’s an improvement. But still, one a day, five days a week, four weeks a month, that’s still $32.60. That’s more than his entire lunch lunch costs. That’s my main point actually. The energy drinks.

Did you know that if you buy an energy drink at a gas station every day for a month, you’ll spend $70 before you can say “caffeine addiction?” Keep that up for a year and that’s $912.50. Without tax. So you’re spending nearly a thousand dollars a year on a little 15.5 oz can, the contents of which attack your teeth the exact same way as METH. Oh yeah, it’s true. I’ve done my research. It’s slower, but it happens. Believe me. I hope you brush your teeth after every can, cause if not, you’re either going to owe bu-kus of money to a dentist or… nope, that’s your only option unless you want cavity, infection, abscess, ridden teeth with no enamel. Good luck getting a date with that smile! *wink wink*
(By the way, I won’t even go into what it does to your liver. Kidneys. Stomach lining. Suffice to say, it’s bad.)
So that’s drinking one a day. I can list, by name, at least four people who drink two or more a day. Let’s do that math! For two cans a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, that’s a whopping $1825. (Did I mention that the $1 can of Peace Tea I drink is also a 23 oz can, nothing artificial, no preservatives, comes in a variety of flavors, and being tea, has natural caffeine? Jussayin.) That’s $1825 you could save instead and use to buy a perfectly good used car in two years. And if you’re a teenager, which most of the people drinking energy drinks are, that’s a pretty big thing.

At any rate, my budget is done, I got that rant out of my system, and I think I’ve made the point I was getting at. So seeing as this is a lot longer than it was supposed to be, I’ll end it here. Cease and desist with the energy drinks and it’ll be easier on your wallet, your teeth, and your kidneys/liver.