I had no idea how much I was spending.
That’s the honest version.
I knew alcohol cost money. Obviously. But I’d never actually added it up. It was just part of life, part of the budget. Not something I thought about.
6 months after quitting, I actually did the math. 2,232 euros extra in the account. Just sitting there. Money I hadn’t done anything to earn or save, and the number’s kept climbing since.
The actual breakdown
Let me show you where it was going.
3 litres of vodka minimum per week. Not cheap stuff. Around 25-30 euros per litre. That’s roughly 80-90 euros per week on just the vodka. Around 350-400 euros per month.
For every litre of vodka, I was mixing about 2 litres of juice. Another 15-20 euros per week in mixers.
Then the food. Drinking every night means eating while drinking. Chips, salami, snacks, stuff you buy at midnight when you’re drunk that you’d never buy sober. Another 40-50 euros per week easy.
Add it all up: I was burning through roughly 500-550 euros per month. On alcohol, mixers, and the food the alcohol made me eat.
6 months at that rate would be over 3,000 euros. I landed at 2,232 because a couple of those months weren’t completely clean. But the direction was obvious, and it hasn’t stopped since.
What actually changed
Not my income. Not my lifestyle, really. I still go to dinner. I still go out. Same life.
I just drink water or sparkling water now. The drinks at the table don’t cost 8 euros each. The midnight snacks don’t exist. The random things I ordered online while drunk and forgot about don’t happen.
The hidden stuff nobody talks about
People think about the bottle in the supermarket. They don’t think about everything downstream.
When you’re drinking, you spend differently. You buy things you wouldn’t buy sober. You order stuff online that seems like a good idea at 1am. You tip more. You eat more. You make decisions you wouldn’t make clear-headed.
None of that shows up as “alcohol” in your spending. But it’s all downstream of the alcohol.
The moment my wife stopped doubting
I showed her the difference in the account after a couple months. Not to prove anything. Just: look at this.
She’d been sceptical. “Sure, let’s see how long it lasts.” Reasonable, given how many times I’d tried before.
The bank statement was more convincing than anything I could have said.
If you want to see your own number, not mine, run it through the Sober Calculator. Took me an hour by hand. Takes you ten minutes.
One more thing
The money was motivating at first. Watching 320 euros not spent in month 1. Then 680. Then 1,140.
But at some point it stopped being motivational and just became normal. This is what life costs now.
And honestly that’s better than using the money as motivation. When saving feels like an effort, it’s hard to keep up. When it’s just a natural result of how you live, it’s easy.
You don’t save the money. It just stops leaving.