Americans spent $40 billion while drunkenly shopping

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I was shocked when I heard this on the radio today.



(Gray News) - The amount of money Americans spend while shopping under the influence keeps rising, jumping by almost $10 billion in the last year, according to an annual survey by Finder.com.

The "Drunk Shopping" survey of about 2,000 American adults revealed that a little more than a quarter of Americans shop when they are drunk - and when they shop, they spend a lot of money.

Americans spent a total of $39.4 billion while drunk in the last 12 months, according to the February 2019 survey. The average amount each person spent hit $736, up almost 65 percent from the year before.

The top drunken purchases were food, shoes and clothing and cigarettes. But some people took it further than that: 12 percent of people bought a pet, 14 percent a vacation and 10 percent a car.

"Nothing says buzzkill like a dent in your bank account after a night of drinking," said Finder's Consumer Advocate Rachel Dix-Kessler, according to Forbes.

Despite the increase in spending, there was a 20 percent drop in the number of drunken Americans who indulged their shopping urges. In the last survey, almost half admitted to drunken purchases, while this year, just over a quarter admitted to them.

Interestingly, the survey revealed that despite Millennials consuming less alcohol than baby boomers and Gen Xers, they spent the most money while drunk. At an average of $1,047, they more than doubled the averages of the other two generations.

Men are more likely than women to shop while drunk, according to the survey. They also spend more when they do so, Forbes reports, at an average of $870 compared to $511 for women.

Finder, which aims to help users with their financial decisions, has suggestions for anyone who's worried about what they may buy while under the influence. According to Dix-Kessler, you should remove saved payment methods from apps and websites and hide your credits cards.

"Most important, if this is an ongoing problem, consider evaluating your relationship with alcohol. Nothing is worth tarnishing your personal and financial well-being," she said, according to Forbes.

Copyright 2019 Gray Television Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
https://www.cbs19news.com/content/n...runkenly-shopping-in-2019-507606501.html
 
Sooo... THAT's HOW I ended up with so many oil filters!!
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Really?!?!?! 40 BILLION? That's hard to believe
 
Originally Posted by CARJ
Agree, I question the validity of the survey.


I question the validity of any survey. Especially the ones you hear on the evening news.
 
Originally Posted by Bud
Originally Posted by CARJ
Agree, I question the validity of the survey.


I question the validity of any survey. Especially the ones you hear on the evening news.


Well the answers right in the survey. They surveyed 2000 people, took those results and extrapolated it to the rest of the population. Did they just survey drunk people or was it a representative sample of the population? Anyway, who knows what the error rate would be, wasn't mentioned.
 
It'd also be interesting to see if the survey sample represented the average American drinker. At the top end, they drink an average of 73 drinks a week. But basically about 60% of people don't really drink.

I did know one drunk, he told me he drank a bottle of rum every night. Basically rum and coke 7x a week. At 16 drinks per bottle, works out to 112 drinks a week! At one point he said he was down to 1/2 bottle a day still puts him at 56 drinks a week.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...rt-will-tell-you/?utm_term=.2189dfed74d1
 
I don't know how people can afford to drink constantly. Up here, alcohol is heavily taxed, something like 47% of the price is tax. Yet the beer and liquor stores are constantly busy. I like my beer, but I'm not buying it all the time.
 
Originally Posted by xxch4osxx
I don't know how people can afford to drink constantly. Up here, alcohol is heavily taxed, something like 47% of the price is tax. Yet the beer and liquor stores are constantly busy. I like my beer, but I'm not buying it all the time.


Here the alcohol is cheap, but the stuff you buy on Amazon and eBay while drinking it is expensive!
 
Overall consumer spending was $14 trillion. Sober shoppers are outspending drunk ones by about 350:1. Is the average consumer in a drunken condition less than 1/350 of the time (29 minutes per week)? It could almost be argued that drinking reduces the tendency to spend.

Except that alcoholic beverage sales are about $140 million. Thus the most money that drinkers spend is not surprisingly on the drinking itself.
 
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Originally Posted by dishdude
Originally Posted by xxch4osxx
I don't know how people can afford to drink constantly. Up here, alcohol is heavily taxed, something like 47% of the price is tax. Yet the beer and liquor stores are constantly busy. I like my beer, but I'm not buying it all the time.


Here the alcohol is cheap, but the stuff you buy on Amazon and eBay while drinking it is expensive!


Ya, that's true! Lots of fun toys available especially on eBay!
 
Originally Posted by Wolf359
It'd also be interesting to see if the survey sample represented the average American drinker. At the top end, they drink an average of 73 drinks a week.

Two high water marks I've personally heard are (1) 36 bottles of beer a day, and (2) a 40 oz + 13 oz of rum per day plus a few benzos to keep him mellow.

The body can adapt to a lot of alcohol - for a while. On one of my training assignments I admitted a large number of men to hospital who were as yellow as a duck's foot (all with alcohol induced liver failure). That plus Korsakoff's psychosis, Delirium tremens (DTs), Esophageal varices, etc. It's not a pretty picture.
 
Originally Posted by xxch4osxx
I don't know how people can afford to drink constantly. Up here, alcohol is heavily taxed, something like 47% of the price is tax. Yet the beer and liquor stores are constantly busy. I like my beer, but I'm not buying it all the time.


It's really the top 20% of people who are doing the majority of the drinking.

Everything seems more expensive in Canada, it's probably way cheaper to be a drunk in the US, taxes on alcohol are high, but not that high.

For you, you could probably drive over to NH for some of the cheapest liquor in the country as they have one of the lowest tax rate on alchohol, otherwise even MA and NY aren't that bad.

Oh and the people that seem to drink all the time never seem to have any money. Either spending it on drink or shopping I guess.
 
Originally Posted by Warstud
The amount of money Americans spend while shopping under the influence keeps rising, jumping by almost $10 billion in the last year...

This is probably because the population is growing and more ppl are turning to alcohol to solve their issues.
 
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