The wine debate

We've all heard that drinking a glass of wine a day is good for you. The limit, I've read, is 2 glasses for an adult male and 1 glass for an adult female per day. It is supposed to do all kinds of nice things to your body and to your heart so long as you consume it in moderation.

I'm sure there is a debate on this, but as big wine drinkers I was interested in how this would impact our budget. Let's assume that we can stomach a cheap $10 1 liter bottle of red wine. If we each consume 6 oz of wine every night over dinner (that's 1 glass apiece) we will have emptied 2.5 bottles a week, or 10 bottles a month for a total of $100.

Ouch. Over our lifetime (assuming we live to, say, 75) we will have spent $54,000 on wine. That's just the glass of wine over dinner! That's an opportunity loss of $500,911 assuming 8%.

Of course we could also save the money and buy all the wine at the back end. Given 2% inflation, each bottle will cost $24 and we can buy 20,871 liter bottles of cheap red wine. That would definitely encourage the grandkids to stop by.