How much is my drinking costing me?

The example it opens with

Four drinks a week at home at about $2.50 each and three out at $9 with the tip. That's $37 a week, $1,924 a year and $19,240 over ten years. Those are example prices, so put in yours. In this example the three drinks out cost more than twice the four at home, so the nights out are where most of the money goes.

For scale, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the average household spent $630 on alcohol in 2025. That average counts every household, including the ones where nobody drinks, so a household that does drink spends more.

The medical bill comes later

The money at the register is the part you can see. The bigger cost lands years later and lands on everyone. CDC researchers added up what excessive drinking cost the US in 2010, in health care, lost work, crime and crashes. It came to $249 billion, or about $2.05 for every drink sold, and government paid about 40% of it. Three quarters of the cost came from binge drinking.

Liver disease alone is a fast-growing line. A 2024 model put the cost of alcohol-associated liver disease at $31 billion in 2022 and projected $66 billion a year by 2040, with women's share rising from 29% to 43%. Nobody has sized what one person's drinking adds to their own future medical bills, so this page doesn't guess at it. Your liver, with and without and cancer, with and without show what the risk looks like.

What the money buys back

Cutting from seven drinks a week to three doesn't feel like much at the table. At $9 a drink it's about $18,720 over ten years, and about 200 fewer drinks a year for your liver to clear. Ways to cut back or stop has what works, and the best non-alcoholic drinks has what to order instead.

This tool is for adults of legal drinking age, 21 in the US. If you drink heavily every day, talk to a doctor before you stop, because withdrawal can become dangerous.