Sunday, January 29, 2006

The Wine Contest Winner is...

Ladies and Gentlemen, please congratulate financial paragon and guesser extraordinaire HAZZARD, of Everybody Loves Your Money! He has won the wine cork guessing contest, in which readers were invited to guess how much money I spent on liquor last year based on a photo of my cork collection. (A good bonus question would have been to estimate what percentage of Portugal's GDP is represented by my cork collection.)
Hazzard's guess of $750 was almost dead-on with my "Dining:Liquor" line in Quicken, which was $754.03. However, I realized that the contest didn't specify whether I just meant wine bought for home consumption, which is mainly what that line covers, so I also went through my "Dining:Dinner" transactions and counted up the ones where I most likely included a glass or two of wine. From that I came up with approximately 36 glasses of wine, at an average cost, probably, of $7, bringing my total cost of booze to $1006.03. Hazzard was still the closest guesser. Our runner-up, by both reckonings, would be the lovely and talented Caitlin of Clutter2Cash. The guesses ranged from Bitty's $186 to Trip's $2500. Bitty, thank you for your vote of confidence in my frugality and temperance, and I apologize if I've terribly disappointed you. And Trip, wow, you must think I am a real partier! To you as well I apologize if I have destroyed any image you may have had of me as a champagne-swilling woman about town. The truth that seems to have emerged is that I drink (or at least pay for) on average about 2 bottles of wine per week, as well as about 3 glasses of wine in restaurants per month. This makes sense, as I've been trying to cut back on dinners out and often cook at home with a couple of my friends rather than going to restaurants.
Thank you all for playing! I will try to have some more contests in the future so everyone can have another shot at the fabulous prize which Hazzard will be enjoying for the next week: that glittering headline reading "Hazzard is wicked awesome!" Maybe to mix things up a bit next time I'll offer a chance to win "[your name here] is peachy keen!" or "[your name here] is the balls!" Stay tuned!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Outstanding. My ninja skills are strong this week.
Thanks for the prize!!
Hazzard :)

Caitlin said...

Even though I didn't win the wicked awesome award I am strangely satisfied by coming so close. My guess was based on 1 bottle a week for 50 weeks * avg $12/bottle + $13 for luck. I know there are 52 weeks in a year, but I like round numbers ;)

Anonymous said...

I had a bit different approach. I counted 10 corks and then tried to guess aobut how many piles of 10 there were. Then I figured that Madame X probably liked to pay about the same amount as me for a bottle of wine. Somewhere around an average of $6-7.50 per bottle. $750 seemed reasonable.
Hazzard

Bitty said...

Ah, that's ok. I did base my estimate on frugality, however. :)

Cheers!