Your town must be expensive. In Toronto, a beer costs about 2 CAD, which is also 2 USD (we have reached parity again). This is true even if you get it at a bar, provided you get it as a pitcher. The food then costs maybe $5 on top of that. So this is $7 per-night under the described rules ("a drink every week with some friends"), which allows just over 4 nights out with a budget of $30. And that's only if you're buying food there, too (bad idea, honestly, you can feed yourself for a week with $5 of food if you're smart. Rich people confound me.)

It's possible you go to more expensive pubs than I, but paying over $30 for a night out sounds ridiculous.

That doesn't sound right. I visited Toronto quite a bit a few years ago and paid quite a bit more than that everywhere I went and I hardly went to fancy places. What kind of food can you get for $5?

Of course here $30 is quite a modest night out, even without a meal. I generally assume at least $80-$100 for going out for food and beers on a Saturday night with my mates, and it's not like we're hitting up all the exclusive night clubs. I know lots of people who spend at least double that.

That’s crazy. London (where I live) is min £3/drink (CAD$4.50), food £5-10 (CAD$7.50-15). A couple of drinks and one plate of food and you easily see a CAD$25 spend.

Outside of forever hypothetical situations devised on messageboards, where a night out can reasonably be limited to "(cheapest) plate of food and 2 drinks", and ends up being more like "plate of food, ooh and those deserts look good, and that was 3 drinks during the meal to wash it down, and now for another 11 drinks, and buying a round for those guys I know from... er... somewhere... and those drinks for those nice girls I thought I had a chance with... and the entrance for the club, and the cloakroom, and some more drinks, and a kebab, and oh screw the nightbus let's get a taxi", it's pretty hard having a night out in London for less than £100.

I think what is most apparent is that different people drink different ways. There is nothing unreasonable about the "hypothetical" case.

You have better nights out than me :)

JC! In Switzerland in a disco you pay 17USD for, say, a vodka-redbull. Food in a bar usually runs 20+. One night out is easily 100USD here. (Well, prices are actually in CHF but it's close enough at the moment)

30.- for drinks in a bar (2-3 drinks)

15.- entry for disco

50.- for drink (3 drinks)

5.- for a hotdog on the way home :D

What places are you going to in Toronto? I grew up there and even several years ago a pint was typically $4-5 and appetizers at a pub were $6-10.

I don't drink much. I was using Molly's as a bar benchmark ($10 for a pitcher), and the first price was just from an LCBO.

Oops, I misremembered. I was thinking of Ein-Stein, not Molly's.

NY. More cocktails than beer. How many beers do you need to get a buzz?

$5 food? What are you eating? Is it healthy?

I'd need more beers to get a buzz, of course, but honestly I have no idea how many it'd take. I was working under the assumption we were only having one.

As for what food costs $5, I'm eating pasta and instant noodles, at the moment. It's not healthy if it's all you eat, of course. At the bar you could spend the money on a burger or whatever.

Yeah, I'm probably gonna need at least one strong $10 martini (still add tip onto that) if I'd qualify it as drinking :-)

Also, you won't find a $5 burger in any bar in NY.

I live in London. I didn't mean that you could do all of those things, but for £30/month you could definitely go for a couple of pints a week somewhere nice. Dinner, cocktails, a club and a taxi home is a different matter!