The science of beer maths

Something I needed to share with everyone is the concept of beer maths, which came up when I was travelling last year (I wouldn’t want to get credit for inventing as I’m sure others have come up with this before us!)

When you travel your budget constraints are very different and when I say travel I mean long-term-living-out-of-a-rucksack type travel not I-have-3-weeks-of-holiday ‘travel’, as what the two different types would consider cheap is likely to be very different! Case in point when a friend thought a £10 lunch was cheap in Quito – where you can get a whole 3 course meal for £2.5!

So the beer maths concept is simple – when every dollar counts you need to weigh up, do I take this taxi or get 2 beers? Is this bus ride the cost of a beer? In which case do I ride, or walk and have a beer?

In most cases we chose the beer over the taxi ride! It became a frequent occurrence to weigh up expenditure on discretionary items versus beers (non negotiable!). We were drinking beers mainly because they were the cheapest alcoholic option.

Sometimes we mixed it up with wine (such a treat in South East Asia!) or cocktails(!), but mainly the love of the cheap beer was there and as an offshoot to this, each new country was celebrated with the posting of a photo of its beer on Facebook 🙂 a selection of these photos shown below!