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See how many hours you need to work to afford a bottle of beer!

Ugodre Obi-chukwu by Ugodre Obi-chukwu
June 22, 2015
in Uncategorized
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I was out recently with some friends in a night club in down town Ikeja. It was a boys hangout and as we typically do on such occasions, ended up drinking a lot of vodka, brandy, soft drinks, water and off-course beer. When it was time to pay up our bill was a nicely sum of about N100k. Nicely because we were over 10 guys with half of us surely within “the above N5m per year” earning bracket. The beer bill came to about N39,000, vodka and Hennessy N45,000 and the rest on water and soft & energy drinks etc. Like i said this was a usual norm and nothing special, thats until I read a reuters article that said “an average african had to work three hours on average to afford a beer, compared to 12minutes for a European”!!!! Three hours!!!! Wow.

So, I decided to put that to put it to test, to find out if it is really true. To do that within my resources means I will have to stick to Nigeria and off-course make some assumptions. Here they are?

Average Cost of Beer  (Retail Price) – N200

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Hours Worked Per day – 8.30-5.30 (9hrs)

Working days a month – 20days

Minimum Wage – N18,000 a month (without deducting tax, pensions etc)

The Result 

SALARY PER YEARSALARY PER MONTHSALARY PER DAYWORKING HOURS/DAYSALARY/HOURAVERAGE COST OF BEERNO OF HOURSNO OF MINUTES
          N        N           N
 216,000 18,000 9009 100200 2.00 120.00
 500,000 41,667 2,0839 231200 0.86 51.84
 1,000,000 83,333 4,1679 463200 0.43 25.92
 2,000,000 166,667 8,3339 926200 0.22 12.96
 3,000,000 250,000 12,5009 1,389200 0.14 8.64
 5,000,000 416,667 20,8339 2,315200 0.09 5.18
 7,000,000 583,333 29,1679 3,241200 0.06 3.70
 10,000,000 833,333 41,6679 4,630200 0.04 2.59

 

So there you have it. It will take just 2 hours of work for an average Nigerian on a minimum wage to afford a bottle of beer. What about you? How many hours do you need to work to afford a bottle of beer?? Oh well, you probably are within the minutes category right?. What if the beer was purchased in club like we did? How would you fare? Well, here it is;

Average Cost of Beer  (Bar/Club Price) – N700

Hours Worked Per day – 8.30-5.30 (9hrs)

Working days a month – 20days

Minimum Wage – N18,000 a month (without deducting tax, pensions etc)

Result

SALARY PER YEARSALARY PER MONTHSALARY PER DAYWORKING HOURS/DAYSALARY/HOURAVERAGE COST OF BEERNO OF HOURSNO OF MINUTES
           N        N          N
 216,000 18,000 9009 100 700 7.00 420.00
 500,000 41,667 2,0839 231 700 3.02 181.44
 1,000,000 83,333 4,1679 463 700 1.51 90.72
 2,000,000 166,667 8,3339 926 700 0.76 45.36
 3,000,000 250,000 12,5009 1,389 700 0.50 30.24
 5,000,000 416,667 20,8339 2,315 700 0.30 18.14
 7,000,000 583,333 29,1679 3,241 700 0.22 12.96
 10,000,000 833,333 41,6679 4,630 700 0.15 9.07

 

How did you fare now? Minutes or hours? Let’s make it classier and add premium liquor like vodka, brandy, whisky? Lets go

Average Cost of Premium Liquor  (Bar/Club Price) – N10,000

Hours Worked Per day – 8.30-5.30 (9hrs)

Working days a month – 20days

Minimum Wage – N18,000 a month (without deducting tax, pensions etc)

SALARY PER YEARSALARY PER MONTHSALARY PER DAYWORKING HOURS/DAYSALARY/HOURAVERAGE COST OF PREMIUM LIQUORNO OF HOURSNO OF MINUTES
             N          N        N
 216,000 18,000 9009 100 10,000 100.00 6,000.00
 500,000 41,667 2,0839 231 10,000 43.20 2,592.00
 1,000,000 83,333 4,1679 463 10,000 21.60 1,296.00
 2,000,000 166,667 8,3339 926 10,000 10.80 648.00
 3,000,000 250,000 12,5009 1,389 10,000 7.20 432.00
 5,000,000 416,667 20,8339 2,315 10,000 4.32 259.20
 7,000,000 583,333 29,1679 3,241 10,000 3.09 185.14
 10,000,000 833,333 41,6679 4,630 10,000 2.16 129.60

 

From the above, its pretty clear that for an average minimum wage earner or indeed a corper you will need to work 100hours just to afford a bottle of premium liquor in a club. For an average white collar guy earning N3m you will need to work 7hours a day.

Whilst we do not work hourly in Nigeria, this analysis is quite instructive as a bottle of beer/liquor  in a bar can be finished within an hour depending on who is drinking and who is paying. Juxtaposing that with how much you need to work to earn that gives you a different perspective. Agreed you can simple divide the liquor cost by your salary to get a percentage but an estimate an hour becomes useful if that same time can be used more productively.

This article originally appeared in Nairametrics on 18th June 2012.


Tags: Consumer GoodsDeepdivePersonal FinanceYour Money
Ugodre Obi-chukwu

Ugodre Obi-chukwu

Ugo Obi-Chukwu "Ugodre" is the Founder, Publisher, and Chief Analyst of Nairametrics, a leading business and financial news online platform in Nigeria. Ugo is also the Chief Editor of the Nairametrics “Blurb” Opinion pages. Follow Ugodre on Twitter @ugodre and Instagram @ugodre Email: ugodre@nairametrics.com

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Comments 1

  1. 632805761 says:
    June 26, 2012 at 8:21 pm

    interesting analysis

    Reply

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