You've Got to Use Your Head, Son!

In my wife's department in the company, they work a lot. I mean, everybody at our company does a lot of work, but her department really pushes it every day. Because many people in her group were up against a big deadline a few weeks ago, they were asked to put in some overtime and to fill roles they don't normally fill. Everybody was stressed, but they muscled through.

After the deadline, the manager of the department wanted to do something nice for the group, so she invited those who had worked hard out to a happy hour, and she said that the first drink would be on her (well, the expense account, but still, I thought it was a pretty nice gesture -- events like these don't happen all that often). Some people had two drinks, and the manager was fine with that.

What she wasn't fine with was getting a bill that had five drinks priced at $75 a piece.

Needless to say, in the last few days, there have been some unpleasant conversations. From what I've heard, it sounds like the folks who bought these drinks were fully aware of how much they cost, and they "bought" them anyways.

You've got to use your head, son! Do you like having a job at a good company? Maybe it's best not to make your boss look foolish when she has to file her expense report.

I can't even fathom a scenario in which I would think it would be a good idea to put a ridiculously expensive drink on my boss's tab. Shoot, when I get to travel for my job (on the company's dime), I often worry about whether I should get the burger or the chicken, given the few dollars difference between the entree prices.

To me, it feels like the manager was just trying to do something nice for her employees, and the employees ended up throwing it in her face. On the other hand, I suppose you could make the argument that when the manager said that the first drink was on her, people assumed they could order whatever priced drink they wanted.

I was complaining the other day about an $8 beer, so perhaps I'm being a little too harsh. What do you think? Is this behavior justifiable? Let me know in the comments.

P.s.: To put the drink cost in perspective, I was at an upscale bar last night, and I asked how much a drink of Johnny Walker Blue would be (as it was the highest-priced drink my feeble mind knew about). The bartender said $35, which is less than half as much as the drink these folks got at the happy hour.

P.p.s.: If you're curious what the drink was, here you go.

Want to Save Money? Lower Your Standards

Last night, a buddy and I went to go see the very meta horror film A Cabin in the Woods. If you have ever enjoyed a horror movie (or, if you think that all tropes in horror films are overdone), I encourage you to see it. I can't say too much more than that without the risk of spoiling it, so I'll leave it at that.

After the movie, we decided to go get a drink and catch up. We were at a mall that had an allegedly Irish-themed bar (inasmuch as waitresses in short plaid skirts equals Irish), so we went in. I ordered a draft beer, and my buddy ordered a whiskey; our tab came to $17 for our two drinks.

I'm not going to say that I was shocked at the price, but even as I ordered, I knew the price that was being charged was going to be ridiculously high when compared with the actual cost of the goods. I don't blame the bar (a for-profit organization) for setting its price point high either; after all, those plaid skirts aren't going hike themselves up. In fact, I'm not going to blame anyone for anything.

All I'm going to say is that my buddy and I probably would have had as good of, if not a better time, at a more reasonably priced bar. Because of their cheapness, I have an unreasonable fondness for dive bars. Their price points tend to be what I hope to pay for my adult beverages.

What can I say? Paying $8 for a beer just isn't in my wheel house. Based on how the franchise I went to is expanded its locations and growing as a business, apparently a lot of people are willing to frequently overpay for their drinks, and I say good for them. They must be a lot more financially secure than I am.

Of course, in the above story, the choice of bar was more of a choice of convenience than anything else. That said, for my friends out there who enjoy the occasional drink responsibly, if the bar that you're at has any sort of theme (unless that theme is darkness and pitcher specials of Miller High Life), you're probably going to be paying too much for drinks*.

What do you think? Does the perceived niceness of a bar make you want to pay more for the same alcohol you could get elsewhere? Let me know in the comments.

*A notable exception to this rule is when you drink for "free" in Las Vegas while you're gambling. While you'll be indirectly paying too much for the drinks when you lose Junior's inheritance at the blackjack table, getting "free" drinks in and of itself is a hard price point to beat.

3 Lessons about Selling Sports Tickets on Craigslist, Or, Why I'm a Moron

As I mentioned last week, over the last few months, I have managed to lose a good-sized sum of money by selling my extra season tickets for the San Diego Chargers on Craigslist.  While I have more or less sworn off of making money in this way, I learned a few things that I think could be helpful to others who are trying to make money selling tickets on Craigslist.

But today, I'd rather talk to you about the draft...

Nah, just kidding.  Here are my thoughts about selling football tickets on Craigslist.

1)  Don't Assume Prices Will Go Up - I bought a partial season ticket package (I received tickets to four of the eight home games).  For arbitrage to be successful, one must sell items for more than he or she paid for them (this is key).  Of the four games that I purchased, the ticket prices for only one of those games in the secondary market went up significantly.  For each of the other games, the tickets lost value (including one game in which market forces compelled me to sell three tickets for $10 a piece -- a $60 per ticket loss).  For the other two games, I lost about $15 to $20 per ticket.

2)  Make Sure to Maximize Profits - I purchased season tickets because the secondary market for one of the games (Green Bay at San Diego) was ridiculously expensive, and the Chargers organization, knowing that that was the marquis game of the season, did not allow fans to purchase tickets for that game alone.  Instead, fans had to buy at least a two game package.  Nevertheless, it has been a tradition for me and my family to go to a Chargers game at least once a season, so I thought I'd save us all (read: my family) money by buying the tickets as part of this package.

Then, on the morning of the game, which took place in beautiful, sunny San Diego, the unthinkable happened: it rained.  One of the people who was going to come to the game was my grandfather who, though spry for an 88 year old, is not really the sort of person who should be sitting in the rain for an extended period of time.  My uncle (understandably) decided to keep grandpa company, which left me stuck with two tickets.  Worried about the last minute nature of my plight, I hurriedly put the two tickets up on Craigslist.   While I did make a small profit, the sheer number of rapid responses to my posting led me to believe that I could have sold the tickets for quite a bit more.  When you consider that I felt compelled to pay my grandpa and uncle back for what they had paid me for the tickets, I didn't come out very far ahead at all.

Particularly when I lost money on the other games, I should have tried to sell the tickets for a lot more.

3)  Make Sure to Have Change - For one pair of tickets that I sold, the buyer and I had agreed to $110.  Absent-mindedly, I did not bring change with me.  The buyer only had twenty dollar bills (as he had just hit up an ATM on his way to meet me), so we were left with with three options: not selling the tickets, selling the tickets for $120, or selling the tickets for $100.  As I was leaving early the next morning to fly to a different state for a work conference, I wanted to get rid of the tickets (as dealing with buyers on Craigslist is a fickle, time-consuming enterprise), so not selling them wasn't really a great option for me.  He, of course, didn't want to pay more than we had agreed on, and so I was left taking less money than I had expected. 

I realize that $10 isn't a lot of money, but, as I had already lost so much money, any amount extra that I could get back would have helped.

In short, I think trying to re-sell tickets is a fool's errand, unless you can purchase the tickets for a significantly reduced rate.  If you're paying face value with the intention to re-sell, you are almost certainly paying too much.  Nevertheless, people can and do make money in this way, and I hope the above will provide a helpful, if cautionary, example.

Photo by me!

The Premium Paid for Convenience

In the end, it all comes down to our time versus our money. At least it did for me last night.

Last night, I had a hankering for a mixed drink with a name that is unwritable (unlinkable even!) on this PG rated blog. After checking my stash, I realized that I was missing two key ingredients for this Drink That Must Not Be Named (DTMNBN). After discussing dinner plans with my wife, we decided that I would go and pick up food and bring it back home. The only convenient place to purchase the ingredients in the vicinity of the restaurant was a convenience store that I am not fond of, as I believe their prices are high and they charge a fee for debit/credit transactions.

After considering how much time I had available, convenience won out, and I paid a premium for that convenience. While similarly sized portions would have cost, probably, $20 at the grocery store, I ended up paying north of $40 at the convenience store.

That’s gross, right? It cost me twice as much to get items I wanted just because the store was more convenient.* What kind of a personal finance blogger am I anyhow?

As a justification, all I knew is that I had a limited amount of time to get food (it was ordered before I left the house) and stopping at the grocery store would have added an extra ten or fifteen minutes round trip. I didn’t want to spend my time in that manner, so I chose to spend my money to save time. A general set of equations that can be seen from this are:

Time saved = extra money spent, and
Money saved = extra time spent.

As you can see, there is a tradeoff that can easily occur between our time and our money. This was a good reminder to think seriously about overvaluing convenience in our day to day lives. Some other areas that fall under this category are:

ATM Fees—Sure, it may seem like a good idea to take money out from an ATM that isn’t affiliated with your bank (if you need to split a check at a restaurant, for instance), but those $2 or $3 fees add up over time. It’s worth taking the time to get money out from your own bank for free.
Eating Out or Eating Takeout—It can be oh so nice not to have to cook, but you are definitely paying extra for the benefit (to say nothing of the nebulous world of tipping on takeout).
Paying for Parking—I live in San Diego, and anybody can tell you that the parking situation in any big city can get pretty hairy, especially on a weekend night. It can be tedious searching for street parking only to find a spot eight blocks away (if at all), but when the parking garage next door to where you’re trying to get is charging $20 for the night, I’ll gladly talk the walk.
Buying on Impulse—This has happened to all of us: we’re out shopping, and we find something that we can’t live without, and so we buy it without a second thought. A better option would be to either sleep on it to see if we really need the item, or, if we decide that the item is necessary, to spend some time comparison shopping online (where the price will almost certainly be better).

How about you? Are there items in your life that you’ll gladly sacrifice a few extra bucks for because the convenience is worth that much to you? Or, to look at it in the opposite way, in what ways do you consider your money to be more valuable than your time? Let me know in the comments.

*For what it’s worth (zing!), the DTMNBN was delicious.

*Update 9/5/2011:  This post was featured in the Carnival of Personal Finance.*

Borders Rewards Update

I posted before about how, due to their bankruptcy issues, I was too late to take advantage of some of the coupons that Borders book store had given me when I signed up for their Borders Rewards program.

In some happy news, I received an email Sunday night that stated that they were going to give Borders Rewards members an additional 15% off on everything in their stores through Wednesday of this week.

Given that all of the performing arts books are already marked down by 60% (though, heaven knows, they'll probably go down further soon), it looks like I may be expanding my theatre library in the next day or so. I'll have to stop by and see if there are any books that I've been meaning to purchase.

The Thrill of Antici...pation

I have a confession to make: I totally splurged on something I didn’t need the other day.

Two days ago, there was a Facebook deal for tickets to the Chargers pre-season football game that is scheduled for tonight. Seats were $40 a piece (for seats that are usually $80). Being the frugal dude that I am, I immediately x-ed out of the screen and didn’t give the tickets another thought.

Yeah, not really.

Actually, I bought three, knowing I could get a couple of buddies to pitch in (well, one was for a birthday present for a former roommate; it’s something of a tradition for us to buy each other tickets to sporting events for our birthdays).

Still, I didn’t need to go to this game. Pre-season football doesn’t count for anything, and so most of the A-list players will have little to no playing time. So why, then, as a logical, financially-minded person did I buy?

Recent research (from the university where I received my M.A., no less) has suggested that the happiest people are not those who spend money on lots of things, but those who spend their time and money investing in experiences. One of my favorite things to do in the year is to go to a couple of Chargers games, and getting to do so with a couple of good friends that I don’t get to hang out with nearly enough is worth the money to me.

An additional benefit is that I have spent my time since purchasing tickets looking forward to the event. The three of us are all Chargers fans (which eliminates the fun of trash-talking), but there’s still the fun and camaraderie that accompanies the texts and emails that have been exchanged speculating on who will be playing and for how long.

It seems like this has turned into a justification post, which I don’t know that I intended. Still, even the writing of this post has pleasantly increased my anticipation for the event.

How about you? Is the joy of anticipation a consideration when planning purchases?

One Way NOT to Save Money in Las Vegas

After detailing some ways to save money in Las Vegas last week, I thought it would only be fair to list one way in which I wasn't prudent with my money in Vegas during my recent trip.

After seeing a show, my family and I were left in Harrah's Casino. In an effort to save money, I had purchased and printed out a coupon (from Restaurant.com) for a restaurant in Vegas for dinner, but after I bought the coupon, I called the restaurant for reservations, but the man on the phone told me that they were closing early that night.

Wah-wuh. A restaurant closing early in Las Vegas? Se ridicule!



Anyways, my family decided just to find a restaurant at Harrah's to eat at. Our choices were a buffet (of which we could not stand another), a prohibitively expensive steakhouse, and a burger place.

How expensive can a hamburger be, right? With this in mind, we opted for the burgers (even though they cost, on average, $14 a piece. For that kind of money, that burger had better be good enough to call me in the morning!).

Still, food is overpriced in Vegas, so eating at KGB (Kerry's Gourmet Burgers) was about as expensive as we might have expected. However, the real tipping point occurred when the waitress upsold us on our drink order.

My dad and I each wanted one beer (at $6 a piece: already a ridiculous price). The waitress told us that we could get a bucket of beer (5 beers) for $25, which would result in a $5 savings (versus paying $30 at the regular rate). I was about to say no, when my dad replied that that sounded good. I was surprised, but I went along with it. To make a long story short, after the meal, when the check arrived, my dad was less than pleased (even though he and I split the bill). I think he just heard the part about saving five bucks.

Still, I want to take a minute to think about the markup that restaurants charge on drinks. I can get a six pack of bottled beer at the grocery store for somewhere between $6 and $12, usually. That means that beer costs me between $1 and $2 a piece. I have to believe that restuarant is getting that same beer at a significant discount as they are purchasing in bulk. However, even if they're paying $2 per beer, they're more than doubling or even tripling their money (by selling at the "deal" rate of $5 or the normal rate of $6).

Even if you're not an alcohol drinker, your drink can have an outrageous markup. If you buy soda from a fountain, it likely costs the restaurant a few cents per soda (the cost of fizzy water and the cost of syrup). I think KGB charged $3 per soda, which, if it costs 3 cents per soda to the restaurant, is a markup of a hundred times the cost.

What a racket. I guess the extra money pays for the ambience?