The story of a radio

The story of a radio

I am in the midst of a drastic change in my financial mindset. I have been struggling over the last 2 years to get a handle on my spending and build a strong financial foundation. Well, over these past 2 years I have learned that I am very good at justifying expensive purchases, even if I don’t have the money to pay for them. For example, earlier this year I just had to have that Panasonic 42” Plasma that I had been keeping my eye on. When it went on sale for $300 less than I had anticipated paying for it, I went ahead and made the purchase, on my Best Buy credit card. You see, I didn’t have the money to pay for it, so I really couldn’t afford it, but I justified my purchase like this:

“It is 0% financing for 3 years, so what is the difference between saving the money for 3 years and buying the TV versus just buying it now and paying it off over 3 years?”

Except I am now stuck with a $50 per month payment for the next 3 years, whereas if I had been saving the money I could elect not to save for a particular month if money was tight, but I no longer have the option.

That TV was the old me. The new me was recently looking to get a radio for my desk at work. I just started a new job last month and my old radio did not get any reception. So I thought, I better buy a really expensive radio that gets reception at my desk, I need to have my radio. I looked at a Boston Acoustics Receptor Radio that would have set me back about $120 on amazon.com. At one point I actually had the radio in my hand at the local Target.

Then I thought, thankfully, that this was not the wisest purchase for someone with young children trying to pay off debt, and I set it back. I ended up turning in my spare change at a coinstar machine and turning it into an amazon.com gift card, which I used to purchase an inexpensive radio that works just fine as well as some rechargeable batteries for all of my kid’s toys.

It is these types of decisions that I hope will be the difference as I work to build a strong financial foundation for me and my family. We shall see, I will have to take this one purchase at a time and:

“Stop justifying my purchases”

Passion for sports: making me broke?

How much does my passion for sports cost me?

I am a huge sports fan. I live in the Detroit area, where we always have sports teams to watch and cheer on (Tigers, Lions, Pistons, Red Wings, Michigan, Michigan State, etc.). I grew up watching sports on TV and attending live sporting events. It is the language that my father, brother, friends, and I all share. Anytime we are together the conversation turns to sports. The greatest childhood memories I have with my father involve playing or watching sports, I even bought an entire season ticket package so I could get tickets to the final game at Tiger Stadium. Needless to say, sports is a big part of my life.

What has never occurred to me is how much money do I actually spend on sports? Well, I am going to give it a shot right here. Below is my typical yearly sports activity.

1) Tickets to live sporting events:

a. Michigan Football – 3 games x $50 = $150

b. Tigers – 6 games x $20 - $120

c. Lions – 1 game x $60 = $60

d. Red Wings – 2 games x $75 = $150

e. TOTAL = $480 per year

2) “Extra” costs in attending 12 sporting events

a. Parking - $15 x 12 = $180

b. Food - $10 x 12 = $120

c. Beer - $8 x 9 = $72 (No beer sales at U of M games)

d. Gas – avg. 60 miles x 12 events = 720 miles x $.42/mile = $302

e. TOTAL = $674 per year

3) Cost of watching at home

a. Satellite package upgrade to include sports channels/HD = $40/month

b. TOTAL = $480 per year

This is a quick analysis and will vary from year to year, but I am amazed to find that I spend approximately $1600 per year watching sporting events!!!! WOW!!!! I will definitely have to consider this going forward before I commit every time someone offers me tickets to an event.

The scary thing is that this is a fairly conservative estimate. I have excluded the fact that my wife attends several of these events with me, which drives the cost up significantly. This also does not factor in special situations such as last year when the Tigers made the playoffs and my wife and I went to a game for $125 per ticket, plus the “extras”. This figure could easily be $2000 per year or more. We also attend several concerts each year, which I did not include here either, I may save that for another post, but those numbers could easily rival these, OUCH.