Music - Part 2

Conversation 3 mintues ago over IM:

Jennifer: kooks are playing at lupos on Sunday the 14th. Tickets are $10. Want to ask Michelle and Chris to go?

Bryan: do they like them?

Jennifer: for $10 it's just a fun night out. they've got 3 weeks to listen to them

Jennifer: Michelle was saying she wanted to go to a concert

Bryan: 18 months to the cape. and we are going to the US Open and NYC. the kooks will be $10 plus dinner - each. I say no.

Jennifer: I'm going to see if she wants to go with just me and I'll tell her no dinner. Show is at 7pm. It's $10. I wanted to see them in Boston last June and tickets were $25. If you don't want to go that's fine, but I'm taking $25 and going if she wants to go

Bryan: ok, makes sense.

Compromise is key. I really don't care about the Kooks whatsoever. I could take them or leave them. But I know Jen really likes them - so I could tell there was a bit of "I'm doing this whether you like it or not" in her last post. And that is fine. But in my mind, I started thinking the following:

A night out typically means:
Tickets ($20)
babysitter ($40)
dinner and drinks ($120)
gas ($20)
some other extraneous expense like parking ($10).

So what $10 to see the Kooks ends up costing us is:

$210

Now the concert will only cost $25 and Jen still gets to see the concert with a friend. I think it works out very well. We just saw two concerts together, so I have my fill for the time being.

Money saved - $185.

Seeing the Kooks - Priceless

(Note from Jen: We both agree that the initiative is about cutting back, not cutting out entirely. I think that $25 is totally reasonable for a concert and a few drinks (bummer about the FEW part, but I'll deal) and I will note it as part of my small pool of discretionary spending for September. Maybe I'll give up something like Noah and Owen's lunch money to make up for it ;-) But I must also give Bryan props for recognizing that he wasn't really into it. So by cutting him, and a potential dinner, out, we saved ourselves $185 from what we would have normally done prior to the initiative. That's cutting back for ya. That's a savings of 88%. May not sound like a major sacrifice to most of you, but for us, it's curbing our old habits to make room for savings and debt elimination - and that's what this is all about folks. But I've got to have fun - and martinis - once in a while :-))