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“Are You *IN* Debt or Do You *HAVE* Debt?”

May 16, 2016 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

This weekend my wife and I had a date night while the kids slept over their grandparents house. We used the opportunity to go to Foxwoods casino for a special dinner and to see comedian Chris D’Elia. He was a co-star in NBC’s Whitney and Undateable, two shows that I thought were fantastic. I didn’t particularly like them due to D’Elia, but he was the common theme.

I’ll get back to Chris D’Elia and the dinner in a bit, but I found the opening comedian somewhat interesting. I think his name was Mike Lomborg. I wish I could find out for sure, but he wasn’t mentioned in writing anywhere I could find. My best attempts to dig through Google came up empty.

Comedy usually doesn’t pay good money for people at this level. And that’s a point that Mike grabbed onto and ran with. Comedy also works best when it’s a little self-deprecating. Mike explained that having a scooter instead of a car significant diminishes his dating prospects. He also said this (paraphrased) about one of his break-ups:

“She said that she loves me, but she’s not in love with me… That’s like me saying that I have debt, but that I’m not IN debt. So I went to the bank and told them that while I have debt with them, I’m not IN debt with them, so I’m not going to be making any more payments.”

Obviously, that wouldn’t work out very well for Mike’s personal finance situation. I found it funny, so I had to share it.

He had another personal finance joke. This one was about student loans. He mentioned how he wrote a $300 check and somehow still owes the same amount of money (it’s a comedy show, not math, but let’s presume that the interest rate is the reason). He goes on to ask if they are the mafia, because it would be easier if they just broke his legs and called it even.

He warned that this is what happens when you go to college and don’t use the degree. That’s some sage advice from a guy who started out his act with about 25 pointless swears in the first 2 minutes.

Ever see the movie Memento where the movie’s scenes are in reverse and then returns to the present day at the end of the movie? I’m going to steal that idea for this article.

A couple of hours before Mike took the stage, my wife and I sat down for dinner at David Burke’s Prime Steakhouse at Foxwoods. This was not going to be a cheap dinner. However, I hoped to have a steak that I wouldn’t forget. In a way, they delivered on that promise, just not the way I had hoped. I’ll start by saying the service and the table-side Caesar salad were very good. Unfortunately, the 75-day dry aged ribeye was very ordinary… and certainly not of the worth the premium price in my opinion.

Continuing the Memento backwards theme, we were a half-hour early for our reservation. We decided to have a drink at the bar.

The price of wine at David Burke’s Prime was shocking. The cheapest bottle on the menu was $82. I’d say only 20% of the bottles were in two digits. I’d say the median was probably around $125. With four glasses of wine per a bottle, that’s anywhere from $20-$30 a glass. They had good wine, but having been to several of the vineyards, they weren’t extremely premium-priced ones. The interesting thing to me is that if you bought wine by the glass, there were many selections between $18-22. That seems to be the best way to go… if you want wine.

I went with the beer myself. At $7-$8 for most of the drafts, you can have 2-3 before you get to the price of a glass of wine… or around 15-18 drafts for the price of (my estimated) median bottle of wine. (Note: Please don’t try to drink 15-18 beers.)

I don’t think I’ll be back. It’s not because it was bad, but I found David Burke’s Prime Steakhouse was a slightly above average experience for an extreme price.

Before we went to David Burke’s, we stopped to play some craps. I’m a big fan of craps, probably because I know many of the odds. That helps you minimize the house’s advantage… which is the best that most people can hope for.

We proceeded to lose $50 fairly quickly. What are the odds of three straight rolls of 3 on the come out roll? Well, it’s 3/36 for one roll. My math skills are very, very rusty, but I think it’s something like 27 in 46,656… or about 1 in 1725. That’s exactly what happened to us.

We figured that we might as well move on to dinner. Though it was early for our reservation, maybe they’d be able to seat us early. Worse case, we could pass the time to dinner with a drink at the bar.

Now we jump to ten minutes before the Chris D’Elia show starts. I decide to hop on Twitter and see if people in the audience are Tweeting about him. I do a search and see tweets saying that his show Undateable was cancelled by NBC hours before. I figured that this could be very interesting…

… it didn’t get interesting as he didn’t mention it until near the end of his act when someone in the audience brought up Whitney. He said something about his stand-up routine being different from his television stuff. So that was disappointing. He also seemed to be so tired that he’d laugh at his own jokes before he told them. One time he told a joke and ad-libbed something and said, “Hey someone Tweet me that so I remember that.”

This is nitpicky stuff as most of his act was very good. He had two financial jokes (that I remember).

The first was about Wells Fargo greeters. It was funny, but I couldn’t related because: 1) Wells Fargo is barely in New England and 2) Who actually goes in banks? I’ve been inside a bank about 3 times in 5 years… and they were for fairly unusual circumstances such as getting a HELOC for solar power and opening a business account.

The second joke, and I’m not sure this was supposed to be a joke, was D’Elia admitting that he has no idea how to switch banks. He thought that perhaps they give you bags of money with money signs on them when you leave the bank.

I wonder, is this really a problem that people can relate to? I understand that it’s a joke, but it seems like the joke would be funnier if there was basis of truth that people could laugh as if to say, “It’s funny, because it’s true.”

My favorite joke of D’Elia’s was about how we are the stars of our own movies. While we might all agree that he’s the star right now with the literal spotlight on him addressing a large crowd, there’s an entirely different perspective to consider. For some couples, such as ones on a date, he’s just a small part of their evening… he might as well be “Comedian #2.”

Let’s end this rambling article on that sage thought from “Comedian #2.”

P.S. If you are still reading, I’m going to be releasing a special deal exclusively on my mailing list tomorrow. It’s free, so you might want to sign up if you aren’t a member already.

Filed Under: debt, Random thoughts Tagged With: casino, Chris D'elia, David Burke's Prime, Foxwoods

Don’t Lose Your Shirt in Las Vegas

August 1, 2011 by Lazy Man 12 Comments

Las Vegas Survival Guide
Las Vegas Survival Guide
If you were wondering why I haven’t posted very much this week, it’s because I spent the weekend in Las Vegas. It was my first trip there in about ten years. It’s a little hard to say which changed more, Vegas or me. It’s probably pretty close.

We went for a friends’ military promotion ceremony, but it certainly didn’t hurt that it was Vegas. As usual, we didn’t want to break the bank, so we looked for ways to get by on the cheap. Here are just my early impressions on the short amount of time we were there.

Best Las Vegas Hotel Value

I’m going to give this a tie to two hotels, even though we only stayed at one. I did look at the Trip Advisor reviews of the second and it looks like the place we’d choose next time. I’m giving this award with great attention to “cheap” rather typical “value.” The reason for that is because in Las Vegas, most people are typically only looking for a place to crash for a few hours anyway.

  • Super 8 – We stayed at the Super 8 a little off the strip. While that may sound like a bad location, when we get to best value casino it earns a lot of points. It was around $42 a night including taxes. This isn’t a place to impress the ladies. While there may have been a drug deal going down and some ladies likely “practicing the oldest profession”, my theory is that it just adds to the flavor. Little known fact: At over 300 rooms, it’s the largest Super 8 in the world.
  • Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon – We stopped here briefly because we had a little time to kill before dinner one night and this was the only place we found with a craps table open. I was also curious of the food specials posted outside (more on that later). It’s got a better location than the Super 8 as it’s on the strip across from the Bally’s. I’m told you can view the famous Bellagio water show from time to time there. It seems like the pricing is competitive with the Super 8, so it’s worth considering.

Best Las Vegas Housing Value

It’s not a hotel, so I couldn’t include it above, but some friends of friends decided to rent a house. We stopped by a couple of times and it was an amazing place. It had to be about 4000 square feet. It had a two pools… one for swimming (with a hot tub) and one better known as billiards. The place was in great condition with exceptional appliances, flooring, counters, etc. It’s five bedrooms easily could sleep ten (and you could stretch that if you put people on couches. All this for $269 a night. If you have 4 or 5 couples, you could live in the lap of luxury for around $30 a night per person. You’d even save more on groceries as you have a full kitchen. The downside is that the strip and airport was about a 10 minute car ride away, so some of that savings is going to go to a rental car or cab.

Best Las Vegas Casino Value

The Ellis Island Casino & Brewery wins hands down in this category. While there are other casinos with all the bling, this is my kind of place. This was right next to us at the Super 8 (one of the reasons we stayed at the Super 8.) It has a $5 craps table… I can play twice as long to lose on the increasingly standard $10 minimum craps tables in most casinos. (Yes, I think of it in terms of how much I can play before losing. I think that’s fair to set the expectations low when the house has an advantage on you.) That’s enough for a good casino, but it’s the extra’s that make Ellis Island my favorite. Cocktail waitresses come by quite often and when you ask for a beer, they bring 20 ounces from their own brewery. In life you usually get to choose two out of three of the following: free, quality, and quantity. While I’m stretching the “free” here (as I was gambling), you can fork over $1.50 in cash for the same beer if you aren’t gambling. Beyond that Ellis Island has Metro Pizza, voted 4 years in a row the best pizza in Vegas (I concur with the decision) and the best food special you’ll find (more on that later).

While on the topic of craps, I should mention two things. 1) I’m extremely conservative so the house typically has less than a 3% advantage on me. I left Las Vegas with about $75 in total winnings. Know when to talk walk away, right?

Best Las Vegas Food & Drink Specials

  • Ellis Island Casino & Brewery – The $6.99 steak special is one of the best deals you’ll find anywhere. It is a 10 ounce filet cut that would easily sell out at $20 any other restaurant. I’ve paid more than $30 for a steak that wasn’t as good. With potatoes and green beans it is a full meal. It’s available 24 hours a day, and it’s worth going out of your way for. I’ve already mentioned the beer special above, so for less than $9 you could really be celebrating in style (if you forget that it is a hole-in-the-wall casino.)
  • Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon – Yep, I’m going back here. They get an honorable mention for a steak (rib-eye) and eggs special for $5.99 available from midnight to 6AM. Sadly due to the timing of that special, we didn’t partake. I also noticed that they had $5 pitchers of Miller Lite, which is up there with the Ellis Island beer special.

I think that covers most of the deals that we found in Vegas. As for the rest, it wasn’t a deal going to ESPN Zone for the USA-Canada hockey game, but it was fun. It wasn’t a deal (and not particularly fun) going to the new hotel Aria for drinks. We were slightly positive at RumJungle in Mandalay Bay (I remember it being a lot better 10 years ago).

I would like to try to spend a week in Vegas spending as little as possible. You could stay at Super 8 for about $300 (weekend is more expensive) and eat for around $150 ($20 a day). Our flight from Northern California was around $100 round trip (Virgin America, which I highly recommend). So two people (sharing a room) could plan a whole week for about $800. If you join all the casino’s players clubs and used the free money they give out, you might even break even for the week.

Then again, a week of the Vegas lifestyle may just kill you. The weekend alone was quite a bit for me.

Filed Under: Spending, Vacation Tagged With: casino, Food, hotel, las vegas

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