I really wanted to get two things out today – hence the unusually forced title. Unless you’ve been asleep over the last 3 days, you know that Denny’s is giving out free breakfast today. Like in most cases, you get what you pay for. Last year Denny’s ran a similar promotion. I went by to see if I could grab some free breakfast. The line was around the block. I realized it would have been a better value to go spend my own money rather than just waste two hours of my time in line. From the news this morning, it seems that’s true this year as well. [Note: Sorry, but by the time I’m publishing this, the deal is over on the east coast, and winding up on the west coast.]
The other news that I’m touching on is that my wife and I spent around $1000 on Red Sox tickets for this upcoming year. At least that ticked to 9 games (6 in Oakland against the A’s, and 3 in San Francisco against the Giants). On one hand, it kind of hurts to spent nearly $1000 like that. On the other hand, when we moved from Boston to San Francisco, we knew there would be some pluses and some negatives. I’d put the price of seeing a Red Sox game as one of the positives. In Boston, a single ticket comparable to what we got for each the Oakland games would probably be $250 per game. Viewing it through that looking-glass makes it seem like a much, much better value.
I know much of you are probably saying that spending $1000 on baseball games probably isn’t too bad if it’s budgeted for. However, we don’t have a formal budget. It’s more of a “live your life frugally, so that when things like this come up, they aren’t an issue” type of thing. It’s made me think, that perhaps it’s because I’ve thought about personal finance years ago that I didn’t have to think too much about it now.