Lazy Man and Money

Save Money in New Orleans (Part 2)

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Two and half years ago, I went to New Orleans for my wife’s pharmacy conference. One result of that (other than a hangover or two) was this article about visiting New Orleans on a budget. Last week we had the opportunity to go back… this time for my personal finance blogger conference.

Since I was busy learning new blog stuff, my wife went out and explored New Orleans on her own. Thus, for the fourth time in eight years, she’s doing a majority of the work for a blog post on Lazy Man and Money. (For years I called her Energi Gal, but giving that statistic, maybe our roles should be reversed.) She’s self-conscious about her writing (she shouldn’t be) so I’ll be putting her notes into my words.

New Orleans Specific Tips

When I got out of the taxi from the airport, I wanted to give the city a big hug. Coming from New England, the culture is so different and unique to me. I just love it.

Part of that is the food. New Orleans has fantastic food, so you can skip the expensive restaurants. However, if you do want to have an upper-class dining experience, I highly suggest SoBou at 310 Chartres St. in the French Quarter. It is the same food as the Commander’s Palace which is a top New Orleans restaurant. Monday through Friday, if you purchase a lunch, you can get 3 martini’s for $0.25 each. For the price of one martini at some places ($15), you can get lunch and three slightly smaller martinis. I’ll leave it up to you to debate the merits of drinking three martinis at lunch on a weekday.

If you aren’t into martinis, you can instead go to Mena’s Palace at 200 Chartres Street. The daily special of fried chicken, salad, and red beans and rice for $9.50 can feed two.

Looking to make your drink last? My wife went to Spirits on Bourbon, which was featured on the show Bar Rescue. Their signature drink is The Resurrection. (Is it just me or does the mention of “Resurrection” remind you of the song in Office Space?) This 24 ounces drink is in a souvenir skull-shaped plastic mug that lights up on the bottom. My wife asked for a separate cup of ice and ended up drinking it for 2 hours… that’s how potent the drink was. At $15 it isn’t the cheapest drink in New Orleans, but refills are cheaper at $9. The mug will be what we use to give out candy on Halloween.

New Orleans is known for its beignets, a tasty treat that is similar to fried dough (or funnel cakes). The place that made them famous is Cafe du Monde. However, the ones from Cafe Beignet are just as good (in my humble opinion) and coupons abound for a coffee and 3 beignets for $4. I made the mistake of asking my wife to bring me back some as I was at the conference. The order was so large it took me three days to finish them.

Our babysitter back home had requested a t-shirt from our visit. Every place you went to had a deal that allowed you to save a few bucks if you buy two… a classic bulk deal. Since my wife and I had all the T-shirt we can ever shake a stick at, the bulk savings was something that we passed on. (By the way, does it strike anyone else as being weird to request a T-shirt from a place that you didn’t go to? I feel like getting the shirt is a memento of going to that place… “been there, done that, got the t-shirt”, right?)

More General Tips

Like any party town (and New Orleans certainly qualifies), prices are cheaper during the week. There are more specials, because the supply of disposable income (also known as people) is greatly reduced. The competition is fierce. If you get a chance to choose, the weekday is definitely the cheaper way to go.

This won’t come as a shock, but sharing is a great way to save. My friend from Stop Buying Crap went last minute. He was able to get a discount ticket from an attendee who couldn’t go. He split a hotel room with a friend. He even split a cab from the airport to the hotel.

My wife reminded me that the last time I was in New Orleans I wanted to buy an apartment there. I can’t say for sure whether that opinion came before or after a trip to Bourbon St., but I feel it must have been involved in some way. I love the city, and thought that it would be cheap, but upon doing a little Zillowing in the French Quarter, it is certainly not in my budget for an impulse buy. Nonetheless, if you ever get the chance to go to New Orleans take it, you won’t be sorry.

Ultra Frugality Mode Activated!

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From the beginning of starting Lazy Man and Money, I’ve been a proponent of both saving and investing. I’ve found that this is kind of an unusual stance amongst personal finance bloggers. While most everyone agrees that both are important, I usually see them lean heavily in one direction or the other.

I don’t think there is necessarily a right or wrong way to work. I know people who make six figures that begin with a crooked number, but they have little savings. There are others who don’t make a lot of money, but they find a way to squirrel it away and watch it grow to financial freedom.

The math is extremely simple, the different between what you make vs. what you spend equals freedom. You can create more freedom, or get freedom faster by making more or spending less.

I believe in the two equally, probably more than most personal finance bloggers. That’s why you can go from one article yesterday: Time to Buy Yahoo Stock? to today’s article about becoming extra frugal.

With that long-winded explanation out of the way, our family has embarked on a mission to kick the frugality up a notch for a couple of months… at least as much as possible.

Why the sudden change?

One of the tenants moved out of one of our investment properties. The kitchen cabinets and counters were the original ones from the early 80s… and I don’t think they were particularly well-made then. Even with a small kitchen and the most basic cabinets, the costs kept rising and rising. We thought it would be around $6500, but legitimate, though hidden costs started to creep in. And then there was the mold removal from a pipe that had been leaking for who knows how long. By the time we are done, we’re probably going to put 10-12K into this.

That’s a lot of money to spend in a month, especially when you don’t have a tenant in the property to pay rent.

None of this is really a surprise and I’ve created spreadsheets to depreciate and amortize most of the major maintenance. At the same time, it’s psychologically a big deal. That’s one of the interesting factors at work here.

Seeing a big drop in available cash is never a good thing. When it comes from one account it can seem worse than it is. My wife and I ran a comprehensive net worth that we tend to do every few months. The result was that we still had a plenty of accessible cash… it was just spread in a few different accounts (some mine, some hers, some shared). This was a huge step in mitigating the psychologically big hit.

The other interesting thing is that it triggered us to move into an “ultra frugality” mode. Well, maybe not “ultra”, but “very, very mindful.” Here are some changes we found we could make nearly right away:

  • Eat Out Less – We have an Entertainment-type book and though we feel like are getting a good deal, we are not saving money with it. We’ve been using it a lot this summer to “get out of the house.” By a lot, I’d say about twice a week, not five times or anything like that. We should be able to cut it down a bit.
  • Eat Down the Food – We have a chest freezer and it’s full of food. We also have shelving units full of food. I got most of this food by stocking on great deals. Now it’s time to eat it down. We’ve challenged each other to make each meal with something from this storage. Aside from staples like milk, the hope is to not have to spend money to bring in more food for little while.
  • Have “Limited Spend” Days – My wife had Friday off and we paid for day care anyway, so we took the kayak to the beach and paddled around a bit. (Now you know why there was no article last Friday.) Saturday we took the kids to a free playground. Little Man (2 years old) had a ton of fun. Mini Man (8 months) enjoyed watching and doing a little crawling. Sunday, I watched the Patriots play one of their worst 2nd halves of football in the last 14 years. As they say, “Two out of three ain’t bad.”

    We still ended up spending money on these days… but it was small amount.

We’re also trying sell excess stuff Ebay. In some ways, that amounts to drop in the bucket, and it can be a lot of work, but every little bit helps.

It sounds like a perfect plan except for two things.

The annual financial blogger conference is this month. That’s in New Orleans. Fortunately, I literally wrote the post on how to visit New Orleans on a budget. Also, finance companies sponsor lunches and the occasional libation. (Note to any such companies reading this, please send me your invites.)

The other thing is a two-week trip to Aruba a couple of months later. We have our Marriott Vacation Club time share that was bought a decade ago now. I’ll be applying everything from Save Money in Aruba and Save More Money in Aruba to minimize expenses.

I think what it comes down to is that I’ve always been frugal with my purchases, trying to maximize value. However, over the next couple of months, I’ll try to combine that with an eye towards not spending money at all, when it is reasonable.

Visiting New Orleans on a Budget

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Last week, I found myself in New Orleans. I dovetailed on my wife’s annual pharmacy conference. I find it’s a good motivating factor to get me to see a new place. It was just a couple of years that I used it to motivate me to see Washington D.C. for the first time.

The first thing I noticed is that New Orleans is full of life. By that I mean, something is going 24-7. I had a friend say that when he was last in New Orleans he thought that he might die if he stayed another day. That’s just the famous Bourbon Street bars and clubs. However, on this visit New Orleans was taken over by Kentucky basketball fans for the SEC conference. In addition to that, Russell Brand was filming Diablo Cody’s new movie (which is untitled). We got to talk with the movie’s publicist which is something that really doesn’t happen to me every day. Later that weekend, Brad and Angelina Pitt were in town for a $1000 a person event to benefit their Make It Right Foundation, an organization that works to rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. In town to help was Rihanna, Ellen, Sheryl Crow and a bunch of other people who you know. Yep, I missed my chance to hang out with Snoop Dogg.

On the Katrina front, I was surprised to see so little damage. That’s more a reflection of staying in the French Quarter which only had about a foot of water according to the locals. My wife and I thought about taking a tour to see the damage, but a tour company profiting on the misfortune of others didn’t sit well with us. We kept looking for a tour company that donated money to a foundation to help, but we didn’t find anything.

However, we had a friend go on such a tour and it leads off our saving money in New Orleans tips.

  • Go on a tour of the Katrina damage – It was a mistake for us to skip the tour on principle. The friend said that the tour was around $25-30 for 3 hours and she came back with some amazing pictures. the pictures weren’t of wreckage like I expected, but showed water lines on places that still seem inhabitable. There were also pictures of the new houses that they are building which are extremely eco-friendly.
  • The Rat Hole – For all the people who are Bourbon Street looking to save a little money on their beverages, I recommend this place. It’s easy to get sucked into the marketing of “Huge Ass Beers”, but I found that The Rat Hole had the cheapest beer on Bourbon Street. The selection isn’t great, but Bourbon Street deals in quantity not quality. I’m not advocating going the quantity route, but I recognize that it’s a part of Bourbon Street. I might as well save people a couple of dollars.
  • McDonalds – I know this is an odd item to have on the list. However, for this northerner, it was interesting to see grits and sausage biscuits and gravy on the breakfast menu. I may be weird in that I like to try any unusual McDonalds items when traveling. For $3 this combo didn’t disappoint. (Again keep in mind that I don’t typically eat these foods, so I am not one to judge quality of them.)
  • Eat at Mother’s – This place is a cafeteria style restaurant. It isn’t much to look at with the old basic furniture and the original sign from 1936. The place puts its efforts into the food. I liked the Jambalaya, while my wife preferred the red beans and rice. We got a side of the ham, because it seemed to be their specialty (it’s on the sign from 1936), but it wasn’t that much different from sliced deli ham. That’s one thing to skip. Be sure to take a few minutes to see the autographed pictures (Howie Mandel with hair!) and the funny signs. My favorite was, “Our credit manager is Helen Waite. If you want to pay with credit, go to Helen Waite.” (Note: They do accept credit cards, the sign was for people using credit in 1936.)
  • Window Shop – My wife and I spent some time on Royal Street (the next street over from Bourbon St.) window shopping. The danger with this is that we passed some enticing items. One place, Vintage 329 was never open despite a sign saying that it was open 8 days a week. We wanted to visit it because they had a first edition Harry Potter collector’s set of all US versions of the book signed in the window. I asked my wife (a big Harry fan) how much she thought it would go for and she said around $500. I told her that if it’s under $1000, I would buy it on the spot. We never could get a price since it wasn’t open, but I see a new one on Ebay for $8900. The Vintage 329 didn’t seem to be in as good a shape, and they kept it displayed in direct sunlight (why?), but I think they would have been asking for more than $1000.

There are surely plenty of other ways to save money, but this is the last trip we have planned for some time. I also don’t know when I’ll have the next opportunity to go to New Orleans. The combination of the two left us spending a little money than when we are in our usual frugal mode.

On the “anti-save money” front, The Old Coffee Pot and the Court of Two Sisters are perhaps two of the best places to have brunch. I wrote about The Old Coffee Pot last week, but the Court of Two Sisters put on an excellent jazz brunch in a courtyard with historic fixtures and the smell of lilacs. It’s not low on price, but it is high on value.

A Few Quick Thoughts and a Great Deal

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I’m just getting back into the swing of things after my first visit last week to New Orleans. I know just a few a weeks ago, I was in Maui and now New Orleans. New Orleans was a partial business trip. I’ve got a lot more to say about the trip, but I hope to do it in a “Save Money in New Orleans” post later coming soon. I think I’ve got the travel bug all out of my system, I don’t have plans to go anywhere for a few months.

New Orleans this past week was washed over in blue and white with University of Kentucky fans taking over the town for the SEC championship. There were so many fans that I actually had interest in watching a college sporting event for the first time in my life. A few of them had shirts that declared that they still hate Laettner. I was confused because I remembered Laettner making a big shot for the blue and white. I just didn’t account for the fact that there might have been two blue and white teams on the court that day.

With the blue and white theme in New Orleans, thoughts turned to Peyton Manning and his press conference about moving on from the Indianapolis Colts. Even though he was biggest nemesis to my beloved New England Patriots, it was sad to see the end of perhaps football’s biggest rivalry over the last decade. In an article that is a must-read, Rick Reilly said it best, thanks for the memories Peyton. (Oh and Mr. Manning if I get my time machine worked out, I’m still going to try to find a way to stop your parents from procreating to give the Patriots another 3-4 more Super Bowl victories. I’m sure you understand.)

I noticed that Apple is the recipient of a class action law suit involving misleading advertising and their Siri product. I have to say that it is about time. Sure, I’m a bit of an Apple hater, but some of the marketing is why. The commercials always show Siri working almost instantly with perfectly relevant results. No one I know has seen the product work that way in person. The FTC is making a push for truth in advertising eliminating disclaimers in small letters of “results not typical.” It seems like Siri would be a good place to start. Perhaps fast food commercials would be a good place to start too, but I feel that everyone knows those exaggerate and have a realistic expectation of what the product is going to really look like.

Finally, if you put up with my rambling this long, I’ve got what I think is a killer deal for you. I noticed yesterday that Slickdeals highlighted a BowFlex set of dumbbells. These allow you to dial in a weight rather than changing weights. The effect is similar having a whole set of various dumbbells in just a small space. The reviews on Amazon are mixed because an older version of the product had some safety issues that have been fixed. I’ve been looking to pick these weights up used for around $200 on Craigslist for the last 4-5 months. They never seem to go for less than $250 and with Amazon’s price around $350 they really retain their resale value. The deal includes the weights and a stand that usually is around $150 itself (that’s an expensive stand and something I was prepared to deal without) for a total of $279 (plus tax in many states). It’s not the $200 price I was looking for, but they are brand new with the added value of the stand. I couldn’t resist and made the purchase. Follow up the instructions on Slickdeals above if you are interested.