Lazy Man and Money

The Cost of Attending Friends’ Weddings

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As I write this on Monday, I’m less than 24 hours removed from having been at my friend’s wedding brunch. I’m catching up on email and I see this article about people declining weddings because they can’t afford it.

The cost of attending a wedding to friends is something that is overshadowed by the cost of the wedding itself. It’s hard to write an about having to $700 when the bride and groom are dishing out $30,000. (Those are just averages.)

At this particular wedding, the bride and groom went way beyond what we’ve seen at most weddings. I don’t even want to think about what it cost, especially factoring the New York City cost of living into it.

Our costs we kept very low thanks their generosity. We probably still topped the $700 average. That’s the kind of thing that happens when it costs $60 a day to park your car. We thought about taking other transportation, but with two people trains weren’t much better.

Fortunately, this comes at a time in our lives, where this isn’t a hardship. Being nearly 40 and on-top of our finances, this was well-accounted for. It doesn’t work out that way for everyone. It didn’t work out that way for myself and my wife when we were younger.

I was asked to go to a wedding in New Jersey soon after the dot-com boom around 2002. I wasn’t employed and I definitely didn’t have the money saved up. It’s just natural for a 25 year old to not have much number, especially in a busted economy.

My wife’s experience was even worse. She was a bridesmaid while she was in college. Bridesmaids have it worse than groomsmen. Most groomsmen can rent their tuxedo and not have to buy a new dress. In this case, it was worse as the bride was out of college a few years along with all her peers. My wife was surprised with a bill of $2200 for her involvement, which I think included a lavish bachelorette party.

Here’s what I find fascinating about this. The average American can’t afford an $1000 emergency expense. I wonder how much people save for their friends’ wedding. You may see the expense coming down the pike, but I wonder how many people are really looking for it. Also since some groups of friends get married around the same time, people may have their own wedding to fund.

The real winner in all this… the wedding industry.

Budgeting For a New House

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I was surfing the web earlier this week when I came across a home that I like. I haven’t shown my wife it yet. It’s a little larger than she’s looking for and I’m a little nervous about her reaction. While she’s really good at cleaning, she definitely doesn’t enjoy it. This home would require a lot more cleaning than our current place… and we know that I’m too Lazy to do it. Nonetheless, I thought I’d openly brainstorm about this house… toss it by my budget and see how it goes.

You probably want to know a few things about the house. You may have read a little about it on the news already. It’s the Spelling estate with a 150 million dollar asking price.

Is the Spelling Estate too Expensive?

While a price tag of over $2500 a square foot may seem expensive, I’d argue that it’s not. You have to factor in all the surrounding land. How many more houses could you build on that? With a bit of work, you might be able to get that dollar per square foot down. Also, not all square feet are created equal. A square foot of a top end new stove is worth more than square foot with an a low-end one from 1976.

The Opportunity

Before we get into the costs, let’s dream a little bit about how I could make money with the Spelling estate. Here are just a couple of ideas of the top of my head:

  • Make it a Museum and Charge Admission – Maybe I could turn it into a . I saw Tori Spelling on Smallville a couple of weeks ago, and she looked poised for a big acting break. That could only help the museum style business, right?
  • Rent it out for Special Occasions – Weddings are big businesses. I imagine Hollywood’s rich and famous have significant money to spend for such once in a lifetime opportunities. There’s no need to stop at weddings. My home could be “the it place” to have a Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Quinceanera, or other similar celebrations. Anyone who has seen MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 knows there’s money to be made here.
  • Use it to Jump Start My Socialite Career – I’d get in all the newspapers as the buyer. That kind of publicity is hard to buy. I have to do more research on the socialite front before I can count on this income stream. I’m not sure if a guy can even be one. If so, do I have have a video tape get out there like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashians? Yikes, I think I just lost all but two of my readers.

I think some combination of all of the above is the answer to unlocking the full value of the home. Readers, can you help me out with other things that I missed in the comments?

Budgeting for the Mansion

I had a little difficulty in budgeting for the mansion. I fired up my mortgage calculators and found that most topped out at a paltry 10M loan. Fortunately, I can make some back of the envelope calculations with that amount. A 10M seems to lead to payments of around $70,000 a month. That would put the payments on a 150M home at around an even one million a month. However, I might be able to bargain down the 150M number a bit in this economy. I suspect I could get payments down to $900,000 a month. Judging by how much Lazy Man and Money has made over the last year, I’d need approximately 500 more sites like it.

If you are smart you’ll start snapping up domains like LazyManAndBasketWeaving.com right now.