As you might suspect, Sunday morning came fast and hard. I had pre-purchased our tickets to thee ole fair so we spent about 30 minutes weighing the pros (fried food, midgets in costumes) and cons (rain, cold, removing ourselves from bed, wasting $26) before the gavel of Google maps brought our decision-making to an end: ye fair was three and a half ungodly hours away. And it closed at dusk. Which was in like 5 hours. So we agreed to try to not spend $26 all day in exchange for our laziness, and I spent the next three hours cursing ESPN for locking me out while attempting to pick up Miles Austin at 11:59 a.m. Oh, for the thirty-seventh time, did you hear he had the best game of his life?
I definitely learned a little lesson about pre-purchasing those tickets, which incidentally I did because it said there were limited quantities available at the discounted price (incidentally, there were not). I am a chronic planner and always think that the price will jump or someone else will buy whatever it is that I want if I do not buy it right at that minute. My neuroses has saved us a lot of money, especially when it comes to plane tickets and such, buuuuuut this weekend made me realize that perhaps there's some value in playing Brian's version of the Game of Life, which is to wait until the last minute to buy things for ultimate flexibility purposes. Because sometimes you get a lot of good deals that way too. Case in point, we wouldn't have wasted $26 this weekend. And, for the two UT games that we've gone to together, we didn't spend a dime because we didn't buy tickets in advance and instead just used tickets from people that were leaving the game around halftime (excellent plan, you must try it). That's at least $200 saved.
Great free seats, no complaints.
So, I decided maybe we should start keeping track of money we save/waste through our different tactics and see where things shake out. For all I know, maybe the early bird is getting screwed. (Note: that is an obligatory concession and I know it's not true, what? Game on.)
3 comments:
your way of life wins. hands down. and i'm not biased because you're my friend or because i live my life the same way. i swear.
i'm probably down the middle - half the time i plan, half the time i wait. BUT - i can say (even though i do this all the time), it's better not to wait until the end with plane tickets. (oh gosh - i can't believe i just typed that!) i've been screwed over twice recently (and actually didn't go on a trip - DIDN'T GO - because of my poor planning & ridiculous last-minute prices).
and i'd say that in terms of stuff like "only a limited quantity available" - you can weigh the pre-purchase in terms of "would our lives be incomplete without this?" that was apparently not the case with ye olde faire (but seriously, i think if you'd ever had a drink called "wassaile" you might have chosen differently).
I was not told about said wassaile.
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