Saving Money on a Concert - Another Success

Another year, another Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert that I attended on the cheap!

You can see my previous story here.  This year, I rode to the concert with a friend of mine who already had tickets for himself and his son.  We planned to get there about 20-25 minutes early, but for whatever reason, traffic was horrible.  He wasn't even to the parking garage until 2 minutes after the concert was supposed to start.  I hopped out, and quickly made my way over to where I bought the previous years' ticket.  Since at this point was almost 5 minutes after showtime start, they didn't even balk at my offer of $30.  Like last time, as soon as I showed him the $30 cash, I was golden. He pointed out some things on the ticket, took my $30, and handed me the ticket.  I was probably one of his last possible customers, and he'd rather have $30 than $0.  If I'd wanted to wait longer, I might have gotten the ticket for even less.  I missed the first song, stood and watched the 2nd song, and had a seat for the 3rd song.

I paid $30 for a ticket whose face value, including fees, was $95.75.  I saved $65.75, or right at 69%.

Having carpooled down with people who already had tickets, you might have wondered what I would have done if I was unable to buy a ticket for $30.  Within walking distance is a pinball/duck pin bowling bar I had been meaning to visit, and I would have hung out there until the concert was over.

Another Way to Save Money on a Concert

This probably wont work at all venues, or for all events, but it's worth checking into.  It's certainly less sketchy than buying tickets from a scalper, like one of my previous posts.

My wife was wanting to see the comedian Brian Regan.  The cheapest tickets were $39.50, before Ticketmaster "convenience" fees.  Those Ticketmaster fees were $11.05, bringing the total price to $50.55 per person.  That's over 25% of the price of the ticket. Yikes.

The trick is this: don't use Ticketmaster.  Give the venue box office a call and see if you can buy tickets over the phone.  In this case, we were able to pay just $39.50 + a $2.50 phone order fee.  Then, on the day of the event, you just pick up your tickets from the will call window at the box office.  $8.55 saved.  Of course, you could save the phone order fees altogether and physically go to the box office to buy the tickets, if that's convenient for you.  Another $2.50 saved.

Want to pay less for cable? Try asking.

When we moved into our house several years ago, we called and ordered WOW! cable and internet.  They gave us a great introductory rate, good for one year.  When the year was up, my bill went back up to the non-discounted rate.  I took 10 minutes to call them, and lo and behold, they dropped the rate back down to the discounted rate.  The discount expires every year, and I have to call back every year to re-request the discount, but they always give it to me.  I've saved $12.50 per month for 7 years.  Long story short, I have saved $1,050 in 7 years, just by asking.  Of course, it goes without saying that you should be very, very polite.  Please and thank you.

No guarantees this will work for your cable provider, or phone company, or whoever else is asking for your money.  It doesn't hurt to ask.  The worst they can say is no!

Save money on a concert or event... Maybe. If you're patient and flexible.

Saving money isn't just about never spending money.  Often, there are things you want to do, and you can still do them, saving money in the process.  Disclaimer:  Check the ticket resale ("scalping") laws in your area, as it is illegal in some places.  The idea for this post came from this article.  Although Rob's article is specifically about getting a ticket to a sold out show, I figured it would work regardless.

For example, the day after Christmas, here in Columbus, OH, was a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert.  I wanted to go, but I was feeling particularly cheap, and didn't want to pay full price.  I believe tickets started at around $50 for nosebleed seats, up to around $80 for floor seats.  I also didn't want to pay the $10 for parking.  Hence, I began hatching a plan to go, as cheaply as possible.  My plan was to find an extra ticket that someone wanted to recoup their money on, before the concert started.  Once the concert starts, the ticket essentially worthless.

The first step was avoiding parking fees.  This was particularly important to me, as I wasn't sure I would be able to get a ticket for the amount of money I wanted to spend.  I certainly didn't want to pay $10 to park at a concert I couldn't get into!  So, to avoid parking fees, I parked in the neighborhood just north of the arena.  It was less than a mile, and took around 20 minutes to walk to the arena from there.  I've been to many events in the Arena District, and you can easily spend 20 minutes just getting into/out of the parking garages, so this was already a win.

Next, I needed a ticket.  For cheap.  As far as I can tell, scalping tickets, at least in Columbus, OH, is not illegal, as long as it's for face value or less.  I always see guys with "NEED TICKETS" signs around their necks, not even 100 feet from the doors, so I imagine if it were illegal, they'd be shooed away long ago.

At around 10 minutes to showtime, I approached Mr. Needs Tickets, and said, "I need a single ticket."  At this point, it felt really, really sketchy.  I'm an introvert by nature, and just doing that was out of my comfort zone.  He said, "Best seat in the house, club level, $150."  First of all, club level isn't (technically) the best seat in the house, and since that's over face value ($60), I'm pretty sure that's illegal.  I told him that I had $30 cash on me.  He acted incredibly offended and said, "$30?  What do you think you're gonna get for $30?!?!  You can't even get a ticket at the window for $30!!"  I said, "I was just hoping if you had any cheap seats to go right before showtime."  He said, "Let me see your money."  This was, by far, the shadiest feeling point of the whole experience.  I pulled the $30 out of my pocket and showed him.  He said, "Here you go, Merry Christmas." and handed me the ticket that he had just tried to sell me for $150, in exchange for my $30.

At this point, I was both excited and apprehensive.  It was a print-at-home ticket, and for all I knew, it was fake, or a duplicate someone had already used to enter the arena.  For all I knew, the guy did that to people who were cheap to him.  So I got in line, waited, and they scanned my ticket.  *DING*  I'm in!

I went to my seat, happy both to be at the concert, and also to have paid half of what everyone else around me had paid.  While it wasn't technically the "best seat" in the house, it was perfect.  Behind the mixing/lighting consoles, and up off the floor, a pretty straight-on view.  A few minutes later, a woman sat next to me and said, "So I guess you're the guy who bought my extra ticket."  She said she had sold it to the scalper a few minutes earlier, and she was surprised that the guy had been able to resell a single ticket.  She didn't say why she had the extra ticket, but did say that he had paid her $20 for the ticket.  So while she did lose $40, she could have lost $60.  The scalper took his $20 investment and made $10 profit, and I saw an awesome show, for half price.  It was a NotLoseAsMuch-Win-Win situation.

So, you can see by the title of this post, that there's several qualifiers...  Maybe...  Patient... and flexible... First, there's no guarantee that there will be tickets available, nor is there a guarantee that the scalper will be willing to sell to you for the amount you're willing to pay.  If I had offered $20, he probably wouldn't have taken it, since he would have made no profit.  If going to the concert is extremely important to you, you may just want to suck it up and pay full price from the box office.

However, if I had waited until showtime, or possibly even a few minutes after, I might have been able to get it for $20, or possibly even $10.  At that point, he would be like the original ticket purchaser, just wanting to get some of their investment back.  Therein lies the patience requirement.  I was not that patient, as I really did want to see the show.

And finally, flexible.  There was one ticket available.  My lovely wife had seen TSO before, and while she enjoyed it, she did not care to see them again.  That was to my advantage, in this case, as the seat was great.  Had I needed 2 (or more) seats together, the selection would probably have been poorer, or possibly non-existent.  Or the cost could have been higher, since single tickets are presumably harder to get scalp.  There's always the possibility of buying 2 (or more) single tickets, and not sitting with the person you're going with.  Works fine for a concert (Personal pet peeve: people who talk at concerts.  People around you paid to hear the music, not your inane conversation.), but not as fun for a sporting event.

Choosing an Alternative Energy Provider

Depending on where you live, you may have the option to choose an alternative energy provider.  Where I live in Ohio, Columbia Gas and AEP Ohio are my local natural gas and electric utilities.  In essence, they provide the wires and pipes in my city and neighborhood that distribute the energy (natural gas, and electric) to me.

However, when it comes down to where the actual energy is purchased from, I can choose another provider.  I don't pretend to know a lot of the details, I just know that it boils (ha ha) down to this:  Energy companies can offer you different rates for energy.

For instance, I use a company called FirstEnergy Solutions for my electric.  They offered a locked rate of 6.9 cents per kilowatt hour, fixed rate, through December 2019. At the time, energy from AEP was, I believe, 7.6 cents per kwh.  Nothing says your regular electric utilities' rate can't go down, but have you ever seen it go down?  About a year or so since I signed up, AEP charges 9 cents per kwh.  We use ~5,200kwh of electricity per year, which means at the current rates we save around $110 a year, or a little over $9 per month.  As AEP's rate (presumably) continues to go up over the next 6 years, I'll continue to pay 6.9 cents per kwh.  For my November 2013 bill, if I hadn't switched, it would have been $60.24.  Because I did, it was $52.92.  Not a massive difference, but every little bit helps!

However, you have to be careful, and read the fine print.  Different doesn't always mean less.  A few weeks ago, we had guys going door to door through the neighborhood, trying to sign people up for a different natural gas provider.  He showed me a copy of a gas bill, and pointed to the graph on the bill as an example of how natural gas prices spike in the winter.  Problem was, that's not a graph of price, that's a graph of usage.  If you have natural gas heating, of course you use more in the winter!  He didn't have a brochure that laid everything out, but he let me see the contract.  55 cents per ccf, 1 year commitment, and a $250 early termination fee.  But I'd get a $25 Visa gift card for signing up!  Ooo!  Ooo!  However, I had just received our natural gas bill a few days before, and remembered looking and seeing that, even through Columbia Gas (because I haven't switched natural gas energy providers yet), the rate is only 46 cents per ccf.  Needless to say, I declined the offer.

Keep in mind that both utilities still bill me for getting the electricity and gas to my house.  The actual cost of energy is just one portion of the bill.  And it's important, and convenient, to note that I don't receive a separate bill from FirstEnergy.  They bill AEP, and AEP bills me.  No extra checks to write, no difference in how I've been paying my bill.

So, as always, do your research.  Read the fine print.  Compare the rates.  Beware of cancellation fees.  Not every offer or company out there is trying to save you money.

Private Student Loan Refinancing

Warning:  This blog entry contains math.  You are warned.  Actually, I did all the math already, nevermind.  Caution: This blog entry contains numbers.  Also, remember that I'm not a trained financial wizard, I'm just passing on what I've learned.  Your mileage (or savings) may vary.

Best advice I can offer on student loans:  If at all possible, avoid them.  

That said...

Back in 2004, my wife graduated from Columbus College of Art and Design.  It's a great school, she got a great education, and she wouldn't trade her experiences there for anything.  Great schools, however, come at a cost, and she took out several student loans.  For some reason or another, very few loans were available through government, and most of her loans were private loans through banks.  We consolidated the federal loans early on to lock in an interest rate, but I didn't look into private loan consolidation (shame on me).  3 years later (2007), interest rates had risen greatly, and I investigated consolidation.  I did my research, and the best I could do at the time was a fixed rate of 9.66% for 30 years.  I don't recall the exact interest rates of the loans I was consolidating, but this was a good rate at the time.  I know, ewww.

Fast forward 5 1/2 years later.  During that time, the economy, eh, not so much.  Over the years, I had looked for different ways to lower the interest rate.  With the economy the way it was, banks weren't looking to loan money for private student loan consolidation.  Finally, the economy started picking up, and at the end of 2012 I found a place called custudentloans.  My biggest concern was, the interest rate is variable.  However, the interest rate is tied to LIBOR, which is very stable, and likely to stay very low for several years (according to a friend of mine from high school, who now works in all manner of financial things).  And looking at the previous 9.66% interest rate, a nice 4.75% rate sure sounded good.  Add to that, the loan was only a 15 year loan.  And did I mention that the new monthly payment was 21% lower than the old one?

Because my brain likes comparisons, here's a few key comparisons between the old and new:

Caveat:  The numbers below assume the interest rate wont rise above the 4.75% that it currently is.  However, it will, that's pretty much a sure thing as the economy improves.  More on that below.

Old:  24.5 years @ 9.66% fixed.  294 monthly payments remaining.
New:  15 years @ 4.75% variable.  180 monthly payments remaining.  21% lower payment.
New loan will be paid off 9 1/2 years sooner than the old loan.  (but wait, there's more! See below...)

That's right.  Paying 21% less each month will still save 9 1/2 years of payments compared to the old loan.

Another Caveat: The numbers below reflect extra payments I made.  First month, regular payment.  Second month, extra 18%.  Third and subsequent months, extra 36%.  Keep in mind, however that the extra 36% on the new loan is equivalent to only 12% extra on the old loan.  During the previous 5 1/2 years, I had paid an average of 10% extra per month, so really it's only 2% greater than what I was paying on the old loan.  Confused yet?  I hope not.  And remember that 2%...

Averaging the last 6 months of the old loan:
19% of the money went to principal.
81% of the money went to interest. (Ouch)
1.1% of the principal was been paid off (approx 2.2% per year).

Averaging the first 6 months of the new loan:
58% of the money went to principal.
42% of the money went to interest.  (Still ouch, but less ouch)
3.5% of the principal was paid off (approx 7% per year).

The first 6 months of payments on the new loan paid as much down on the principal, as the last 19 months on the old loan.

Remember that 2% extra I'm paying?  2% seems really small, but it compounds.  In interest you pay, that's bad, but in principal you pay off, that's good.  No, that's great.  Just by paying that extra 2% (compared to the old loan) each month, my new loan will be paid off in 9 years, 8 months instead of the original 15 years (terms of the new loan), or 24.5 years (terms of the old loan).  Total savings:  14 years, 10 months (178 months) of payments.  Maybe I'll bump up the payments a bit, just to make it an even 15 years of savings.  :)

Pay down the principal as fast as you can.  This is especially important to me on this loan, because of the variable interest rate.  Someday, hopefully later than sooner, the interest rate will rise, meaning my monthly payments will rise.  The more I pay off the principal now, the less it will cost me in the future when interest rates rise.

That orange/blue stacked graph up there?  Every month, the orange (money applied towards interest) will grow smaller, and the blue (money applied towards principal) will grow larger.  That was true of both the old loan, and the new one, it's just that with a lower interest rate (new loan), and in particular with a lower interest payment and additional payments (new loan w/extra payment), much more principal comes off the loan each month, meaning less money in the future towards interest.  It's inherent in a standard loan: each month you (hopefully) pay the previous months' interest, and some of the principal.  The following month, because you paid off some of the principal the previous month, your interest (your cost for borrowing the money) wont be quite as high as the previous month.  Because of that, this month, a little bit more of your money goes towards the principal, because you have less interest to pay.  And so on and so forth, repeat until the principal is gone.

Which brings us to the final graph.  This blog is all about making good decisions.  One good decision is education.  Another good decision is saving as much money as you can, when paying for that education.  Refinancing our private student loans will save us 55-58% over the life of the loan.

Regardless of the actual dollar values, would you rather pay a blue, orange, or yellow amount of money?  :)

Do you have private student loans?  Are you interested in refinancing them?  If you click my referral link for custudentloans and refinance, I get a nice thank you from them.  And you'll get a nice thank you from me.  :)

Do Your Own Simple Car Repairs

A great way to save money is by doing your own car repairs.  The key to being successful is knowing your limitations, and doing your research.  While cars are big, complex machines, they're really just made up of many, many simpler machines.

Case in point:  This evening, I was with my wife at her aunt Maria's condo for Sunday dinner.  As we pulled into the complex, my father-in-law was looking at Maria's friends' car.  It was a 2002 Honda Accord SE, and it was stuck in park.  Normally, you'd start the car, step on the brakes, and then shift out of Park.  A quick search on the Internet showed this to be a common problem, and had the following troubleshooting tip:  Step on the brakes.  If the brake lights don't come on, you've got a faulty brake light switch.  Sure enough, no brake lights.  Faulty brake light switch.  She was just going to take it to the dealer and get it repaired there.  However, a little more Internet searching showed that the repair is ridiculously simple.  The switch unplugs from the wiring harness, and screws right off the brake pedal.  We took the part to the FLAPS (Friendly Local Auto Parts Store), and $28 later, had the new part, which included a lifetime warranty.  Took it back, screwed the switch back in place, and it fixed it.  Under 45 minutes total, from removal to repaired car, including drive time.

My local library (and maybe yours) subscribes to different databases.  One of them is the Auto Repair Reference Center, with repair information on over 37,000 different vehicles.  That alone is a goldmine of information, but included with it is a listing of labor times for repairing different parts of your vehicle.  For this switch, it listed repair time of 0.5 hours.  Most mechanics in our area charge around $90 an hour, but most have a 1 hour minimum.  Thus, for this $28 repair that took well under an hour to do, they would probably charge close to $150, parts and labor.  I found a post on a message board that got an estimate from a mechanic for...  $150.  $122 saved, and I didn't even break a sweat.

Remember what I said about knowing your limitations being the key to success?  A few weeks ago, my 1999 Saturn was in need of wheel bearings.  They've been grinding for too long, and slowly getting worse.  I'm the original owner, 154k miles strong, so I knew that the bearings, and indeed everything in the front end, was original.  I read up on it, ordered what I needed, and figured it'd be a 2 night job, maybe 3.  Now, when I say I read up on it, I mean finding a good online forum.  For me, SaturnFans.com is it.  I should have heeded the advice of several, no, many people who said it was something they would not attempt themselves.  Once I started, I realized that, oh, my ball joints are cracked, and should be replaced.  And the one ball joint is part of the control arm, so that should be replaced.  And when replacing the control arms, you need an alignment anyway, so, shucks, I might as well replace the struts too.

17 days later, my car was back up and running, with essentially an entire new front suspension.  The 2 years of Southern California winters were fine to my car, but the subsequent 13 years of Ohio winters had severely rusted 2 bolts into place.  After many nights of trying different many things, I was finally able to safely cut the bolts out.  I got an alignment at a mechanic, and had them do a check on the steering/suspension system, and all was well.  According to the library database on car repair, I saved well over $1,000 in labor costs alone.  However, based on how long it took me to repair the car, I would say I definitely didn't pay attention to my limitations.

One final piece of advice:  If you have the time, for the best price, order from RockAuto.com.  And before you order, do an Internet search for "rockauto 5 percent discount".  They always have a 5% discount code floating around.  That $28 part from the local store, was $18, shipping included, from RockAuto.

Do your research.  Be an informed consumer.  Know your limitations.  Or learn them, like I did.  :)