When you’re unemployed, all luxury spending gets cut out of the budget. No more eating out. No more non-essential clothing items (I’m still trying to convince Matt that a new pair of shoes *is*, in fact, essential). No “impulse buys.” No frivolous purchases at the grocery store, just because “it looked good.”
No, all those fun ways to spend the money burning a hole in your pocket are suddenly frozen. You have to be judicious. You have to be careful. You have to be wise. You have to be fiscally responsible.
And sometimes, you have to break the rules a bit.
Like we did, today. We splurged – big time – and treated our family to a once-in-a-lifetime event: Game 4 of the ALDS between the Rangers and Rays. We attended church first, proudly sporting our Rangers colors, and then headed out to the Ballpark. Though we had paid for a parking pass, we arrived too late to use the assigned lot. We ended up using our Six Flags parking pass to find a space close to the third base entrance, and were greeted with this piece of fine artwork on the back of the car in front of us:
Like good, responsible parents, we have taught our children how to “Do the Claw”, though they definitely put their own spin on it:
We found our seats, which were in the upper deck behind left field. We had a great view of the plate, the jumbotron, and for the first hour were actually in the shade:
But as the day heated up, so did the Rays, scoring multiple runs off Tommy Hunter. Things did not look good for our boys, so we did the best we could to spur them on and donned the rally caps:
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough as the Rays took us to a Game 5. To console ourselves, we took advantage of our great parking (and season passes) to enjoy a few hours of Fright Fest at Six Flags, which made a great ending to our special day.