Adventures in Debt

Last weekend the girls and I headed out to Pittsburgh to watch our hometown Toronto Blue Jays play the Pirates in a little InterLeague MLB play. Sadly both teams are not the best right now, so neither game we saw featured a lot of scintillating play, but our trip was a success nonetheless (and aside from the fact that our Jays lost two out of the three games!)

Spending Money

What money was I using to fund this trip? My Vacation fund. This fund is supposed to be used for my trip to Italy next year, however since I’ve still got an entire 12 months to save up for that trip, I figured it was okay to dip into it right now. So I withdrew the $220 I had saved up and off we went. I actually came back with some of the cash still in my wallet, a whole $57 worth, which I thought was pretty good. Of course since I still owe my one friend for the hotel bill, that will be wiped out, but I was pleased that I didn’t need to dip into too much for that.

Hotel Deal

My friend Je was able to get us a really good deal on a the Omni William Penn hotel, which is the grandest hotel in downtown Pittsburgh. She was able to use her employee discount and got us two nights (for three people) for $300 total, which is tremendous. I am quite pleased at that.

Gas Prices

Gas prices were of course going to be the second largest bill we’d have to pay, considering Pittsburgh’s about 500kms away from Toronto, however due to the former strength of the US dollar, and their own oil production, gas prices are still “cheap” in the US in comparison to the rest of the world. Don’t get me wrong, they are still creeping up there, but considering in Toronto we are paying about $1.35/L, anything less than $4/gal in the US was going to be good, as that was still less than $1 Canadian after all the conversions. We were able to do a complete fill for $3.97/gal the first day, and then I topped up the tank in Buffalo for $4.39/gal, which is still cheaper than the $1.32/L it was once we crossed the border. In all we spent $120 CDN on gas, which split three ways, is a good deal for a whole weekend.

Fun & Shopping

The girls had wanted to do a bit of shopping, so they spent some money on some really nice clothes, although to be honest, they didn’t spend as much as they could have. Where we really did well was at the ballpark. PNC Park is one of the better ball parks in MLB, and we had a great time. Since we weren’t sure if we’d be able to make it in time for the Friday game, we ended up buying tickets from the box office when we got there, and we got some tremendous seats for $20. These seats would have been easily over $45 each in Toronto, so we were quite pleased. Add the fact the game went 12 innings, we got there in the third inning, and there were free fireworks after the game, and we were happy. For the Saturday game we had already purchased our tickets before leaving Toronto, and we were even MORE impressed then. We had club seats (read: cushioned and with our own private bar/restaurant area) for $47 each. These types of seats are hard to come by in Toronto, in fact, I’m not even sure if you can buy them individually. I believe they’re mostly season ticket holders. Regardless, we were treated like queens in the Club seats at PNC Park, and while we were surprised the game was only 2 hours long, we had a great time. Too bad they didn’t go into extra innings that night as well.

Conclusion
Don’t let high gas prices stop you from planning a fun road trip with your friends or family. A great trip can still be had for relatively cheap. The total cost of this trip for me is about $240, $20 more than I had saved up. Not bad at all for a 3 day trip with some good friends.

Oh, and I even found a penny at the ball park, which I was able to add to my total in the Change Challenge.