Just bought a ticket to a chamber music performance that will include Karen Knudsen, one of the choir’s professional altos. I love listening to these talented artists perform—they all have lovely voices (one has a magnificent voice, IMHO). Next Tuesday’s concert, part of the annual Bach Festival, will feature Bach cantatas and include oboist Marian Buswell, organist Scott Youngs, violinist Stephen Redfield, and cellist Jan Simiz.
If you’re in central Arizona, you should consider attending one or more of the Bach Festival performances. They’re really top-flight, and a ticket for a concert is only $25 ($20 if you’re in your dotage). Five concerts will take place over a week, from January 8 to 14. Here’s a list of the events.
{sigh} Wish I could afford to go to all of them. As it is, though, one twenty-dollah hit means no meals out for me this month. Twenty bucks blows my “entertainment” (hah!) budget direct to Hell.
Had an interesting insight over the weekend, as I was setting up a Quickbooks Online account for my personal accounts. Between the $2100 drawdown from savings and the $1080 Social Security benefit, net inflow to my checking account is actually just about what it was when I was working full-time for GDU.
So…why do I live in a constant state of penury?
Because I’m paying my share of the mortgage on the downtown house out of pocket, instead of out of long-term savings as I was doing when I had a job and when the stock market was whaling along magnificently, and because I’m having to pay over $130 a month for Medigap and Medicare Part D.
So my available income (if you can call drawdowns from savings “income”) is $865 a month less than what it was in 2009.
No wonder I feel pinched all the time. And no wonder going to one inexpensive concert means I can’t go out to lunch for an entire month.
Explains a lot, doesn’t it? There’s a reason I’m working like an animal but still feeling like I have to live like an anchorite. Dang. All an anchorite has to do is tend his garden and pray all the time.
Welp, speaking of working like an animal, I agreed to spend a day with friend KJG, whose house is way to heck and gone out at the White Tanks. Will have to leave by 9:00 a.m., but I still have a project to do for a client that has to get done this morning.
So…to work.
I would bet that getting one more ticket would have no discernible consequences–just try it!
Isn’t it fun to have fun?
@ frugalscholar: That might be true if it weren’t for the $450 bill I’m about to incur for removing the tree and cleaning up the eyeball-snagging palo brea, the overgrown vitex, the overgrown olive, the scruffy acacia, the brutalized paloverde, and the tiger-clawed Texas ebony. This month, truth to tell, the $30 personal entertainment budget should have been consigned directly to yard maintenance…that is, I really did not have $20 to spare for a concert.
Oh, I still think you could find $40 by eating from your freezer and pantry. Have faith !