79. Justin Timberlake Concert Insights: Balancing Fun and Finance

In this episode, host Laura Sexton shares the lessons learned from attending a Justin Timberlake concert in Las Vegas. The narrative highlights personal anecdotes, financial planning insights, and the importance of balancing fun with financial responsibility.

In this episode we’ll discuss:

.     Splurging vs. Saving

.     Emergency Fund and Contingency Planning

.    Financial Review and Reflection

For more on Opportunity Cost, see episode 72.

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Transcript

Laura: 0:03

Hello and welcome to the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. I'm Laura Sexton, your trusted financial coach and money mindset specialist. Join me as we explore the world of money and money mindset while also paving the way for a lasting legacy that extends far beyond money. Together we'll eliminate stress, amplify freedom, and ensure you stop paying for your past so you can start saving for your future. If you're seeking peace in your finances, more margin in your budget, and a legacy that inspires generations to come, you're in the right place.

Speaker 4: 0:46

Hey Accelerators! I'm really excited to talk to you today about this really fun topic, the lessons I learned from attending a Justin Timberlake concert. You guys are just gonna have to go with me on this really fun journey here because I am overjoyed and may get off topic because I had the absolute most amazing time seeing Justin Timberlake live in Las Vegas. It is The fourth or fifth time that I've seen him live, I think I've been to every single one of his tours when it has been near me, except for the man of the woods tour, which was because I was way pregnant and could not get that far away from my doctor. So that's a bummer. I wish I, I wish I would say that I've been to all of them. I like to say that I fell in love with my husband at a Timberlake concert. I like to say that NSYNC helped me kind of develop who I Who I am as a person, which may seem a little extreme, but it's not. My screenplay that I had running around town in Hollywood for a while is written based on my first ever story that I ever wrote, which is what would happen if NSYNC showed up at my local mall. The point is NSYNC and Justin Timberlake have had an integral part of my development and, when I was younger, a lot of my joy. And so I thought there was nothing better to do than to combine two of my loves, Justin Timberlake and our money mindset. So here, my friends, are some of the lessons I learned from attending a Justin Timberlake concert. First of all, you are not going to be surprised by this one. The first thing I learned is budgeting and planning. You have to set a budget. For your trip, and it needs to be realistic. Okay. The whole trip includes the tickets, your accommodations, your food, and your additional entertainment. My husband and I had a very loose budget for the trip. We knew how much we wanted to spend and what number we didn't want to go over, but we knew that we could pretty much enjoy ourselves, do whatever we wanted, and we weren't going to break the bank because we don't really have lavish taste. We weren't going to sit down at a steakhouse that didn't have prices on the menu. We're just not there yet. However, we did say that the next time we go to Las Vegas, we would really like to have an extended food budget to just have some of that really fancy dining experiences. But as it was, we ended up at a sports bar and we had some delicious food and we were very, very happy. So the 1st thing you have to do when you are planning, you have to set the budget for the trip. Now, look right in line with the budget is the plan. You have to have a plan in advance to take advantage of things like early bird discounts, any deals. If you want to go to certain restaurants, you have to have reservations in Las Vegas. There are other. Cities and towns, where, if you have certain things in mind, you need to get reservations ahead of time, especially after cobit. There are plenty of places that have reduced the number of occupants at a time. You just want to plan ahead. Now, this does not mean that we had everything regimented and planned out before we left. We actually didn't. It was funny. My mom asked, my mom came and watched the kids for us while we went away. It's our first time leaving the kids ever. First time in eight years, my husband and I have been without a child with us. And he was just as shocked as I was when I made that decision. Revelation I was like, you realize it's been 8 years and he's like, no, it hasn't like, yeah, it literally has been 8 years since we have been without a child. And that's shocking. Thankfully. I love him enough to not. Made that a big deal in the last 8 years. It just there hasn't been a good time. I haven't been ready. He hasn't been ready. And so now we were at a good spot with our kids that we could leave and I just. Didn't really want to make a plan. My mom asked, well, when are you leaving? I was like, I don't know. Mom's like, well, when are you coming back? I was like, well, I don't know. She's like, well, what are you going to do while you're there? I was like, I don't know.

Speaker 5: 5:17

Part of our plan on this trip was to not have a plan to just fly by the seat of our pants and do whatever popped up, whatever we wanted to do. I actually was considering sleeping for a good majority of our time away. To be completely honest, what I would really love is a really solid night's sleep. That would be fabulous. I don't know if that's actually going to happen for me anytime soon, but that's what I was hoping for on the trip. And it didn't happen because the concert. It started much later than I'm used to being out and it ended much later than that. And so it was just one of those things where I was like, I'm not going to go to bed on time. I'm going to go to bed super late and we're going to see what time I get up. And thankfully my body did let me sleep in just a little bit. So the next lesson I learned was opportunity cost. We've talked about opportunity costs before. You can scroll back just a couple episodes where I went into what opportunity cost really is and how it applies to the decision making process. But there was one thing in particular I had to really look into the opportunity cost of, and that was whether or not to drive or fly to Las Vegas. So how did we decide? It wasn't so much a time versus money thing, which you might think of as far as driving, but both of those things did really come into play. So for us, driving would take about 4 hours and it would cost us 1 tank of gas to get from where we live to Las Vegas. You have to factor in of course, stopping for snacks or something to eat. You have to factor in the time of us just being together, which actually was wonderful. There was so much silence and just amicable being next to each other. It was just absolutely fabulous. Highly recommend. Please make sure you were doing that with your spouse from time to time. It was great. So it was only going to be 4 hours. It was 1 tank of gas. Plus, we would have to pay for parking, which in Las Vegas can get really expensive depending on where you're staying. But the time part was really the overwhelming factor for us. It was only going to take us four hours to drive there, and we would have our car. And that just seemed better for us than driving an hour and a half to the airport, being there two hours early, taking the 45 minute flight over to Las Vegas, getting our bags, and then driving to the hotel. We may not have had to drive to the hotel. There is a shuttle from the hotel from the airport to the hotel that we were staying at, but then you have to wait around for the shuttle. And there's just. That looked like it would equate to about 6 to 7 hours, but here's the other thing. It wouldn't have been on our time. We wouldn't have been able to just pick and choose when we wanted to leave. We went over mother's day weekend and. There was a Mother's Day tea for my preschool daughter's class. They were having a Mother's Day tea and if I had booked a flight. We would have missed that. I wouldn't have been able to go to this mother's day tea. Now, my mother was in town and she could have gone with her and they would have had a great time, but I wanted to be there. That was important to me. And so, because we had chosen to drive versus fly, we got to leave a little bit later and we still had plenty of time. Once we got checked into our hotel. We wandered around for a little bit. We've picked somewhere to go eat. We just really enjoyed ourselves and there was nothing Tying us down except for when the concert started which by the way the doors opened at six But Mr. Timberlake did not go on stage until 9 PM. So I'm really glad that we decided we were just going to goof off for a little bit before we went. Anyway, the opportunity cost time versus money in the end. It could have been cheaper for us to fly, but being on our own time. Made driving so much more palatable. Now, you may not be able to do that. If you're living in Texas and going to Las Vegas, you may need to fly. It may be cheaper. You know, it may be considerably cheaper. Weigh that out, but deciding what to do, we. Found the things that were most important to us, and then we cost valued what we were willing to spend to get those things. And in the end, it was much better for us to drive than to fly. The other lesson I learned from going to the Justin Timberlake concert is planning for unexpected expenses. Look, my friends, you need an emergency fund for your trip and you need a contingency plan. What I mean by this, an emergency fund for the trip that's for those things like unexpected car repairs that come up a medical emergency and unexpected fee that you weren't planning on paying things like that are important to budget. And we were driving to this event. So what would have happened if we had blown a tire or gotten a crack in our windshield or anything could have happened? Right? That's part of driving the car. Granted, we had just had the car serviced a little bit before our trip. So we knew that it was in good working order, but still things happen and we had to pay for that service. You want to make sure that there's just a peace of mind. So you have a little bit of buffer and emergency fund in your travel budget. Unexpected fees happen all the time in Las Vegas. You're not necessarily thinking about, Oh, you know, there's a bag check fee here, or, there's a room service fee. They have all kinds of new things that they've added on to your hotel stay that you didn't necessarily think of before. Just plan ahead. Just put an extra buffer in there because Ramit Sethi calls them phantom costs. They're costs that you're not necessarily planning for as you're planning out everything. So you know, this is my budget for the trip. Add in a little bit of buffer to that budget. If you're saying my budget's 5, 000 dollars and I can't spend a dollar more and your budget at 5, 000 dollars and there's no emergency fund, you have to bump something down to add room for an emergency fund because things are going to happen. And there's no reason going into your actual 3 to 6 month emergency fund for things that you can plan for on this trip. Like, let's not overextend ourselves here and let's not be like, well, if I hit 5001, I've gone over because there's shame and guilts that can come along with that. I just really want you to have complete peace of mind. Anytime you're going on a trip. The contingency plan is for potential unexpected events during the trip. I was looking at this kind of, like, we're making a plan to go here. We know this is the path, but can't go that way because that sidewalks blocked off. Weirdly enough, this happened. We were on a sidewalk and the elevator was broken. And I thought to myself, wow, that would be really awful. What happens if you're in a wheelchair and you can't go up the stairs in a wheelchair. Like, that's going to be really difficult. And the, escalators are thin enough that I don't think you get a wheelchair on the escalator. I think that's why they are the size that they are. I was like, this would be a really big bummer if you were in a wheelchair, because you can't go up and down this elevator. It's the only way to go across the street legally. And then we went down this very long. Very long road, and I passed by a guy in a wheelchair and I was like, hey, dude, like, the elevator's broken. He had to turn around, go back and find another way to cross the street. So he could go up the street and then cross again to get to where he wanted to go. Oh, my goodness. Contingency planning. What are you going to do? If the road you want to go down is broken? Blocked off, what are you going to do if the hotel you want to stay at is full? What are you going to do if the show that you were planning on going to, but you didn't buy tickets ahead of time is sold out. These are things that you need to just have a backup plan for. What if I was planning on going to 1 restaurant and they were full for the night and I had to go somewhere else, like, just have a backup plan. And sometimes it can be fun to make these plans and also make plans for if your plans fall through or, you know, Maybe for us, our contingency plan was we'll find something when we get there because we weren't really stuck on anything except for being at the Justin Timberlake concert, which again was fabulous. The next lesson, the 4th lesson, that I learned from attending this Justin Timberlake concert was to look out for some cost saving tips. And here's where I'm going to talk about some information. Specifics right, like food and drinks in Las Vegas. There are plenty of affordable dining options. There are plenty of non affordable dining options. You just have to plan for which ones you're willing to go to some of. Some of the restaurants in Las Vegas have overpriced items because they call them like Vegas specials, and it would really be cheaper to not get the special, but get everything individual. These are just things you need to think about. Bringing snacks on your road trip, as opposed to buying them at convenience stores, convenience stores are convenient, but those are the most expensive places to buy your food or drinks. So pack pack those things ahead of time. Just be thoughtful ahead of time as far as entertainment is concerned. There are many low cost entertainment options. There are many ways to get. Groupon's or discount codes or things like that. They're they're everywhere. You just have to look. Sometimes you can Google discount code for the blue man group, or sometimes if you're staying at the hotel, that there's a residency. We were staying in a hotel where carrot top at the residency and that made me feel old. All of Vegas made me feel old. Everybody that was there were people from. My era and before. And I was like, are people still listening to Santana? Is that still a thing? People still want to see him perform. That's amazing. He was old when I used to like him. So like, good for him. He's still going. Carrot Top apparently still going. Blue Man Group's still going. There were so many shows in Las Vegas that were catered to my generation. And what I'm realizing is I have the money to spend on it. So cool. Of course, they're going to be catering to me because I have the money to spend on going to these shows. But it made me feel a little old. That's fine. That's totally fine to make me feel old, but there are very low cost entertainment options and there are ways to reduce the cost of your entertainment options. What you cannot do, my friends, you should not, cannot do not go to a timeshare presentation. In order to get free tickets to a show. You do not need to see Cirque dele that badly. Time shares, Dave Ramsey calls legalized fraud. They will hold you captive until you say yes, essentially. And I don't want it. I don't want what you're selling. I don't want to be trapped into your product. That just goes down in value. I don't want it. I don't need it. No, thank you. That does bring me to my next thought though. And that's your hotel room. What do you, what do you actually need out of a hotel room? Do you need to spend a whole lot of money? Do you have lavish lifestyle needs that you just need to make sure that you are covered in a fancy hotel room if you do and you have the money for it. Great. Go for it. But my line of thinking was, we're not going to be in this hotel room for very long. We could go to the pool. We could go to the shows. We could go do slot machines. We could walk up and down the strip. There's so many things to do that. We weren't actually going to spend any time in the hotel room. We were sleeping there essentially. So, we didn't want to spend a whole lot of money on the hotel. We wanted to be close enough to the venue that we could walk there and not have an issue, but we did not want to be staying at the venue, because the prices were outrageous. However, if we, if we decided that was important to us, going back to the opportunity cost, if we decide staying at the venue was important to us, we could have spent that extra money. No big deal. However, I did not realize that our hotel room didn't have a refrigerator and that kind of bummed me out. So that would have been something I would have rather had an upgrade to have a refrigerator in my room and like some water or something. Come on Hilton do better. All in all, the room is not the most important part of the travel. It's the entertainment, it's the food, it's the people that you're with. It's the things that you're experiencing. So cost savings tip, you don't need to splurge on the hotel room, unless that is a core value of yours, at which point go ahead. That brings me into the next thing that I want to talk about. And that's splurging versus savings. Look. There's certain things that are worth splurging on, and there's certain things that are not. If a hotel room is important to you and you feel like that's where you want to splurge, go ahead. If the experience is where you want to spend more of your money, spend more of your money there. Figure out what's the most important thing and then enjoy that. Some people enjoy, quality and some people enjoy quantity. And what I mean by that is sometimes. You just want to go out and buy the really nice, expensive jacket. That's a quality piece that, you know, you're going to keep for a really long time, or you're the type of person that would rather just go to H and M and buy shirts that, you know, are probably going to fall apart in the next year. You get about 10 good wares out of them before they start to fray or ravel or whatever. And then you're going to throw them away. So that's quality. Versus quantity. I can get one jacket that's a quality piece, or I can get 10 shirts. Which am I going to choose? The same decision making process goes into or emotional process goes into experiences versus things. Some people are experiences people where they will go out to a nice restaurant. They just want to have the drinks and they want to have the big steak or what what have you. They want to have the big and the fancy because the experience of it is most important to them. Where's other people go and the experience is not that important to them and they don't care and they're like, I don't need them. I don't need a glass of wine here. I'm fine. Like, I'll eat my food and it's great. Or there are people that are just wanting to have the thing to remember the trip by. Either way is fine. It's really who you are. What is more important to you? If the memories and the experiences and the quality, that's your splurge area. Then that's what you splurge on. But if you are on the other side, then splurge on the other side, splurge on the things that make you happy, but you can't splurge on everything. Otherwise, it's not a splurge. It's just an overspending issue. And I come to this main point that I learned on this trip, this main thing that I learned while at the Justin Timberlake concert, and that is that I am too old to buy the cheap seats. I'm not going to do that ever again. And I didn't necessarily buy cheap seats. I actually bought really good tickets, but I bought higher up because I had seen some things online about what may or may not be happening at the concert. And I'm thinking I want to be up above and I want to be watching everything from Above, so I can see down into some of the things that he's doing. And I got to see some some shoulder. He was changing clothes, and as he was driving down, I got to see some shoulder as he was taking his jacket off. So that was exciting. I wouldn't gotten to see that if I was on floor level. But I now have vertigo apparently from being up too high, and I will not be doing that ever again because I want to be on the floor and I want to be dancing. I want to be having a good time and I make way too much money to buy tickets that are up high when I have the money and I should have spent the money to be on the floor. That would have just been smart. I know for next time, guys, I know for next time, what it is that I want out of my concert going experience. You see, the last time I went to a Justin Timberlake concert was with my husband. He was not my husband. He's my boyfriend at the time. And I just will forever be grateful for that experience. I bought tickets at the same place. It's a different theater though, but it would have been the same seats. But because it was a different theater, they just felt different. it was not, it was not the business. I will not be doing that anymore. I am too old to sit up high. I will now be only sitting on the floor or the lower level from now on. So, you know, if you're ready to splurge, go ahead and buy the good tickets. Okay. When you finish your trip. You need to do a financial review. You need to review the expenses. You need to go over what you actually spent versus what you budgeted and you need to analyze any discrepancies. If you overspent in 1 area, why if you didn't spend the money that you thought you were going to send? Why? Then learn from your mistakes. Any financial mistakes that you've made, you need to have the discussion about. If you went way over your food budget, why? What was it, what was it that was important to you about going and eating the extra at that time? By analyzing this and figuring out what is and is not important to you on your trip, you are going to learn. How to budget for trips better in the future. You're also going to learn what's important to you. So you can dive into that in your everyday life. I think this is really important that it's not just about while you're on the trip. I get whatever if while you're on the trip, you realize that you really enjoy going to steak houses. Why don't you put that in your budget quarterly? Like, it may be expensive, but let's enjoy our life, you know, I'm very much in the camp of, I want you to have your retirement. I want you to be millionaires. I want you to be comfortable later in life, but I want you to enjoy your life right now. This is part of the rich, abundant life that we've been talking about. The last thing that I want to talk about today, and the last lesson learned is about self reflection and balancing fun and finances. I grew on this trip in different ways. I knew I was going to enjoy it. I was with my favorite person on the planet. I was seeing my favorite singer in person. There was nothing about this trip that I was dreading. There was nothing about this trip that was negative. The entire trip was a positive growth experience, and I'm so thankful for it. I'm thankful that I was away from my kids. They were able to miss me for a little bit. Turns out I should do it more often and I would have never known that I was capable of this- that they were capable of spending some time away from me had I not done it. I also think my relationship grew. My husband and I are closer because we just had some time together to bond together as husband and wife and not just as mom and dad. We have to in the grand scheme of things, balance the fun and the finances. We have to find a way to have fun while staying financially responsible. And because we do the self reflection, because we look back and we. Analyze and we review our expenses and we learn from our mistakes because we do all of those things, it's easier to balance the fun and the money later. And I think. There's so much that can be learned from any of our everyday experiences, but especially the big ones, we can always learn from these expenses, these experiences about ourselves, about what we want most in life, about how to make our lives even more abundant and rich and full. I had the most amazing time at the Justin Timberlake concert, had the most amazing time spending time with my husband. In case you didn't know, people used to call me Mrs. Timberlake, but Justin and I got divorced when my husband and I got married. Like, it's a whole thing. It's a whole back story. It's a whole back story. It is a joy to have gone to this concert, to have gotten, To develop my relationship deeper with my husband and also to come and share some of those lessons I learned with you, my friends, the accelerators. You know what I'm going to say, but I'm going to switch it up a little bit this week. Go out, look at your experiences, decide what you like and what you don't like, and then make a difference.

Laura: 25:58

Thank you for investing your time with us today on the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. Remember, your legacy isn't just measured in dollars and cents, but in the tools, habits, mindset, and reputation you leave behind. Don't just listen to the show, but take action on what you've learned. Share this wisdom with a friend who can benefit and help us spread the word by rating and reviewing the podcast. For questions or encouragement, reach out to me on Instagram at Accelerate Your Legacy or explore the resources listed in the show notes. I will be back with you next week. Until then, build your legacy with intention.