Tour Life: Financial Dangers

Earlier this month I wrote about my mini money challenge idea and how I was going to live on just my per diem. I thought – I’m not going to have any problem doing this. I’m pretty much a golden god of saving anyway, especially after a year of living in NYC. So I nailed it the first week. And then… tech ended and I got a little of my life back. Although not much, honestly. Also, we actually started traveling all the time, which means that after driving 8 hours and loading in for 5, I will eat anywhere that is still serving food at midnight, even if that is a really crappy $20 burger – and you can bet I’m going to numb the pain of load in with a drink too (literal pain, I've dropped more than one Sparkle unit on my own head trying to clamp them onto a boom). And I thought, I’m never going to make that goal again. Week 2 came in at $226 - $16 over the goal. Which I’m still kind of pleased with since my backpack that I’d has since I was in high school finally gave up the ghost that week and had to be replaced. Week 3 also came in way over thanks to subscribing to Dropbox for the next year. At $99, that was almost half of my per diem. I actually finished out the week around $330. So there’s definitely been a slow and steady creep. However, it’s difficult to get too upset about it. I’ve surpassed all of my savings goals for the month and still expect to have another $500 to contribute to my IRA on top of what I already put in this month before it ends. I’ve still felt very suspicious though. I mean, what’s the downside here? So I’ve been thinking about it pretty much every time I sign my name on yet another credit card receipt. Lifestyle creep. I think that’s what’s making me pretty nervous. After a year of living like super carefully in New York City, it’s been kind of awesome to not really think about what I’m spending. Sometimes we get to a city a few hours before load in and the most common place to go hang out is the mall. It’s something to do for a few hours and the food court means pretty much everyone is happy for lunch or dinner. But some of that wandering leads to purchases that I used to think through very carefully. Now I’m like, oh, I like that shirt. Buying it. On the plus side, I’m kind of limited in how much I can do because I have to drag all the crap I buy around the country with me. But on the negative side, I definitely feel my brain rewiring itself in dangerous directions. There’s only so much you can fight eating out every day when it’s either that, or hitting the grocery store and living on whatever you can microwave. Our tour also only stays in places one to two nights, so we spend a lot of time driving. That limits your ability to eat anything other than what’s readily available even more. On top of that, there’s a lot of YOLO on tour. I think I’m super lucky that my cast loves roadside attractions, so we stop at a ton. And they’re very rarely expensive, but $5-10 a day on those side stops add up too… not to mention my shot glass collecting habit which is getting a little out of control already. I’ve also found that we’re a group of people who like weird wineries. But how do you not try the pecan pie wine in Orange, Texas or the Flying Monkey red at the Oz Winery in Kansas? It’s just got to be done, people.

So I’m wondering, people who have gone out on tour before, did you find it difficult to reign your life back into normal spending patterns when you got home or was the massive change that is going home enough to kick start you right back into your usual spending patterns?