It's Not A Bender, It's A Lifestyle.

The final pre-Vegas MGM Rewards points from the CC dropped in today. After a good earning month I'm sitting at a little over 52K pre-trip. So assuming I'll earn something like 3K points in December (conservative, being I'll be earning 3X points in town), that gets me to 55K w/o gambling a penny the rest of the year, so I'll just need to earn 20K points in town to keep Gold. Better than I thought it would be, and very doable. With the tier accelerator in play on the trip, if I earn 10K in a calendar day that will bump up to 15K. I may need only two decent earning days of the week to get there. I may just try to take like the Saturday and really start to pump at 12:01am, keep it going through the day and I might be nearly there. I can keep track on the app during the trip so I'll know in real time where I am. It'd be a relief to get it done early, like by Monday latest, so I can just be free to roam and gamble at will at other resort groups later in the trip. Woul...

Whelp, though I can scarcely believe it, we are T-minus one month from Vegalagalus. Time to do the obligatory plan post, that gets almost always uniformly ignored once I'm in town, but I'm a creature of tradition, so here goes. Night one, Thursday: Leave work around 1p, drop the car in the work garage, Uber to SFO and off we go. Fly in time if all goes well with United is around 6:30p. In a cab, over to Cosmo, check in, dump the bag, freshen up and hopefully out to the strip by 7:30-8p. May come down and hit Vesper first for a couple "get started" cocktails, then it's off for a light dinner somewhere at Aria or Bellagio, to start racking up the MGM tier credits. Maybe the food hall thing at Aria, dunno will play it by ear.  Then it's off to drink on strip, nowhere in particular. Probably somewhere mid-strip as I may be wearing down a bit after having been up since 7:30a. Some gambling at Aria or Bellagio maybe on the way back to the room, I will hold off on FB...

It being a worst case scenario post. As I have previously pissed about, the save will not be sufficient this trip. I write this as a plan to deal with this, assuming there is no work bonus this year (which there may still be, making this post moot). By hook or by crook I will have $5700 minimum on the trip. Scenarios: -I get a bonus of maybe a couple grand, and this post is meaningless. Yay! -With my next three paychecks, after paying all normal life expenses:          I have $3500 Vegas save on 11/24 paycheck.          I have $4400 Vegas save on 12/8 paycheck. This is the amount that flies with me.          I have an additional $1300 on the 12/22 paycheck when I'm already in town. The last one is the dodgy one, as it means I float whatever is left on my December CC balance and pay interest on it, which I hate to do but hey, it's Vegas! Assuming I pay $1000 on the 11/24 and 12/8 checks, there shouldn't be more th...

Concerned a bit about the save for the Xmas trip, because there's cause to and because that's what I do. The save is not going great. Various factors have contributed to that. The $630/month I've had to dump into having the car certainly hasn't helped (lease payment, insurance, gas). The IRS payment of $200/month wasn't helping, though that's gone now, thankfully. The cost of life has gone up too, prescriptions, food, essentials, the $100 rent increase etc. All those things factor in. But the main reason is I just spend too damn much money. I spend $250+ on an average Saturday out. I pay $30 4-5 times a week on Door Dash. I make 2-3 weekly $50 Target runs for other shit. It adds up. The June trip hurt too. I'm done obsessing over it but it literally took me 2-3 months to recover from how broke that trip left me, to even begin to save for Xmas. As it stands I have $2900 saved for the trip. I only have 3 checks left before going, and will have 1 more hit the d...

Things looking settled for the Xmas trip, so time to settle up the discounts and freebies. -Comped, no resort fee night at Cosmopolitan on night one, cost $0, would be $242, saves $242. -6 nights at Delano in a King Suite, 3 nights comped, $318 all in. Would be $1392 with no comps and resort fees, saves $1074. -$84 of resort credit at Cosmopolitan, value $84. -$25 Freeplay and $50 RC from the Delano booking, $75 value. -Will have $292 Freeplay and $65 in Resort Credit from MGM Rewards account, value $365. -VIP ticket to Atomic Saloon show, $50, would have been $189 normally, savings of $139. That's $1979 saved over someone without any tertiary comps earned. Not shabby. With all that resort credit here and there I won't have to pay for meals much, especially if I reach 75K Rewards points with MGM and earn the additional $100 resort credit for getting there. I'll be slightly over 52K points when I arrive so with the points accelerator active it should be a if not a slam dunk ...

It has begun. The little twitters of my mind that are telling me: a Vegas trip is not terribly far away. It usually starts about 2 months out from a trip, which is, believe it or not, where we are, finally. Since I got back from the June trip the Xmas trip has been so distant I haven't even really thought about it much, aside from trying to get the overhead of flights and booking handled. Now that they are, the mental countdown can begin. It's subtle things, mostly. Not overt things like how much money I have saved (which is going well at $3K), but little things like "oh I have enough prescription drugs now to get me past the next trip, or "oh I have enough deodorant now to get me past the next trip". Yes, this is level of obsessed with Vegas I am. It's no small thing. I have to admit that the summer/early fall has been a downer. Firstly, the way the June trip went felt like a bit of a betrayal. As if I'd been slept around on my a partner. Then just the s...

MGM rewards are back. Everything looks right I think. I was at 35K points in July now am at 44.8K, which with 3 months of points accrual from the CC is around 3K per month so that figures. Almost $220 in slot dollars too which is nice, and will be even nicer by the time I get to town. With a needed 75K points to stay Gold I have at least an outside chance of hitting it in December as long as I points max at MGM spots. Food, bars, gambles at MGM joints, along with the hotel stay and tier accelerator in place for the trip. Speaking of the stay, nothing final yet. Since the website came back from the hack not much has changed, rates-wise. Of the places I'd actually stay, Aria, MB, Delano, NYNY all have bookable rates now. MB, Delano would have upper-tier rooms that are within the algorithm, but I'd really rather not be that far south. I'm angling for a reno'd room at Bellagio but right now $540 for the 6 nights is a tad high still. As usual, at the first sign of prices goi...