What I learned from spending my vacation days watching TV

"Wasting time is very expensive"

Sept 14, 2016

 

I have always had a inclination towards Reno. Reno is a fun little town with gambling, cheap booze, and pretty good food. I like to think of it as the poor man's Vegas. I used to come here during my college days en route to snow boarding. This trip however I skipped the snow (not that there is any to be found in early September), and ended up watching TV in the hotel room. 

My trip began with a complimentary 2 night stay at the Grand Sierra Resort. It was short notice as these promotions typically are, but my wife and I just happened to be off, so we took the chance. Reno is a 2 hour drive from our house with lots of spotty radio coverage. Topically this would mean a long ride with one of us asleep or staring out the window but on this trip we had a better idea. Right before heading out, we checked out an open house in our home town. We are not looking for a new place but we do enjoy looking at ideas on how to improve our current place. We found that we had plenty to talk about on our way up. Design talk lead to money talk, which lead to a good discussion on investing and retiring. 

We checked into our room, which was far nicer than we were expecting, especially for being comp. It was nice and spacious, and even had a couch. One of our favorite features was the cable TV. I have not had cable for over a decade now, although my wife had only recently cut the cord (when she agreed to marry me). My wife and I ended up spending about 3 hours just watching TV. We got hooked on a marathon of Fixer Upper and was amazed at what can be done with old homes. Watching the show brought us back to our discussion about investing and potentially using real estate as an investment vehicle. I practiced using some of the techniques I learned from Bigger Pockets to gauge the potential value of the properties. Overall it was a relaxing time, but also insightful. The other thing I learned was how big of a distractions TV can actually be. 3 hours went by and we barely knew it. I have not had cable for over a decade, and the sudden availability of 24 hour programming and catching commercials was constantly fighting for my attention. It is a good thing that we do not have cable at home, otherwise we may never get any work done. 

I was able to gamble a little while in Reno, how could I possible pass up the black jack table while I am here. One thing I did notice was how many people were playing the slots. Per regulations, slots in Nevada have to return 88-93% of the money that is put into them, meaning that the casino has a 7-12% return on any given machine. That is why they have so many slot machines and they give out points and comps for playing those same machines. I saw dozens of people playing the slots at any given time but what really caught my eye was that one of the machines guaranteed a "100%+" payback meaning that you can actually win money if you play long enough. Surprisingly, no one was playing at this machine. There were plenty of people playing within range that surely must have spotted the sign, but no one was actually playing the game. The machine turned out to be a video poker machine, very old and toned down compared to the 3D slots with their giant vibrant screens, loud noises, and flashing lights. It dawned on me that the majority of people who play slots are not really playing to win money, they are playing for the flashing lights and sounds which are far more exciting than winning the actual money. 

Reno was a fun getaway, the free room definitely helped. Truth be told, I still ended up spending a good amount of money on food and gambling despite the free room. I learned about how addicting gambling can be, where people will forgo winning money to hear loud noises and see bright lights. I also learned how addictive TV can be, and how hours can be lost without knowing it. As I have written before, time is our most valuable asset, wasting time is therefore very expensive.