There is a piece in today’s New York Times about the cost of tickets at the new Yankee Stadium. It’s very clerverly writen; Vincent M Malozzi does a cost comparison of Yankee tickets and what people might want to spend their money on instead. Since the top-priced seat at the Stadium is $2,650, and Malozzi has three sons, it would cost him $10,600 to attend a single game. Instead, he figures he could use the money to pay for one of the following:

Tuition at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York.

Cruising the Caribbean and, with the money you have left, buy a used Cadillac.

A two-week vacation: one week in Paris and the other on the Jersey Shore.

He continues, giving several other choices someone could make instead of choosing to spend it on Yankee tickets. Now, I would have loved this article had it not been for one thing: Vincent M Malozzi is a Mets fan. He talks about the top-priced seat at Citi Field being $695 but conveniently leaves out the fact that, for him and his three sons, that would be $2,780. I know it’s not half as much as what it would cost him for Yankee tickets, but it’s still a pretty penny. I could think of plenty of things to do with $2,780 and not one of them would be buying tickets to see the New York Mets. I could:

Ride the New York City Subway 1,390 times

Buy approximately 695 half-gallon containers of organic milk

Purchase about 185 boxes of Claritin-D 24Hr (15 tablets per box)

I could go on. Yes, I know, Malozzi is talking about luxury items and it goes without saying  that one can buy a ton of necessary items with that much money. I get it.  But when you’re struggling, sometimes a necessary thing can turn into a luxury.