Sin Tax for Santa

My husband loves to play Texas Hold Em’ poker. He has a regular Thursday night game, and also will play Saturday nights if the spirit moves him. To a true-believer Frugal such as myself, poker seems to be a huge waste of money. But on the other hand, my husband works hard and has a right to some quality leisure time (I don’t why, but he doesn’t agree with me that mowing the lawn is FUN!). He really enjoys time spent with his circle of gambling cronies, and these are not high stakes we’re talking about. Also, he funds his poker forays with his weekly allowance, and it’s truly no skin off my nose on how he chooses to spend it.

My biggest objection to these twice-weekly games is the travel involved. He plays poker in the town of Denton, TX which is about 20+ miles from our house, and I don’t even know how many miles it is from his office in Dallas when he goes there straight from work on Thursday evenings. With gas prices so high I felt that these “unnecessary” trips were a big waste of money. We have gas charge cards for various stations, use them as needed and pay them off every month. We have done this ever since we’ve been married and it works well for us. It’s mainly for convenience (never, ever have I carried a balance on any of my gas cards), but it’s also very simple to track fuel charges because this is the only way that we pay for gas. So it was pretty easy to see that poker games + increase in fuel prices were really costing us a pretty penny.

My husband is a reasonable guy, if not necessarily a true-believer Frugal, so he was willing to come to some sort of compromise. Since I was the grumbler, it was up to me to find the creative solution that would make us both happy. My thinking was this: gas costs for travel to work and other “necessary” trips are paid out of general household funds. Individual leisure activities (such as poker) are paid for out of discretionary allowances. So shouldn’t travel costs to leisure activities also be paid out of discretionary allowances?

With this in mind, I made this proposal. I also thought I’d appeal to his gambler-side at the same time, just to keep things interesting. I proposed that every time he played poker he could either pay a $5.00 “sin” tax into the Christmas shopping fund, or else give me 10% of his winnings, whichever is greater. (I made this proposal when gas was about $2.50 per gallon, so he’s getting a pretty good deal right now. But, as we like to say in a marriage, a deal’s a deal). Before he leaves for the game, he puts $5.00 directly into Christmas savings. He’s very honest, so when he gets home from his game he always puts additional money in if he’s won big that evening.

All this money goes into my favorite piggy bank, Hamletta. I don’t know how much is in her, but we’ve been doing this for a while now, so I feel pretty confident I’ll have a good chunk of change for Christmas when I need it. Those five dollar bills really add up!

Now, I don’t mind at all when I see him heading out the door for his poker game. I really want him to go and win lots of green so I can buy some great presents at Christmastime. And if he doesn’t win big, I still get my five bucks. To my husband this is a small price to pay for my smiling cooperation. And while it is true that I still have to pay the increased fuel bills every month, it is also true that I’m putting away a little something for a known future expense, which I hadn’t been doing previously.

No matter what, I was going to be paying that extra fuel charge anyway, because there is no way my husband is ever (just to save gas) going to give up playing poker. And since he loves it so much, there was no way I was seriously ever going to suggest this. So this way we both get something. A true win-win situation (which are really a lot more rare than is commonly reported in the popular press).

This is Hamletta, my favorite piggy bank. She is named after Hamlet, my favorite Shakespeare character (not to mention they are also both big hams). However, she doesn’t see ghosts, only dollar signs. My sister sent her to me all the way from California. I have the nicest sisters! (And they know me so well, too!)