With rising home prices and stagnating wages, a new savings goal: Beyoncé tickets
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With rising home prices and stagnating wages, a new savings goal: Beyoncé tickets
Last week, Beyoncé released “Renaissance,” her long-awaited seventh studio album. Fans everywhere are hoping she will announce a tour soon — in fact, some have been preparing for this moment for years.
The last time Beyoncé did a solo tour was in 2016. Mars Sebastian, a freelance writer based in Brooklyn, NY, couldn’t afford tickets.
“I swore that next time Beyoncé went on tour, I was not going to miss it,” Sebastian said.
The following year, she started a savings account for Beyoncé-related purchases.
She’s not alone. On Twitter, there are endless tweets from fans who opened savings accounts to see Beyoncé live, or to be able to purchase items from IVY PARK, her athleisure line that is notorious for selling out.
The good news is, saving money for something you love can be good practice for saving in the long run, said Marsha Barnes, founder of The Finance Bar.
“Traditionally we look at savings as ‘you should always be saving money for emergencies and in case something happens,’” Barnes said. “Well, we should also be saving money for the things that we enjoy, i.e. Beyoncé tickets.”
Historically, those tickets can get expensive. According to Vivid Seats, the average ticket price for the Formation tour was $207, but resale prices were even higher, averaging $353 overall, and reaching quadruple digits for floor seats close to the stage.
Between inflation and the long-awaited return of concerts, ticket prices are only rising. Average gross and average ticket prices for North American tours are considerably higher this year than they were in 2019, according to Pollstar’s mid-year report.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of people with savings plans to buy these expensive tickets are on the younger side — millennials or Gen Zers. Younger generations are saving earlier than their parents did, but the economy is working against them when it comes to bigger purchases like a home.
Millennials own significantly less wealth than baby boomers did at their age. They carry so much student debt that, according to a recent survey, a third of millennials say their loan payments are a “major barrier” to buying a home and 32% of millennials have more credit card debt than savings.
Young people are being hit harder by inflation than older generations, are feeling more economic anxiety than ever, and disproportionately face wage stagnation and underemployment.
So in an economy where homeownership — or building up savings at all — feels so far out of reach, the trend of Beyoncé savings accounts could be an indicator that young people want to save, and concert tickets feel like an attainable goal, Barnes said.
“This means young people are getting in the habit of knowing that they need to save,” she said. “I think 100% this should be celebrated.”
If you’re thinking about starting to save, whether to see your favorite artist or to buy a house — or both — Ilyce Glink, a financial journalist and CEO of Best Money Moves has some tips.
She advises setting a clear amount for how much you need, and then “reverse engineering” the process to determine how much to set aside from each paycheck, and for how long.
“Research has shown over the years that when you write down a specific financial goal, you’re much more likely to achieve it,” Glink said. “So instead of just saying, ‘I’m gonna save money for entertainment in this bucket,’ saying that ‘this is the Beyonce concert ticket fund’ may motivate you to actually put the money in there every single time.”
Glink added that while saving for a concert is a “really great short-term goal”, it’s important to set medium-term goals like saving for a house, and “once in a lifetime goals” like retirement, as well. Millennials are ahead of older generations when it comes to saving for retirement, but Glink said it’s never too early to start.
“Balance is important,” she said. “Starting to save for retirement, you never get back the years you don’t do it … (Beyoncé’s) not going anywhere.”
As for Sebastian’s Beyoncé savings goal?
“I am really trying to save enough to get real close,” she said. “Be able to see her breathe.”
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