Eating your way to financial security???

 

I have to admit, this is ingenious - and an example of real "outside-the-box" thinking.

Hungry for financial flexibility, a California man named Dylan shelled out a measly $150 a year to eat every meal at Six Flags Magic Mountain in order to save thousands, pay off his student loan debt, get married and purchase a house in Los Angeles. 

“You can pay around $150 for unlimited, year-round access to Six Flags, which includes parking and two meals a day,” Dylan, 33, explained ... “If you time it right, you could eat both lunch and dinner there every day.” 

. . .

“One of my co-workers said she spent $1,500 a month on eating out. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not going down that road!,’ ” said Dylan, who works as an electrical engineer. He’s eaten an estimated 2,000 meals at around 50 cents per sitting at Six Flags for the past seven years.

“That entire first year, I don’t think I ever went to the grocery store,” he said. “I timed it so I was able to go there during my lunch break, go back to work, then stop back for dinner on my way home.” 

And all the while he was able to stash his cash. 

“It was crazy — I was saving money, paying off student loans,” Dylan claimed. But while his pockets were getting fat, so was he.

. . .

“They’ve got decent options now,” the cheap-eating enthusiast explained. “Still a lot of bad food, I mean it’s theme park food so you can’t expect too much from them. But you find the options that aren’t terrible — stuff like tri-tip sandwiches and vegan options like black bean burgers and meatless meatball subs.”

There's more at the link.

The economics of this kinda boggle my mind.  Did Six Flags ever stop to think that someone might do this?  Even at minimal cost to the venue - buying food centrally in bulk, preparing it as cheaply as possible, and so forth - Dylan must have recovered the expense of his annual ticket in just a few weeks.  After that, it was all pure profit to him, and all pure expense to Six Flags.  He probably cost them several thousand dollars every year, just by being canny and using his head!

Of course, now that the story is out, I expect Six Flags to change their annual ticket benefits at once, if not sooner.  I daresay it'll soon exclude free meals, or include some kind of meal-counting system whereby, once you reach a certain number, your meals are at your expense instead of theirs.

I wonder how many other entertainment venues offer similar deals?  How many of them are being used in the same way?  I daresay bean-counters everywhere will be checking that at once, if not sooner . . .

Peter