Survival of a Punk Rock Festival

9. Making a Budget

            Festivals are always an awesome experience, but they can make you go broke in less than a second. Then the festival becomes a bum experience because you have no money to get food or buy the new band album of the headliner of your festival. It can make a huge increase on the factor if you and your group of friends sit down a week or two before the festival and discuss a budget for the day or however long your long festival is.

            Usually, festival goers mostly buy a lot of merchandise from the different band merchandise tables set up throughout the day or days of the festival.  So make a plan about how much you want to spend on your favorite band.  Also, you should decide how much you want to spend on a new band you just heard play and you want to buy one of their CDs. This is where a lot of concert goers spend most of their cash.  They suddenly decide they want a CD of the new bands they hear who are about to hit it big in the music industry. This is because we as concert goers love to support new artists who have really great music.  So with a budget in hand, you can decide on which new band you want to support.

            When making a budget with your friends, it’s always a good idea to pick a time to decide how much you want to spend on food. Trust me!   You don’t want to go a whole day without eating anything at festival.  Venues will have either a restaurant, snack bar, or both places around the concert venue.  If you have the set list of when the bands are performing,  you and your group of friends can decide which bands you don’t want to see and take a lunch or dinner break during those performances.

Making a budget helps you know how much you want to spend. Usually, you want to spend around 100 or 200 dollars for the whole festival day. If your festival is more than a day, try to spend less than 100 dollars per day.  After it’s over, you will have enough band merchandise and autographs from band members to make your friends jealous.  You will also have some extra cash you didn’t spend at your festival to help you get started with your week. To us concert goers, that’s never a bad thing because we love to go to festivals and support our favorite bands.  So it’s worth every penny spent.