For most of last week, I was at a conference in Los Angeles. Professional conferences are great. Usually the social scene takes on a bit of a party atmosphere and everyone has mutual interests so its often pleasurable to get caught up.
Since our blog is about personal finance, not attending professional conferences, there were a couple of “take-aways” from my trip to LA.
1) Poverty is relative. Judging from the quality of peoples clothes and the look of the neighborhoods in the city, the average joe has less wealth in LA than in Washington DC. To save money, I ended up taking the subway a few times so my observations are based on the subway rides.
2) Its good to split a hotel room with a friend. I ended up sharing a room with a fellow grad student. This was great because I only had to pay $300 instead of $600. Three hundred is still a lot of money, but I wanted a hotel closer to the conference center. Conferences are rare opportunities to establish valuable social capitol in your field. Since a lot of informal socializing occurs in hotels after conference hours are over, its important to be close to the “action”, so to speak, and is therefore worth spending the extra money.
Enjoy your Sunday!
Best,
James
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