Let me preface this story by saying that normally when I return from a cruise I usually return with the equivalent of a large carry-on bag full of cheap duty free booze. This time around since I was trying to pack as lightly as possible I didn’t have the luxury of having a lot of bag space available for the return trip. While it felt good to avoid baggage fees and to have fewer bags weighing me down, let me explain why in the long run it ended up costing me more money to not have that extra bag.
The other day I went to the liquor store to pick up a bottle of Ketel One. After I entered the store and searched around, I couldn’t find the Ketel One vodka I was looking for, however they did have plenty of Absolut. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted but Absolut isn’t bad, so I figured I would get it instead. That is when it hit me, sticker shock.
Here in my local liquor store Absolut Vodka is twenty-four dollars a bottle. In the duty free at the cruise ship terminal, those same bottles were two for twenty-one dollars. Next, I looked at a couple of different brands and the results were the same. While I expected the price of the alcohol to be more expensive after all the other store was a duty free, I didn’t expect the prices to be almost sixty percent cheaper. Now, let me do some simple math. Checking an extra bag would have cost me an extra twenty-five dollars. Normally I would bring no less than six bottles of alcohol purchased from the duty free at a cost of approximately sixty-three dollars. Instead, I opted to not have an extra bag and will eventually purchase those six bottles here for a cost of approximate $144.00.
In other words instead of saving money by not paying for an extra bag I will end up spending an extra fifty-six dollars when all is said and done. I guess the old saying less (bags) is more (money) really is true. Next time I will have to take that into consideration when deciding whether or not it makes sense to bring along an extra bag.
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