This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live.
Life is expensive. Knicks tickets are expensive, too. After the New York Knicks won the in-season NBA Cup at the end of 2025, the January tickets that I’d had my eye on soared in price. This was a small problem. For the holidays, I had promised my daughter that I would take her to a game—so I searched for a work-around. I watched ticket prices the morning of a game, and even two hours before tipoff. But on those secondary resale sites, seeing the ticket prices up in the nosebleed section go for $350, about $100 more than they had a month prior, caused my brain to hemorrhage. And when LeBron James and the Lakers came to play at Madison Square Garden, the average ticket price skyrocketed north of $1,000; even the nosebleeders had to spend about $500. Knicks–Wizards and Knicks–Jazz matchups, which would feature the Knickerbockers against some of the NBA’s worst teams, offered no real savings either.
And still: “When are we going to a Knicks game?” my daughter asked.
I felt awful. But when I saw that the Knicks were playing the 76ers at Xfinity Stadium in Philadelphia, I decided to look up tickets in the City of Brotherly Love on a hunch. Compared to watching the game in the Big Apple, similar seats were around half the price.
In these trying times, when inflation and rising costs are making it difficult for many Americans to rationalize the high costs of entertainment, I’ve learned that if you live in or near one of America’s more expensive cities, it really pays to see if your home team or favorite performer is hitting a venue a couple of hours down the highway from home. By getting yourself over there, you could end up with some extra bucks in the bank, or land a bonus trip for the same price of those tickets, had you paid through the nose at home.
In my case, instead of robbing my daughter of her college funds or breaking my promise to her, I skirted around high prices at MSG and found something priceless down in Philly. I took the few hundred in ticket savings and drove just two hours southwest—round trip was less than $100 in gas and tolls. (From Manhattan, you can even find a 90-minute Amtrak ride for as little as $7 one way.) While the game started at 3 p.m., and we could have easily taken the frugal option of driving down that morning and returning well before bedtime, with meals packed and everything, we decided to make a trip out of it. We spent the night in an affordable hotel, and woke up early to enjoy the city and the sites of 1776. A meal at the lovely restaurant Fork was delicious and less expensive than the average high-end Midtown Manhattan brunch. Then we hopped on I-76 for the stadium, where we found a comfortable balance between 76er die-hards and Knicks fans who either had the same idea as me, were Philly transplants, or had jumped on the bandwagon now that the Knicks showed life.
This is not a life hack limited to New Yorkers—far from it. For anyone living in one of America’s paycheck-devouring ZIP codes, nearby there are often far more affordable alternatives to take in a favorite sports team, theater experience, fine dining restaurant, or musical act.
According to a recent pricing study, the average concert ticket in Austin, Texas, was $279. Three hours away and that same concert would cost $186 in Dallas. If four friends from Austin hop into a car and drive to Dallas with nearly $400 in savings, that ain’t a math question. That’s a great time. The drive between San Francisco and San Jose takes about an hour. Take that quick trip, and you can save nearly $80 on the average concert ticket. In Boston, dining out is expensive. Using any cost-of-living calculator and focusing on dining only, it’s clear that a meal in Boston tends to be about 17 percent higher than in Portland, Maine. If a Bostonian couple wants to treat themselves to a day of good eats—maybe that’s a trip to a lovely bakery to start the day, a tasty sandwich for lunch, and something a touch elegant for dinner—that’s going to cost about $300 at home. Why not head for quaint Portland, just 90 minutes up the coast, and enjoy that extra $50 in savings. There you can eat lobster rolls at the source, enjoy some of the country’s best beer and blueberries, and visit a city with a population one-tenth the size of Boston’s and virtually the same number of James Beard–nominated restaurants. And you get a beautiful little road trip to boot.
Before my daughter and I left for the Knicks game, we stood in the footprint of where Benjamin Franklin’s house once stood. She looked down into the hole over which his toilet had been situated. “I can’t believe this is where Ben Franklin went to the bathroom,” she said, smiling at history. You couldn’t put a price on that, but if I calculated it, financially, we had broken even.
