Project Minimum Wage: BINGO, The Final Weekend

The weekend started off with $49. I had only eight days lefts to go. Things were looking bleak for myself and I was hesitant that I’d be able to finish off strong and make it to Day 30 with money left to spare. I was going to have another “expensive” weekend in terms of Project Minimum Wage and was really going to have to stretch every single dollar to make it.

The weekend all started off with a night of Bingo at one of the local bingo halls in Wichita. It’s a once a year thing my friends and I like to do. It’s been a while and this was one of the only weekends that worked for everybody. Unfortunately it was in the middle of Project Minimum Wage. I had $20-25 budgeted for Friday. Yes, half of what I had left. Probably pretty stupid but I’m a guy and we do a lot of stupid things!

Right before we all went to bingo, I had to stop by and grab a quick dinner because I was rushing from work and didn’t have dinner ready before it was time to dob some numbers. I stopped by Sonic to grab tots, burgers and a free drink thanks to a coupon. $4.

It’s Time To Play The Game!

Then it was time to Bingo! The Bingo Halls in Wichita are much nicer now that they don’t allow smoking. I love it. My friends and I all purchased our bingo sheets, some pulls tabs, and some extra bingo sheets in hopes of winning extra cash. All in all, I spent $22 at Bingo which was a dollar over what I had budgeted. My friend supplied me with a dobber so I didn’t have to spend $1.50. It’s time to bingo!

I had twelve sheets that held my future earnings at stake. Each game prizes ran from $50-75. There was one blackout game at intermission with a prize of $200 and another at the end of the night for $499. I really needed to win this. Figured the chances of winning at bingo were probably better than the lottery. Four games into the night and two of my friends already had won prizes of $50 and $25. (In Bingo if there are multiple winners, they split the prizes).

It was almost time for intermission so that mean a game of blackout for a cash prize of $200. I figured “black out” would be perfect because that’s one of the things I learned in college! (just kidding!). So the MC of the night started calling out number by number. The place was extremely quiet outside of the MC. Everybody was so caught up in dobbing all of their numbers. About 55 numbers get called out and you could just feel the tension in the place. I’m kind of losing my attention and just hearing all of my friends tell me how many numbers they needed to win. We’re now 60 numbers in and you can hear the “oohs” and the “aahs” in the crowd.

The 61st number is called. I19………………………  I dob my I19 and then a lady a few tables away yells: “BINGO!!!!” You hear the sadness hit the rest of the bingo players. All my friends look around at each other to show how close they were. After marking I19, I noticed I had one number left that wasn’t marked, G52. People start throwing their bingo sheets away and I look up at the bingo board. WAIT…….Why is G52 lit up? WAIT……. Why isn’t G52 marked on my bingo sheet? WAIT…………Did I just hit a bingo?

My buddy to the left of me looks at the board and notices G52 was called earlier. So I dob it and throw my hand in the air and say…… BINGO?

Yes, I said it with a question mark. I was confused by it all. Did I really get a bingo? One of the employees walks over and grabs my bingo sheet, reads it off to the MC and she says: “That is a good bingo!”

I should become a professional bingo player

HOLY CRAP! I won! I won! I won! Minutes later the employee brings me over, Not One, Not Two, Not Three, Not Four, but Five twenty dollar bills! $100 cold hard cash in my pocket. As Randy Moss would say, “Straight Cash Homie!”

My investment paid off! We celebrated after with some bingo winning drinks, I only had a $5 tab. Figured I could splurge a little.

Saturday was followed by the Shocker game which I won’t comment much in. I’ve already gained enough gray hairs over it so to sum the night up it was dinner and drinks and a Redbox movie (50/50 which is just a fantastic movie). Sunday was lunch, a free movie (Man On The Ledge, another fantastic movie), followed by an outing at a friend’s house.

The weekend got a little expensive towards the end and I ended up with: $62

Don’t really plan on spending much this weekend at all and ideally should have around the $50 mark by Friday when it all ends. I was saved by my bingo investment. Probably not something that would happen often if I was on minimum wage. But let’s face it: making money on bingo was probably a better idea for me than making money donating plasma. I hate needles.

On to Monday!
Signed,
Professional Bingo Player