Ultimately if you want to save money on a night out in Sydney, and enjoy the week that follows, you need to plan ahead, plain and simple. Do not leave your drunken self to its own devices, it will screw you over. Not only will you end up vomiting on a sidewalk, shoes in hand, while waiting for a taxi – you will be poor.
Don’t Miss The Train:
The last Cityrail trains from Sydney finish up at around 12.05am and start up again at 4.30am. Ensure that you plan to go to clubs and bars that are within intoxicated, stiletto walking distance (around 200m) of a train station. Similarly, if you need to leave outside train hours, catch a Cityrail Night Ride bus. Bus stops are often located near train stations also.
Details of timetables and Night Ride stops are available at Cityrail.com. Use the ‘plan your trip’ function or call 131500 and they’ll do it for you.
Plan To Pre-Drink:
We all know this is a winner when it comes to drinking on a budget, but sometimes even pre-drinking can be too expensive, in which case you should probably not go. If you’re a trooper and can’t help yourself, try going to a local Bottle-O and purchasing only what’s on sale. Remember, beggars can’t be choosers. Otherwise you can always count on considerably cheaper, and surprisingly good, vodka and premixes from Aldi (bare in mind their alcohol closes at 6.00pm), or stick to the trust ol’ goon-bag.
Utilise The Club’s Off Periods:
Clubs and bars need money. Just like you, they too are desperately looking for ways to save and to make money. So utilise this lucrative opportunity.
Go During the week. While I know this sounds lame, if you can replace your Friday and Saturday night binges with a Thursday or Sunday night, you will be saving yourself money in no time. This is a no brainer; clubs are trying to allure people in on quiet nights with cheap meals, drinks, no entry fees and often some awesome mid-week entertainment.
It’s Happy Hour for god’s sake! Almost every decent club or bar in Sydney has a Happy Hour, usually between six and eight. So get there early, jump on those 241 cocktails and hell, you might even catch the train ride home and evade entry fees. To find Happy Hours in your area, visit Happyhourlocator.com, or alternatively, get it as an app.
Get your money out before you leave:
Always have a fail-safe in case you get into trouble. However, at no point during a night should you have to reach for your internet banking. It is just not necessary. If you couldn’t afford to use that money before you started drinking, contrary to popular belief, being drunk doesn’t change that.
Have enough money in your wallet to get you through the night and transfer a small amount that will cover the cost of a bus ride home, one last drink and a cheeseburger. All up, about $20.00 – if that.
If you run out of money, and it is not absolutely essential that you get more, try being innovative and finding new ways to get by, like scabbing free drinks, sweet-talking bus drivers, sharing meals, collecting money of drunk people or betting your friends for drinks that you know you can win.
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