Originally Posted by cyccommute

"Flat resistant tires" are only resistant to flats. They aren't immune from flats. While where you live has some influence on the rate of flats, I've still managed to get flats with flat resistant tires in places where goatheads aren't a problem.
Someone is ripping you off! If you paid $4.50 for a patch kit, you paid $2.50 too much. Rema TipTop patch kits run about $2 and have enough patches to fix 7 tubes. At $9 per tube (which is also high in my experience), that's $27 vs $2. I can afford to throw out tubes after each puncture but there are the voices of my depression era parents in my head telling me that $25 is a lot of money.
I don't know what you are doing to your glue patch kits but I find them to be far from a single use item. I check my patch kits at the beginning of each summer to see if the glue has dried and replace the glue with a fresh tube. Even then, a properly sealed glue tube will last me a year or even more. New tubes of glue that haven't been opened will last for decades.
Just because you average 1 flat per year doesn't mean that you can't have a very bad day. Flats are entirely random and I've had instances where I've blown through my spare tube, my patch kit, patch kit of the three other people on my ride and still ended up walking the last mile of the ride. Granted this was in an area where the goatheads are legend but I've done the same ride and not had one flat.