Save Money at the Movies

Big Screen TV vs. Movie theater

In my post about furnishing for less, I mentioned at the bottom how sometimes I do believe splurging and spending money can actually save you money in the long run. I believe this to be true for a lot of things, especially in the media/entertainment/electronic areas.

This is where our decision to splurge on a 50 inch Panasonic plasma came in to play. My husband had plenty of his reasons, a list a mile long, but this was mine:

We'll save money.

You see, we are huge movie buffs in our family. We watch movies weekly, almost nightly, especially in the off seasons (of primetime- not sports). We used to go to the movie theater about 4-6 times per month in college. When we got married it changed to about 4 per month. When we had a baby, it changed to about 1-2 per month, and that never seemed to be enough to satisfy our movie cravings.

How much does it cost to go to the theater? About $8 per ticket, x 2 people = $16. It is impossible for me to sit in a movie theater and smell the popcorn and not purchase any for myself. I mean IMPOSSIBLE. I'd probably have a seizure if you made me sit through an entire movie with the torturous smell of buttered popcorn, and not have any for my own. So, concessions = about $10. Then, take into account the babysitter. About $10/hr, so around $25. This means ONE NIGHT at the movies will cost around $50!! That's not even counting if you want to catch a bite to eat before/after, or the cost of gas.

Alright. So if we spend $50 per movie and go 1 night per month, we will spend about $612 that year on the theater. If you go 2 nights per month, you will spend about $1,224! That's a lot of money. Our 50 in. plasma cost us $1,100. That right there has already saved us money.

Now take into consideration the value of watching a movie at home on a 50 in. plasma. No annoying people sitting in front of you or kicking your seat. You can pause for bathroom breaks or to put the baby to bed at any time. Rewind/volume/etc, etc. We long ago decided this set up was sooooo much better that sitting through a great movie with annoying teenagers chatting behind you. Add in our surround sound and blue ray/PS3 player we already had, and the quality and experience is WAY better than the theater.

So, where do we get our movies? We rent from Blockbuster All Access. Netflix is a good deal too, if you don't have a Blockbuster store near bye to take advantage of the in-store trades. We pay $20/month on the Blockbuster plan, and get unlimited movies and can change them out in store if we want. We rent, on average 20 movies per month. Yes, 20. I told you we were big movie people! If we were to rent movies individually at the rate of $4 per movie (or paperview), we would spend $960 a year! Instead, we only spend $240 per year... or about $200 if you were to do Netflix.

Now, I realize a lot of people might read this and think, "well why the heck do they even care to spend that money on movies... on the tv... on blockbuster... " This is where the LIVING your life part comes in. Everybody has their own source of entertainment/relaxation/bonding time/fun, whether it be watching football, mountain biking, shooting hoops at the gym, video games, or movies. Whatever your source may be, I really do believe it is important to spend a little bit of money on that every month/year to help keep yourself sane! This is why I do not like Dave Ramsey's debt payment plan. He thinks every single extra penny you come across should go to pay off debt. He does have many many other great pointers, many of which I'm doing, but with my own customized plan. I'm pretty sure Dave Ramsey would call me a fool for purchasing a 50 in. plasma when we have so many $K's in debt... Yes, I'm sure he'd probably laugh at me. However, if we didn't get the source of entertainment/relaxation/bonding/fun, then I'm sure this last year would have been much, much harder on us. (Wow, I just realized how much of a snob I sound like- really I'm not... I've been quite ashamed up until now that we even made this purchase!).

In conclusion- if you like movies and are thinking of purchasing a large tv... it might be a good financial decision for you after all! Tell that to your husband- he'll love you forever!