Frugal Friday: Ditch Your Movie Channels

April 18th, 2008

Do you subscribe to premium movie channels? If so, you may be able to cut your movie bill in half with this one quick tip.

First off, take a look at how often you actually watch those channels. Is it daily, weekly, or rarely? How often do you watch movies on other channels? How about renting – do you rent movies more than you watch them on TV?

Before we made the switch from HBO to Netflix.com, I realized we were hardly ever watching movies on TV and renting all the time. Our total bill was well over $20 a month for both our movie channel subscriptions and our cost for renting. That didn’t make much sense now did it?

Since we don’t live anywhere close to a Blockbuster and still have to drive 20 miles to the nearest rental store, we decided Netflix was our best option. Currently we use their 1 DVD at a time option, which costs $8.99 a month. Actually, when we first started the cost was higher and they LOWERED the cost not too long ago. Pretty amazing if you ask me – when was the last time you heard of a company lowering costs for all their members?

On average, we get about 5 movies a month right now ONLY because I keep them for a few days. I could probably squeeze in 10 movies in a month if I returned them immediately. Since I don’t have to pay for the gas to return it, this is a heck of a deal to me. Plus of course I don’t have to pay extra for new releases.

Turn around time on the movies is VERY fast. When I drop a movie in the mail to return it, I can expect another one in 2 days. Plus if I wanted to watch something else in the mean time, I could watch movies online as well.

Overall we probably have saved an average of nearly $200/year just by getting rid of all our premium channels and switching to Netflix. Plus I get to watch all the movies I want to watch instead of what they want to show on TV. MUCH better option if you ask me!

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  3. Frugal Friday: Review Your Memberships
  4. Frugal Friday: $1.95 Fabric
  5. Frugal Friday: Greeting Cards

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