Category Archives: Entertainment

The True Cost Of A Family Movie Night

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Yes, now that school is out, the kids wanted to have a family movie night yesterday (Tuesday), so my wife caved (probably she caved because my daughter asked, and it’s hard to turn her down when my my beautiful 6 year old daughter’s face is all scuffed up from her accident yesterday).  We both hurt when we look at her, I know I would have caved too 🙁

So, thinking about it, I decided to post the cost associated with our displaced family movie night (it’s displaced because it’s usually on Fridays).

Costs of Hosting Our Family Movie Night:

  • The movie media (DVD):  I usually go to the library to get the movies (although lately, we have been going to red box) during lunch.  Of course, when it is from the library, the cost is free.  It’s free because I typically go to the library every workday to work on this blog.  When it’s Red Box, it’s a buck plus gas…
  • 1 bag of Popcorn (4.00 for a package of 3), so since we only use 1 bag, it’s runs us $1.41 (this number includes taxes).
  • Reeses Pieces and other candies:  oh lets say 75 cents.
  • Pop for my everybody except my daughter who drinks juice still: $1.25
  • Electricity: Whoa!  I’m getting way to detailed, besides the cost for electricity would be the same since the TV would be on anyway… we’ll skip this cost!

So all told, if we average the movie media (DVD) cost between the library and Red Box, the total cost for “Family Movie Night” comes to….:  $3.91!!!  This number contrasts to my previous calculations where I underestimated that the total costs came to only $2.00

Not as bad as going to a movie theater, but still not free either!  I can honestly say, that before we just did this exercise, I just had a guess with respect as to how much we spent for a “family movie night” event!  My previous estimate was too low…

However, the $3.91 cost is well worth the family bonding & snuggling times, and laughs that the entire family encounters as we watch the movies together.

My favorite part of Family Movie Night is hearing the honest laugher from my son when he finds something funny.  It’s truly heart warming…

What is the cost of your favorite near free family activities?  Most have hidden costs that you don’t often associate with the activity itself… like gasoline cost to go to the park, etc…

Enjoy the summer!

 -MR

My Movie Secret Frugal Weapon

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Do you really want to see this movie?

Bad Movie

 

I hate to waste my time and money on movies that suck!  When I was a teenager, there were a few movies that I looked forwards to seeing, spent the money for the movie and popcorn, only to walk out after the first 10 minutes (“The Barbarian Brothers” is a prime example).  Back then, I was defenseless against such movies and ofter got crushed with disappointment!

Today, life is different because of my secret weapon (drumroll …) IMDB.com, yep that’s right the website IMBD.com – “Internet Movie Database” is my secret weapon to combat movies that suck, whether they are new original sucky movies or lesser quality remakes of the older movies.

It has saved me from re-made movies like “When Day The Earth Stood Still” and “The Pink Panther” etc… 

So how does it work, you might ask? 

Well it’s really simple, just type the movie that your thinking of seeing, and it will pop up facts about it and a ranking from 1 to 10 on how people like you and I feel about the movie.  This is one example where the we (the masses) rule!

The one drawback (an one I consider worth taking) is that often times it’s best to wait at least a week after the movie has been released before going to see it.  That way, the movie has a more accurate rating!

So what prompted me to write this?  My kids want to see “The Karate Kid” remake, but it only has a present rating of 4.6 (as a comparison, the sucky movie “The Barbarian Brother” is rated at 4.1)? 

The older version of “The Karate Kid” has almost a 7.0 rating!  So why are we going to see a much lower quality version of the film instead of just borrowing the original from the library and watching that version instead?… The kids and wife, that’s why! 

Since my wife and kids want to go, we’re going to an old fashion drive-in theater that is close by (cool experience with a decent movie).  So here we go to watch a sucky remake instead of borrowing the original and watching an decent film.  The best feature of the original was the chemistry between Daniel-san and Myagi.  Shoot they don’t even have Myagi in the remake… instead the character is Jackie Chan playing Mr. Hans (or something like that)?  Shoot, what made the original a good film was the portray of those two characters, not another action film… 

Thanks for listening to my rant!  Now you know one of my favorite weapons to combat wasting money and time on bad movies. 

Do you have any secret frugal weapons?

-MR

Update:  Okay, I’m back from the Drive-In, and as I expected the story wasn’t as good as the original.  I think the rating is pretty accurate, it might float up to closert to a 5.0…  The acting was just okay, and some scenes didn’t really transition well…  The original “The Karate Kid” was definitely better…

Red Box Review

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Okay, the Blockbuster stores have closed in my city (and also the surrounding cities).  While we didn’t use Blockbuster much, it was nice to walk through it every now and then looking for family videos that my wife and I watched growing up and that we thought our kids would enjoy.

So there are now three options That I will list below, and then tell what I think of newest option, RedBox.

Three Replacement Options for BlockBuster:

  • Library – This is what we usually use, they are a little slow on getting new videos, but free!  Always a big plus for frugal folk like my wife and I!!!
  • Netflix – Great service!  I subscribed to this a few years ago, and enjoyed it.  We cancelled because we didn’t watch that many movies.
  • RedBox – Another great service that only costs a $1 per day to rent a video.

RedBox Review:

RedBox is a very competitive option among the three listed above.  It’s a great deal deal at $1.00 per day.  They also have a great selection of newer videos.  Another plus is that the machine is very easy and straight forward to use.  Think of a candy or pop vending machine except with a broad selection of newer popular movies in a DVD format.

So do I see any problem(s) with their model?

Yes, first, to return a movie, you have to stand in the same line that you need to stand in to purchase a video.  This is a real turn off, and an excellent reason that we are considering going back to Netflix again.  I think the RedBox company should consider having 2 interfaces per box.  One for purchases, and another for returns.  This would make a big different, and might make me reconsider using them more in the future.  After all, as their model gets more popular, the wait time in line will also increase.  This inconvenience factor will eventually cap RedBox’s growth.

RedBox only has limited selections.  This is not a huge negative though, because the majority of people only rent the new of videos anyway.  But if you have kids like me, this make Netflix a bit more attractive than Redbox.

So it’s obvious that RedBox is really aimed at a certain niche, and I’m sure they will realize that having only one entry point to the box for both purchases and returns will limit their grow as they grow more popular.  I think in the short term, their popularity will continue to grow to a point, but then tapper off and perhaps decrease.  As we all get better with technology, Netflix will prove to be the real winner in the decline of Blockbustor videos!

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that you can return a redbox video to any Redbox machine!!!  Not just the one you got the video from!  That’s a nice feature!  I’ve haven’t try it from an outside state, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that flies too!

Honestly, we actually are still only using 2 of the 3 options above!  Since we have a Redbox literally less than 1 mile away from use, we find that we go to than when we are in the mood for a family night video.

If you have any experience with RedBox, please voice your opinion!

-MR

Priceless Memories, Daughter And Daddy Night Out

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Not too long ago, I blogged that I’m going to spend more money to enjoy life a little more (“Spending More Money For a Better Life, Part 1 of 2” & “Spending More Money For a Better Life, Part 2 of 2“).  In those posts, I mentioned that I was going to increase my monthly spending by an average of $100 ($200 per summer months and less than $100 per winter and fall months). 

While, I mentioned how I was going to spend more on golfing with my son, I didn’t really mention what I was planning on doing with my daugher.  First, I plan on golfing with her eventually, but for now she need to develop her golf swing.  For now we’ll just take her to the driving range until she can hit the ball at least 50 or better yet 100 yards.

So until she’s bigger, I decided to try and create something special with her, and that’s what we did tonight.  My plan was to take her to a nicer restaurant and then to Starbucks for an evening of kid’s hot chocolate and reading.

So here are the details…  First I let her decide which restaurant to go to (expecting Olive Garden or Red Lobster), her choice was Burger King.  The Burger King in our area has a very nice play area, with plenty of kids.  So while not ideal for me, she enjoyed it and I read my book that I brought for Starbucks.  It wasn’t as good of an experience as we hoped it would be, because a dad was their with his 4 year old son (who continuously screamed at the top of his lungs).  The 4 year old kept following my daughter bothering her.  She decided to play with the Lego like blocks instead.  So this part of the evening was fair…

Next we headed to Starbucks!  I ordered a Grande Latte for me and a Kid’s Hot Chocolate for my daughter.  The Kid drinks at Starbucks are only $1.19, so that isn’t too bad.  I then let her pick where she wanted to sit.  We went tried two indoor tables before finally ending up sitting outside on a table my daughter chose.  After she ate the whip cream and chocolate syrup off of the hot chocolate, we started to drink our drinks and read our books.

Time magically slipped by and before I know it, it was 9:00pm (later than I hoped to be out).  So we headed home, she got ready for bed, and I made up and told her the typical Friday night bedtime story.

Overall, a near perfect night out and my daugher had a great time!  Well worth the cost (actually at a bargain price)!

-MR