Movies

So everyone knows about the issue Netflix has been having.  First, raising their prices by about 25% (or more).  And then threatening to separate the websites for the mail-in dvds and the instant watch.  Two different websites were supposed to be in the best interests for the consumer?  Yeah whatever...

Jared and I decided to try to look into alternatives to Netflix to see if we could save money.  We have the instant and two-dvds-at-a-time plan.  Our list is typically outdated, so the movies we have we sometimes wonder why we wanted to watch them in the first place.  And they sit in our house for about two weeks before we finally get to watching them.  Yeah, not a good use of our money.

Here's what we found as an alternative:  the library.  Looking at the movies in our list, we could put holds on these movies and potentially have them in a couple of days to a week from now.  Granted, some of the newer movies have about 500 holds.  But if we want to watch them sooner, we can use Redbox.  Redbox only costs a dollar (soon to be a dollar twenty), and we can be sure to watch it (who would rent a movie if they didn't have that "I wanna watch a movie" mood?) and return it within a day.  Bottom line, using the library and Redbox will ultimately save us up to twelve bucks a month (I could get Taco Bell with that kind of money - one of my guilty-but-I-don't-know-why-I-love-it pleasures).

We're still sticking with the instant plan because we use that almost every other day.  So, it's still worth it to us.

If you don't have a library card or haven't looked into what your library offers, then you're really missing out.  I love the City of Madison's library system.  My local library is really small and hard to browse for books, but I tend to browse for books online now.  All I have to do is put a hold on what I need, and the library will have it for me within a day or two (unless there's a line of holds ahead of me).  Using your library for your media is a definite potential for saving money (even if you happen to get hit on by random people while there - a story for another time).