With the coming of the New Year, I want to briefly focus on a few aspects of living a frugal life. I love sharing how we chug along with keeping our goals in this family, and the pitfalls that we may encounter. But, I do also love sharing with you all, and finding out from you all, the ins and outs, ups and downs of trying to save.
Today, I wanted to share the few things that we don’t do frugally. Yes, there are some things that we choose not to worry about when it comes to how much it costs. I do know that these things can be done in a frugal way, but I found that we need a balance in our lives of what to hold back on and what to splurge on. I’ll try to explain why we do what we do in each one:
1. We go to the movies. Movies are something that are near and dear to mine and Hubby’s hearts. Yes, we are the couple that you can ask about “so and so” movie with “so and so” in it, if you don’t remember the exact name. More often than not, we’ll have the answer. This is something that we bonded over when we were dating (along with our love of obsure 80s cartoons) and something we choose not to let go. For those 2 hours or so, we are in a whole other place. It becomes a mini-vacation for us, without having to pack a bag.
Yes, there are ways to save on this. Matinees(which we try to do), free movie tickets from swagbucks(which we’ve done a few times) and even waiting until it comes on video or on television. But, we don’t really like to do that. We like to treat ourselves to a night out, WITH expensive movie popcorn and drinks, and get away through film. Although this is becoming an even bigger splurge for us, we probably won’t falter. When it comes to blockbusters, or those have-to-see kids films, we’re in line to see. And we don’t feel at all bad about it.
2. Cable. Yes, we have cable. Not only do we have cable, but we have cable in two rooms with a DVR box in one room. Premium cable. “Good” cable. This actually is one of those splurges that my Husband won’t do without. He lived with a grandmother and aunt who took a long time to decide on basic cable, and then moved in with roomates who had no intention of allowing cable in their house(this will contribute to splurge #3). So, he feels he needs this. Me, on the other hand, grew up with cable in every room and gets “cabeled out” quite easily, unless it’s on a food show. We do enjoy having cable at the moment, but to be truthful, this would be the first thing to go, on my list, if we needed to cut back drastically.
3. DVDs. This splurge was one that we fell upon when we moved in together before our wedding. We realized that we each had a substantial DVD collection. A few doubles of movies we both loved, and of course, the movies that might have just been loved by one of us. I’ll take responsibility for this one. Since I worked at a video rental place for 2 years, we were able to get the newest releases, and some of our old favorites, for next to nothing by combining sales and my discount. I don’t dare count the amount of DVDs we have now, but each movie that we still have(we purged quite a few a while ago when we moved from our first apartment) actually hold some type of importance. Whether is one that we know will cheer us up, or one that we remember seeing as a kid and takes you back to that time, they all hold a memory of some sort. And yes, we do keep adding to the bunch. Like I said in #1 we have a “thing” for movies.
4. The Boy. I think as a parent, this one is a given. There are a few things that we do frugally when it comes to Sonny Boy, like getting his clothes at a discount, and finding his vitamins and special dietary foods on sale, but if he needs it, we buy it. Plain and simple. The most recent example of this is the amount of his new school. He was already past the age that he should have been in school, and I was very leary to let him go. But, when it came down to it, we did end up picking one the most expensive schools in our area. Why? Because he has less than a year to be ready for kindergarten, and I want him to be part of the best learning environment possible. There are always ways to cut back on something else, but I learned from being blessed to attend 10 years of private school, the best possible learning sets your child up for continued confidence. Confidence not only in school, but in life. So, if we one day have to cut out the first 3 splurges to take care of this one, so be it. It’s that important to us.
Now, because we don’t give on these few things, we do buckle down on everything else. We see these things as the icing on the very frugal cake we build all year. If we didn’t stay aware of all the other aspects of our everyday life, like bills, well taken care-of vehicles, and stocked fridge and pantry, we could not dwell in these “luxuries.” We could easily take away all of these things and ascend even higher into savings, but I wouldn’t want to risk the sanity of my family. I gotta give them some slack every once in a while so they don’t hate me. I’m a good Mom like that; make them delve into the fugal life just deep enough and then pull them back with a new DVD. For this, splurges are just fine for us :o).
Well said and good job! Keep up the good work!
My hubby and I just bought a TV Live and we burned our DVDs to a 1.5 TB external hard drive. The TV Live can connect to the hard drive or to your network and it pulls your movies, pictures, music off onto your PC. Its pretty slick. The TV Live was $120 and now we don’t have a million DVDs laying around, we just have this small box on top of the satellite receiver. Thought I’d share since you have a ton of DVDs…space is precious!! 😉 ~kj
But…being frugal is what makes all the other goodies possible!
Sounds like a happy balance to me!!
Sunnie
I agree with Alex M 100%!
We do movies rarely because of people talking on cellphones, etc. I would rather be comfortable in my own home. But we did movies when we were younger. We also have an extensive DVD collection, most of which has been purchased on sale with some kind of other discount. We like watching some of our favorites more than once.
We too have always had digital cable plus TV and find it well worth the money. We only have what is included in the rent which is up to Cable Channel 117 here in the apt. But that has everything that we need right now! However if a depression hit, we would cancel that in a heart beat.
When it came to our children, we never skimped whether it was clothes or private school. That was a compromise I was NOT willing to make.
Not everyone does everything on the fruality road that other people do. We all need to make the choices that are right for our own families.
Great Post! Happy New Year to you and your family! I hope you are feeling better soon!
I love this post! DH and I are the same way with the TV. I keep trying to see where we can save and cut out, but he’s like ‘Don’t you DARE!’ hahahaha!
Not sure if you use Amazon or not, but I figured I’d share. DH’s uncle uses it and we always give him gift certicates for holidays for Amazon. What he likes, is that he can pick movies he wants, and they alert you ( I guess by email) when the price changes, that way he knows when to buy. Just a suggestion if you want to check it out.
I don’t like to go out to movies, but love my netflix subscription. I mostly rent TV shows because that it my attention span…
But, the way you are with movies is the way we are with travel — nothing fancy but we like our weekend get aways and day trips.
I love love love these comments! We all do so well with our frugality, that I think it’s nice to acknowledge the few things that we won’t “budge” on.
spaghetti, oh yes, of course we use amazon! Thats how I do most of the giveaways on here. Thanks to swagbucks and amazon gift cards, i’m able to do a good amount of them on here. We take advantage of the sales at Hollywood video and Blockbuster for the DVDs we get. The previously viewed DVDs are so cheap and we can get lots at one time with a good sale. We stop in every couple of months to see what new titles are out that we want to add to our collection.
Kara,
thanks for the suggestion on the TV live. Believe it or not, our collection has its own proper place and doesn’t take up too much room, after my ingeniuty of finding a great place to display them without having them in the way. When we have friends over, they basically roam the library and see what movies they haven’t seen or heard of. It’s real estate that is precious to us, but we don’t mind taking up for movies. Like I said, we are addicts lol
We have Dish (cable is not available where we live right now) and I would give it up. My husband is hardly ever home so everything gets recorded on the DVR and we watch it WAY later. And we have Blockbuster online (plus we utilize all the free redbox codes on every credit/debit card we have) so I would be fine w/ using redbox for the newer movies, and blockbuster for getting the shows on dvd when they come out or half the shows we watch are available online for free. Yes we’d be waiting a bit to watch them but I feel like as long as we didn’t start watching a season on tv then have to wait until it came out on dvd, we’d be fine. But he absolutely will not budge on it at all 🙁
We also like to eat out. We almost always have coupons to use and also get some free giftcards (mypoints, or I’ll ask for them for gifts from family) and are pretty cheap (ordering water w/ lemon, paying attention to price of entrees, going on kids eat free nights, etc) but even if we didn’t have the coupons or giftcards, it’s something that we wouldn’t give up. Kind of like you with the movies, we like the atmosphere, it lets us “get away” plus no cleanup, or work.
I definitely agree with you. Being frugal in most areas is what allows you to spend the money on things you truly enjoy. If you cut out everything eventually you’re going to go nuts and start spending like crazy. For us hubby spends on his video games and I spend on books. We also spend on our daughter. Like you, when my child needs something she gets it. I think that’s just part of being a good parent.
I totally agree…my husband and I don’t get to go out very often, and because it is a rare treat, I don’t feel bad about spending a little extra on an outing.(Of course if I have a coupon or gift card to put towards the cost,that makes it even better!) We feel the same way about cable- we’d give it up if times got too tight, but otherwise, program the DVR! 🙂 We recently switched from the local cable company to satellite and saved a bit of $$, so that helped, too. You have to keep a few luxuries in your life- you probably won’t follow the frugal lifestyle very long if you restrict yourself too much!
Hi!! It’s Aj/MrsG(man it still feels weird to say Mrs G) haha. I love this post! This definitely rings true-we’re frugal where we can be and splurge on others.
We too are movie addicts, I had never heard of TV Live before, but my DH is in IT and he basically wrote a computer program and it took 3 tb hard drives to store our current movie collection(we have 3 bookshelves of dvds right now). Oh it seemed to take forever to save all of them, but DH loves the appeal of reaching any movie via remote. Me I like scanning the shelves and picking a movie that way.
Talk to you soon!
We have basically the same list as you, although movies are a rarity cuz we’re fussy about which ones we both want to see 🙂 And I totally agree on cable – we have it, mostly because of DH and HD (LOL!), but if I were on my own, cable TV and the land-line phone would go.
I agree so much with this statement. By saving money elsewhere I don’t feel guilty on splurging on some special food and books. Our weakness is books so our kids have more books than most adults. Now we do get most of them at half price books and I am better about getting them from the library (some books I know I will only read once) but some are just really good friends you want to keep.
Great post! Glad I found your blog. As for obscure ’80s cartoons…do you remember Danger Mouse?? Look forward to reading more from you!