Living on Less – Entertainment

No matter what your budget, all work and no play is not good for anyone.  Entertainment is one area that people will tend to cut out altogether when they are facing a tight budget.  This is a mistake.  Even if you can only afford $10 a month for entertainment, budget for it.  For our family, entertainment includes cablevision, internet and movie rentals.  A lot of people consider cablevision a utility such as electricity, but cablevision does not heat or cool your home, nor does it wash your clothes.   Also, eating out is a form of entertainment.  Some of you would argue with me on that point.  So keeping all of that in mind, we budget $100 a month for entertainment.

What is entertainment to me is not entertainment to everyone else.  I am a home body.  In fact so is the rest of our family.  My husband works hard all day and he enjoys nothing more than to come home in the evening and stay home.  I love being at home and for entertainment I surf the internet and read from the list of blogs I follow and I also read books.

It seems, however, that most of our entertainment options involve movies and TV shows.  We have our favorites but I must admit to you that I could do without cablevision but the “men” in our house would not be able to live without their sports.  They have to have their ESPN, the Hawkeye Football or Basketball games, the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the NBA Championships and so on.  I did not grow up in Iowa, but back in my hometown in Western New York everything stopped for the Buffalo Bills games.   Yes, it would be a dark day in our household if my husband and son could not be watching three different football games at a time during football season.

Our main TV is over 10 years old and still works great.  Yes, it is a large monster and no, it is obviously not a flat screen HDTV but it works great and I don’t care that it takes up a lot of space on the TV stand in the living room.  It’s paid for.

We have MCG as our provider for cablevision and internet and pay $80.00 for this service.  We added the DVR feature for $9.58 this summer.  Yes, that is a lot of money and for a family that is living on less and now on one income; $89.58 is a big expense each month.  However, we have opted to use cablevision and internet as our primary entertainment and over the long haul; it is a good value for our family.  I might also add that we have always received high quality service from MCG and no, I am not being paid to say that.  If I am going to fork over almost $90 a month to a company, then customer service, tech service and friendliness is very important to me.  Also, I like to support a local company.

If you are reading this article, then you must have access to the internet.  Do your own research on television viewing options whether it is cable, Direct TV or Dish Network.  Remember you get what you pay for, so consider service when making a selection and if there is an introductory special price, be certain you know what that fee bumps up to after the introductory time frame is over.  Make sure you can afford it.  Take all of the introductory offers and figure out what the first year will cost you.  This may mean a combination of a few months of the introductory fee combined with months of the regular price to actually see what the first year fee will be.  Make sure to factor in any installation fees.  Many times people get enticed by the introductory offer and then don’t consider what it will ramp up to after that introductory time has passed.  Make sure you understand what the actual fee is going to be with tax added and also with any installation fees.  Also some people will think that although they know they can’t afford the regular fee, they feel that by the time the introductory time has passed, they will be able to afford the regular fee.  As a general rule of thumb, don’t count on possible (an emphasis on possible) future income paying for an expense.  In fact that is a definite red alert that you really can’t afford something after all.

When our income was reduced, I really didn’t even check around to see what other television viewing options we had as I was pretty happy with what we already had.  The only change we have made in our package with MCG is to drop the telephone land line as we found that we were getting most of our calls to our cell phones.

Our other entertainment expense is Netflix.  We pay $9.00 for 1 DVD out at a time, unlimited numbers of times a month and unlimited instant watching of movies and documentaries.  I can send a Netflix movie back on a Monday and have a new one by Wednesday.  I like to put a DVD in the player when I am doing a lot of cooking and baking. While I do watch a few things online, I prefer to watch via DVD’s while I am doing housework.  I have a friend who watches her Netflix selections on her HDTV using a Roku HD Player and also with her Wii II and she thoroughly enjoys it.

So our entertainment expense comes to around $100.00 a month.  We can afford this.  We rarely eat out as we prefer to eat at home.  I can cook a nice steak dinner for us that is better than anything you can get in a restaurant and it costs a lot less.  When we do eat out, I take the eating out money out of our grocery budget for that week.  Because I have a lot of food stockpiled away, it isn’t a grocery budget breaker to do this.

When living on less money you will need to reduce spending in different areas of your budget and you will probably need to look at what money you have for entertainment in a different light.  Perhaps your budget will allow $50 for an entire month for entertainment when you used to spend that amount in one meal at a restaurant.  Instead of giving up and saying it isn’t worth it, take a hard look at what possibilities there are out there for getting the most for your money.

If I had to choose between food and cablevision, cablevision would lose. If I had to choose between cablevision or internet service in order to save money, I would put my money into an internet service.  Our provider offers this service for about $25.00 a month.  You can watch movies and some TV programs online.  Go to the network sites and you can watch several episodes of your favorite TV shows along with news programs.   I have several sites that I use to watch TV shows, retro TV shows and movies.   Check out Fancast and Hulu.

I also like Retrovision which has a library of several old TV shows that you can view online.  My personal favorite is the TV show “Lost in Space.”  There are also shows like MacGyver and the Rockford Files along with some old movies (hence “retrovision”) that are kind of fun to watch.  You can also view documentaries and old sporting events.  This site appeals to me due to my age.  I was raised in the 60’s so I remember watching a lot of the TV shows and even movies that are listed on this site.  There are adventure movies, cartoons, comedy, crime, drama, and more.

Another site I like to check for interesting videos is the Iowa Public TV website and You Tube.

When I want to watch a program or movie, I have to plan ahead as I find it hard to sit and just watch something for a long time.  I would rather have a DVD playing while I am doing housework or when I am working out, but during the winter months I find that I have the time to catch up on a favorite movie or TV show.

Rarely, maybe only once a year, do we go to the theatre to watch a movie.  It has to be a good movie for us to see in a theatre and not wait for it to be released on DVD.  When we do go to the movie theatre, we nearly always go to the matinee on Sunday afternoons, as it is cheaper.  We recently went to see the movie “Wall Street Never Sleeps” and while we were waiting for the movie to begin, we were trying to guess the last time we had been to the theatre.  It had been about 2 years. Also, eat before you go to a movie theatre and never pay the high prices for popcorn and other snacks at the theatre.

Other options for TV/movie entertainment is to borrow a DVD from the public library or borrow DVD’s from friends.   Many of us have forgotten the wonderful resources of a public library.  Besides books and DVD’s you have free access to the internet when you need it.  Sit in a cozy chair and read a book or pick up some DVD’s.  It is kind of like Barnes and Noble, without the coffee.

Many people use Red Box to rent a movie for $1.00 for the evening.  You can even reserve a movie online.  Just swipe your card at a Red Box and make your selection and you have an inexpensive movie night all ready to go.

Aside from TV and movies, during the warmer weather, we take a lot of walks and bike rides, especially on the recreation trail.  I know that many people would not think of this as entertainment, but I do.  I get exercise in the meantime and I enjoy nature and the solitude of walking or biking on the trail.  If you are discouraged about finances, go for a bike ride or walk on the trail and see the wildlife and you will feel a little less stressed and discouraged.

For families, some of the most meaningful and enjoyable family fun can happen in your own home.  Weekly game nights, movie nights and pizza nights are entertainment ideas that are not lost on decades past but are being revived.  Pull out that old game of Life that still has a teacher’s salary somewhere around $6,000 and compare the prices to today’s new game of Life.  Yes, I said a real board game and not a computer game.  If you really want to do it up good, have a retro game night and get out those old board games that you played when you were a kid and serve up food that your mom made.  We use to always have those Chef Boyardee pizzas on Saturday game night when I was a kid. It was the only time that we got pop to drink.

Other options for entertainment are all the activities on the town square during the summer such as the band concerts.  Have friends over for potluck and a movie.  It is all about friends getting together and having fun together.  Why not have everyone share in the fun by bringing a dish to share?  The host provides the beverage, the movie and obviously the place.  It can be as simple as sharing different snacks to bringing a theme dish such as Italian food or Mexican food.  How about serving waffles and each person brings a topping for the waffles?  That to me is what entertainment is all about – friends and/or family getting together to laugh and have a good time.

Perhaps you have opted out of paying for cablevision because you cannot afford it but you like to watch the Hawkeyes or Cyclones play football.  Work out an exchange with friends to watch the game at their home and provide snacks or exchange yard mowing for sports watching.  Be creative and barter for these services.

Other entertainment possibilities are going to home football games, going to school plays or local theatre productions.  Throw a card game party or meet a friend for something as simple as a cup of coffee at a coffee shop or make your own coffee and head to a park to visit with a friend.

Again, what is entertainment to me, is not necessarily entertainment to everyone else. I look to what I already have in my home for entertainment.  I have cablevision, internet, plenty of board games, plenty of food, plenty of DVD’s and I have family to interact with.  It is interesting to note that the smaller the amount of money you have for entertainment, the more you tend to spend with your family doing things.  As a side note, don’t think that because you have teenagers at home that spending a night eating pizza and playing games is something that they won’t do. It’s as if we as a society have been convinced that once kids get to a certain age, you no longer involve them in doing things at home as they are with their friends more often.   On the contrary, they still need you and planning a family night every now and then should not end when your children become teenagers.  It doesn’t have to happen weekly, but still plan one.

The one plus in getting through these hard economic times is that it has forced us to come up with inexpensive ways to de-stress and be entertained.  It is interesting that the majority of the ideas I have expressed involve getting together with friends and family and doing something together.  It is what families did during the Great Depression.  They may have not had much, but they had each other. The same holds true for today.