Last week I blogged about how to ditch your cable or satellite bill but still get to watch all of your favorite shows at little or no monthly cost. This week I’d like to encourage you to also stop paying to rent movies. If you still rent movies from a rental store – listen up! Our family has not paid to rent a movie in over 6 years. Here’s how:
Libraries everywhere have free movies that you can check out for a week at a time, and often renew them. Yes, that’s F-R-E-E! Keep it a day late- probably only a $0.25 fine. You can even put these movies on hold, often before they are released. DH was really good at this back in NWA- they would often call him with 3 or 4 new releases at a time).
Many church libraries have vast movie collections as well. Granted we attend a rather large church, but I would very conservatively estimate that there are more than 1300 videos in their collection. About 1/3 of these are kids movies and another 1/3 are tv shows. Again, check them out for a week at a time, with only a $0.25 late fee.
I know many families who are neighbors that share a netflix subscription. When the one at a time DVD comes in the mail, one family watches it, then gives it to their neighbor to watch and put in the mail to send back to netflix.
Another great option for movies? Redboxes found at many McDonald’s, Walmart’s and other stores. They not only offer $1 per night rentals, but they offer free rental codes the first Monday of every month if you sign up for a redbox account, plus other additional days when you sign up for text codes with them. Even if you don’t have a free code, you’re still saving an easy $3 bucks over the rental store.
If you watch a lot of new releases I would recommend that you get setup with netflix for $8.99 a month. That’s a pretty good deal for lots of screen time and hopefully you will use it to watch your favorite shows also.
OK, so these options may not be as convenient as the local rental store, but consider if it’s worth the savings to spend an extra few minutes. Even if you are only able to pare your paid movie rentals down by 1 or 2 a month, or pare the cost down from $4 to $1, think of all the money you can add to your savings throughout a year’s time. How much do you think you can save each month and still get to see the movies you want to watch? That money can go a long way.
We use the free movie rental codes for the Blockbuster kiosks and you can use the same one over with different credit cards.
thanks! We didn’t have Blockbuster in our area of NWA, so I had forgotten about them. How do you sign up for their codes?
I just find lists of them on the blogs and write them down and keep them in my purse when I am out. Brookshires, gas stations and DQs have the kiosks.