Comments on: Finding Extra Money

By: David

David — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:41:42 +0000

Good points, Matt. Right now, however, life is busy and my Blockbuster subscription is “too much”. Most weeks the movies sit there waiting to be returned, and I wind up only getting 4-5 movies per month on my busiest ones. By switching to the 1-at-a-time plan, I can save more than $100 over the whole year, without losing out on new movies. When my debt is repaid, or when I get more spare time, I will likely go back to 2 or 3 at a time. Rhapsody is a no-brainer, I can do without iTunes for now, even though Rhapsody isn’t the most awesome thing on a Mac.

Either way, don’t get me wrong; I LOVE the subscription model. It makes budgeting easier, and keeps ledger entries less cluttered. I just don’t want to get “too much” of a plan while I’m in the process of coming out of debt and building a savings account. It may only be a few less dollars per month, but even 4-5 bucks extra can make big dividends on a high interest credit card.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:37:04 +0000

David - found your blog by way of thesimpledollar.com.
First off, you have great content. I can relate to a lot of what you are saying - and in this post particularly due to the subscription nature of most of my entertainment expenses. However, I have found that the subscriptions are actually saving me money when managed right. For instance - for the longest time my wife and I avoided Netflix and Blockbuster Online, opting instead to drive 10 minutes to the Blockbuster Store. Since we only rent 2-3 times a month we figured we were saving money. Wrong. Once I finally looked into, I realized that the Netflix 1-at-a-time (Unlimited) plan actually costs the same as renting 2.4 movies from Blockbuster at the store. Therefore, during months where were rent 3 or more movies we are saving big time. The only time we’d be at a loss for the month is if we rented 0 or 1 movie that month, in which case we’d be overpaying compared to the cost of in-store Blockbuster. It’s a fair tradeoff, and when you micro-manage and calculate fuel to get to the store, and the fact that we tended to buy snacks while at the store… there’s a significant savings.

I found the same thing to be the case for the URGE music service over iTunes downloads. I don’t really care if I ‘own’ the songs I download, so subscribing to a library of over 2 million songs accessible at any time balanced out for me as well - taking ~$30 of $.99 purchases per month down to a flat fee of $9.99 per month for roughly the same music.

Anyway, keep up the great writing.

- Matt

By: Juggling Frogs

Juggling Frogs — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:59:52 +0000

This is wonderful. How lucky you are that so much money was being spent on fees - you can eliminate them without changing your standard of living. I know you’ve just started, but you have a winning attitude.

Wishing you all the best,
CLKL