Keeping with the videophile theme, I started to look over our own DVD and now Blu-ray collections. You’re probably thinking, here’s a guy who has a personal finance blog with frugal tips that owns a Blu-ray player? As stated before, my wife and I do enjoy watching movies. With my research and patience, I was able to get a PlayStation 3 for just over $200 on eBay via a gift card and Microsoft’s cashback program. Rejoice!
Our collection of DVDs probably surpasses 200 and currently we have just 7 Blu-ray discs. These have been accumulated over many years or we have received as gifts. I would imagine our collection is fairly modest compared to the average household. Of course, we never paid retail for any of them, but let’s assume we did. We’ll say the average DVD upon release was $18 and the Blu-ray was $30. That is nearly $4,000 spent on movies over the years! To put that in perspective, that is over 18 years of Netflix with 3 out at a time!
So now to the guts of this article. We spend so much on all these movies, but how often do we really watch them? For how often we watch newly released movies or movies recommended by friends, it seems we have less and less time to watch our favorites. I admit, there are some movies I probably never watched since purchasing, but then there are those that I could watch over and over and never get sick of them (Lord of the Rings for instance).
So there you have it, I’m guilty of spending money on things that are just material items than anything. It’s like buying a new car and driving it off the lot, the value of DVDs decline rapidly. Couple that with the advancing technology of Blu-ray, your DVD collection slowly becomes obsolete. You say to yourself, you never know where an instance will arise that you will want to watch a given movie. But will it ever happen?
Think of it like this, you’ll spend $8 to go see a movie in a theater. Then you may spend $4 to rent it to watch it with some friends or maybe go right to the store when it’s released to buy it for $20. It’s not too hard to figure you could almost spend over $30 for a single movie that you only watch a handful of times.
While it’s not an easy thing to replace going to the theater, because that is just one of those experiences my wife and I enjoy, we really need to work on saving money by not buying movies anymore. With the emergence of on demand movies, Hulu.com and Netflix, there really is no excuse to purchase movies. If you have an itch to watch a movie again, put in your queue and wait!
You don’t know how many people I know that have a wall full of DVDs, but yet I never see them watch them. It almost seems like we are brainwashed into buying them. I’m sure the situation is different if you have kids, as kids enjoy watching the same movie on repeat for days. I think that is a valid situation to purchase movies.
While I don’t think we’ll totally abstain from purchasing movies, I think we’ll make a better conscious decision whether or not the movie (or TV show) belongs in our ultimate collection.
Do you feel you are overspending on DVDs or Blu-rays? Have any of you already adopted a ‘no DVD or Blu-ray buying’ strategy? What is your reason for buying?
Stupidly Yours,
Matt
photo courtesy of Andres Rueda
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StupidCents was founded by Matt in 2009. His thoughts are shaped by his family and career and seasoned by his endless motivation to succeed personally, professionally, and financially.
Buying movies has always struck me as a stupid waste of money. It seems dumb people are hard-wired with this purchase impulse. I deal with low income people due to my job and most have extensive video collections. However, they seldom own books and most are renters for life. So if you want to live in a low-rent district, keep buying those useless Hollywood releases; meanwhile smart people borrow the same movies for free from the library and watch them in their paid-for houses.
I think that nowadays is stupid to buy music or movies in CD´s and DVD´s having iTunes and Netflix at our service, the only thing that I buy in stores is videogames…
I/we do purchase many DVD’s and I believe it’s justified. One, I don’t pay for or have cable TV. I think that is a waste of money myself. $60.00 a month is 6 movie title purchases for me on average.And many titles I am getting new for $5.00 or less these days.
Two, we rent our movies from Netflix, and then when we like one we see we put it on our “to buy list”. For around $20.00 a month we watch 12 movies a month at 3 movies a week.
I have watched most the movies we have purchased over ten times and some much more than that. Now I am one of those people that can watch a movie over and over and am always picking up something new in it or simply enjoying it because it is a good movie. Many see a movie once and that is good enough for them. So I believe there are many factors that deem purchasing movies justifiable or not.
I agree with most the comments here. If people are just collecting them to collect them, then it’s somewhat senseless, but if you re-watch them as we do, then I think it is much more feasible to purchase them.
I didn’t state either that I don’t go to the theaters. So simply refraining from doing that, to me, pays for the movie itself. The price it costs to see the movie at a theater at regular prices, not dollar night, pays for the movie right there and then I can re watch it/them all I want. It does help to have a nice TV set and a decent surround sound system too for serious movie watchers. Then you don’t really miss the theater experience creating one in your own home, and eliminating the high priced pop corn, drinks and candy that raises the theater going prices substantially as well. And if you want to stay or be in your skivvies you can do that too. Smoke if your like me, pause the movie for breaks, use subtitles, and have the volume adjusted to your liking. I especially like the subtitles as I can’t always understand what’s being said, like with heavy accents, fast speaking, or words not being pronounced clearly with proper pronunciation such as with slang. And then I really like the Special Features and Featurettes as that gives me a better understanding of the movie as well, beside a little more entertainment.
I will just cringe when DVDs will go out someday and I will need to start over again. I had a collection of over 300 VHS and then DVD came out, and as I just replaced a select few and then just collected the releases from that point. But being I don’t watch TV or cable, having a movie to put in and the option of titles is a nice thing to have. I do have to admit though, I have purchased some movies thinking, why did I buy that one, but a year or two down the road I still watched them again, so the money was not completely wasted.
We are all different with different tastes. I am 50 and stay home more. If I were 21 I most likely wouldn’t be buying movies and didn’t when I was that age. Like someone commented, having children changes things some too. I purchased many movies I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for my son. So this is my two cents worth and hopefully gives some of you an understanding why some of us like purchasing movies.
I’m a collector of both DVDs and blu-rays. I will not attempt to convince money-conscious types about aesthetics. No point. You will bypass owning a great classic film if it’s available on lower-rez streaming from ad infested Hulu-Plus or stop and studder Netflix. To me those venues are preview level mediums. Not for serious film viewing. A blu-ray of The Sand Pebbles or Lolita, The 400 Blows or The Seventh Seal is an incomparable experience to a streaming service. Most are packaged with special features like full-length commentaries and many have film scholar comments you’d pay a mint to audit a class to hear. The film itself cost millions to produce, the preparation to disc near hundreds of thousands, maybe, as in Ben Hur millions to produce for the consumer market, with expert finishing, packaging and navigation, and you pay what? $15-39 bucks! On a decent size plasma, or projection screen the restored, hi-def picture and sound is jaw-dropping. Better than the theater experience with just the minimalist home theater equipment. I have over 200 blu-rays and around 400 DVDs collected over 15 years. There are over 69,000 hours in a year. At 2 hours a movie that’s 1200 hours. If I watched each movie 5 times a year that would just be 10% of my available hours a year. What are you doing with your 10%… besides counting your money? Now I’m going to leave you and go watch the blu-ray of Midnight Cowboy, then The Graduate, tomorrow, Straw Dogs and Straight Time(Dustin Hoffman week at my house ).
Phillip…you are wrong.
There are 8760 hours in a year. If you watch all your movies 5 times a year at 2 hours a movie, you spend 6000 hours watching movies. That is 69% of each year, and this doesn’t include sleep and crap. But how the heck do you get 69,000 hours? Since you buy about 40 movies a year, you spend about $3,000 on them. So, we all hope that about 40k was worth a quality that is a bit higher.
365 days/year * 24 hours/day = 8760 hours/year
That being said, I just buy movies my kids will enjoy (got special/platinum editiions of about 30 disney movies (original classics) for about $140 on craig’s list in like new condition) and occasionally ones for me if I find them for under $3, or I got all 8 Harry Potter movies for $20 the other day. I don’t actually have kids yet…but I will someday.
Yep, you’re right. My bad math. I do indeed spend a great deal of time and money my films. You spend very little. I love film. You can take them or leave them. Your passion is for saving money, mine is to have the best experienes possible with great films. And I’m willing to pay for it. I will never be remembered as a thrifty guy, or a shrewd fiscal negotiator. I will be remembered for the films I cherished, and adored to distraction. You can keep the money.
You can have great experiences with great films at the same quality still…just rent it at blockbuster for $1 (or netflix/redbox/whatever for what they chargeyour blockbuster isn’t in a convenient/close place) instead of buying it.
Anyways…you’ll be remembered for your possessions in popular entertainment (not just the taste, but what you actually own)? Really? That is the way you define yourself and expect others to define you (and no, having a number in a bank account helps out your life, if anything comes up and for the future when you may not be able to make as much to keep a standard of living for a family, and isn’t a definition of who many of us consider ourselves)? I guess that comment seems a bit “Fight Club.”
Being defined as a person who cherished and collected many of the best films ever made? Ummm…. Yes. Sounds good to me. And thanks for the “Fight Club” comparison. I’m flattered. About money: now I’m sure you are an exception, as you show some modicum of interest in film, but I know far too many people who have plenty of money who are just cultural dullards. Their uninteresting, they talk too much about their kids, their work, and least interesting of all, their money. Marcuse calls these types “one dimensional”, which is generous. I try to ignore them but they bump into me alot chattering about the latest slapstick experiance they witnessed. I believe this is because they need to laugh constantly. Not wry laughter mind you, but gut-bustin’ belly laughs in response to the most mindless incidents (think flatulence or films like “The Hang-Over”). This is to keep at bay the realization they really have nothing substantive to think or talk about. Just emptiness. But, I’m no better really. Like them, I must also escape. I choose Hawks, Hitchcock, Buniel, Godard, Penn, Welles, Renoir, or Chaplin to get away. They have far more interesting things to say and I leave these meetings feeling restored. Sure that I can endure another day with the rich oafs and yahoos who care nothing about existence except for defining it on Jeopardy!. You see, Locke, (interesting avatar, btw, fill that blank slate!), I am doomed to care more about those films than about the money it takes to see them time and time again, to learn them, in the comfort of my on little hovel of a home, with only the bright glow of the flat-screen to warm my penury little behind.