Do You Buy, Lease, or Get Free Entertainment?
For Christmas this year Kyle received an Amazon (affiliate link – thanks for using!) Kindle gift card (and the giver checked that we do in fact own a Kindle). Receiving that gift card, as well as considering some others, made me realize that we really don’t buy media any more. I can remember only twice in the last five years or so that we’ve bought a song, book, or movie that wasn’t a gift.
It’s not just that I’ve become really cheap or that I’ve shunned entertainment but rather that my concept of ownership has changed, as I’m sure it has for a lot of us in the post-digital revolution and internet age. I used to want to own books and music so that I could have access to them at any moment I would like. Now with subscription services and the internet I can pay a relatively small price to have access to a lot of media nearly whenever I like or nothing at all for a bit less convenience. I never buy music, movies, or TV shows and I only buy books now if I want to have them for multiple future references or lending (which is rare). I’ve literally never bought anything from iTunes and the only time I remember Kyle buying any was the few songs we didn’t yet have for our wedding reception playlist. Kyle has stopped buying video games and now only plays free computer games.
While we don’t buy digital copies of media, we do have a subscription service (Netflix, a gift) and we get media for free from the library and over the internet. We also pay to attend live events, but I’m not sure if those should be considered “experiences” or “leased entertainment.” We prefer to spend on those live events than on owning our entertainment.
Of course digital media isn’t free even if you give it from a free source, because you need the computer/console/player/TV to interact with it, so there is still an up-front investment to partake in those kinds of entertainment. We bought a lot of those devices back when we had more subscription services, but I’m not sure that I really need more than my computer and smartphone at this point.
What entertainment do you pay for and what do you get for free? What is your opinion of ownership of digital files? What subscription services do you use? Do you have any odd or off-the-beaten-path ways of getting media entertainment?
photo from Free Digital Photos
Written by Emily
Filed under: frugality, spending · Tags: books, free, library, movies, music, TV
Why We Don’t Have Life Insurance and When We’ll Buy It
I Wish We Could Buy a House
We Have Too Many Gift Cards!
We Are Debt-Free, We’re Not Debt-Free, We Are Debt-Free, We’re Not Debt-Free…22 Responses to "Do You Buy, Lease, or Get Free Entertainment?"
Leave a Reply
Recent Comments
- Emily on Blog Statistics Update April – May 2013
"Thank you for offering your assistance - I've been reading your niche site serie…" - My Money Design on Blog Statistics Update April – May 2013
"I can feel your frustration and pain with affiliate marketing and trying to incr…" - Weekly Favorites, Gratitude, and Giveaways #109 | Budgeting In the Fun Stuff on Long-Distance Marriage: Communication and Personalities
"[...] PF with Long-Distance Marriage: Communication and Personalities I don…" - Eyes on the Dollar 20/20 Posts of the Week #37-Travel Plans and Craving Carbs! | Eyes on the Dollar on Long-Distance Marriage: Communication and Personalities
"[...] Long Distance Marriages: Communications and Personalities at Evolving Pers…" - Eyes on the Dollar 20/20 Posts of the Week #37-Travel Plans and Craving Carbs! | Eyes on the Dollar on Favorite Posts, Mentions, and Top Comments Week of 5May2013
"[...] Rules, Debt Roundup, My Money Design, Evolving Personal Finance, I Heart B…"
Archives
Categories
Popular
Favorites
The only one we really buy on any regular basis is movies as we’re big movie buffs. We might buy a song or a book once in a blue moon, but nothing really other than that.
John S @ Frugal Rules recently posted..December Blog Goals Update
Why do you like to own movies? Instantaneous access, multiple viewings, lending…?
I love Spotify–best $5/month I spend on entertainment!
The Happy Homeowner recently posted..January 2013 Goals
Kyle uses the free version of Spotify – what’s the difference between free and subscribed? Limited time?
My wife and I are big into movies and probably watch about 15-20 per year in the theater. I’ve personally grown away from buying the DVDs, but she still wants to. We are running out of space on our DVD cabinet!
The one place I’ve completely done away with all spending for entertainment is music. I’ve reached a point where it’s not that important to me. There are so many free streaming options, that I haven’t actually bought music in 6 years.
Edward Antrobus recently posted..3 Ways to Save Money When Moving
Why does your wife want to keep buying DVDs? Do you watch the same movie multiple times or is it about having immediate access when you watch it the first time?
I actually don’t even listen to music any longer but rather podcasts and I can get many awesome ones for free! Kyle uses free Pandora and Spotify. If I ever want to hear a certain song I just use Youtube.
Mostly, she hasn’t shaken loose the collection mentality. But I’m trying! There are some movies that we watch multiple times, but that is probably about 5% of our total collection.
I don’t listen to Podcasts as a rule, because if I’m not actively paying attention to it, I’m not hearing it. Years of living near an air force base mean that my hearing isn’t the greatest. I use Pandora and iHeartRadio for music mostly to drown out the tinnitus.
Edward Antrobus recently posted..DirecTV Saga: Part II
I had a hard time mentally getting over collecting books, too, but after my parents stopped buying them for me I could see that it wasn’t sustainable!
I don’t pay for books (library) or music (streamed). We do pay for movies (cinema or on TV … though I think the age of the physical DVD is well and truly over).
eemusings recently posted..Fitting travel into your life plan
I guess it depends on how fast the big companies are able to compromise on streaming situations with regard to royalties and advertising. We use Netflix streaming basically every day and our Netflix DVD rentals have really slowed – but that’s because we like instant gratification, not that the selection is amazing. We received a BluRay player for Christmas and I have qualms about keeping it as I think/hope streaming will really take over in the next couple years.
I’ve always had a strange relationship with song downloads. Growing up in the Napster era, it doesn’t seem right to pay for songs, since they were so easily illegally downloaded. It’s a weird moral issue for me because I know it’s someone else’s property, but for some reason I feel like it should be free. Luckily, Pandora stepped in to give me limitless free music provided I don’t care exactly what order it’s play in!
I used to download illegally too when I was in high school and I did peer file sharing in college, but since then I haven’t downloaded for free anything that normally would be paid for. I just became less interested in music! I’m thankful that Kyle is satisfied with free Pandora/Spotify because he listens to music all day long.
I buy a few albums from iTunes every year for music, but most of what I listen to is podcast or audiobook. We donate to NPR and a couple of the specific NPR podcasts, but is that charity or paying for media? =)
As for books, I am a huge library junkie and really only buy 1 book/yr. Mr. PoP on the other hand will usually buy half a dozen or more because he tends not to read straight through. But, they’re usually Kindle books that are out of copyright and cheap.
What you didn’t include on your media list that we pay for a regular subscription every month is the news. We pay for 1 online news source that lives behind a paywall. We also buy the local Sunday paper in physical form every weekend. Together, the news is easily our most expensive media spending.
Mrs. Pop @ Planting Our Pennies recently posted..He Said, She Said: Expensive Hobby Or Male Bonding?
Kyle and I have asked ourselves, too, if donations to NPR are “charitable” and should come out of our “charitable giving” budget. He thinks not because it’s a way of paying for a service I use, I think it is because all non-profit donations should fall into that category.
It is annoying to have to return books to the library partially read – that happens to me often. If I decide a book is worth returning to I’ll ask for it as a gift or use book-specific gift cards to buy it.
Good point about leaving off news, which is definitely “entertainment.” I forgot some people pay for news! We’ve never gotten a paper and just read free online news sources.
If you can get it for free, then why should you pay? We do not have a cable subscription but we are subscribed with Netflix. However, we also borrow DVDs from the library. My friends and I share our eBooks. Most of them were downloaded from the internet… for free!
Cherleen @ My Personal Finance Journey recently posted..How Diabetics Can Get Life Insurance
What are the comparative advantages of Netflix DVD service vs. getting DVDs from the library? Do you lend ebooks though your Kindles or do you just send each other the files manually?
We buy netflix, but everything else we get as gifts or for free (legally!)
nicoleandmaggie recently posted..If you were stranded on desert island…
Nice!
I pretty much only do free entertainment at this point. For a while we paid for netflix and hulu+ but they didnt feel worth it. Now I mainly watch free things online or go to the library.
Fig (Figuring Money Out) recently posted..Career Aspirations and Decisions
What do you like to watch online for free? We like Hulu, certainly, but still spend a lot of time on Netflix.
[...] @ Evolving Personal Finance writes Do You Buy, Lease, or Get Free Entertainment? – We virtually never buy media any longer but get most of it for free. What do you splurge on [...]
[...] Do You Buy, Lease, or Get Free Entertainment? [...]