Live Frugally by Making the Past your Present

I have spent a lot of time reading other personal finance blogs, my favorites can be found in my blogroll at the right-hand side of the page. It seems as though most of the personal finance blogs that I read focus a lot of time on debt reduction. I fortunately do not have a large amount of terrible (credit card) risk, so I have been able to focus my attention on saving for a condo down payment. The most important part of that previous sentence though is that I am saving, furiously for that matter.

In order to save for my down payment I have been living very frugally. In order to save and still enjoy my early post-college years, I have had to resort to finding as many good deals as possible. I have previously blogged about discounted restaurant coupons, which is one example of the deals I have explored. I have found numerous ways to save money on entertainment as long as you are willing to hold off on the latest fads for a few months to a few years.

One frugal form of entertainment that I enjoy is going to a “cheapie” movie theater. They offer movies on the big screen after they leave the regular movie theater, but before they come out on DVD for rent/purchase. A movie ticket is $2 six days a week and HALF-PRICE for $1 on Tuesdays. The only issue with this strategy of movie watching is you have to wade through the old people if you try to see a movie before 8 o’clock. The key to taking advantage of a cheapie movie theater is to wait a month or two after the blockbusters hit the big screen. If you can hold off on the summer blockbusters for two-months you get a great savings and still get to see Will Ferrell on the big screen in all his glory.

If you don’t want to waste the gas to go out and find a cheapie theater you can always wait for the DVD to come out for rent. The best and most frugal way to rent movies is through redbox. It’s an online service to reserve DVDs at a local redbox location, there’s one at my local Jewel. You pay $1 for a one night DVD rental. One negative about redbox is that you have to use a credit or debit card. There are always numerous promotional codes floating around the internet for free DVD rentals that work at redboxes. There’s no better deal than free.

Due to my athletic and academic pursuits in college I fell behind in my video gaming for four years. I’ve discovered that falling behind on technology is amazing for spending habits. Instead of buying new Xbox 360 games or Playstation 3 games for $60, I’m buying used Playstation 2 games for $10. I’m also finding out that holding out on buying a television is paying dividends. It seems that improvements to televisions, 120 Hz and 1080p, are coming out regularly, which drops the price of older models significantly. The moral of the story is if you can wait for technology by about a year, you can save significant wads of cash that can be socked away for future fun.