The Weight of Money

When we move, I’ll be back in the position of not owning a television. I’ve spent years and years without a tv and have usually just ended up living with someone who had one. Happily, the partner does not own one either and we’ll move away from housemates who own several.

He suggested that maybe we just get one from a friend who is offering one for free, but I said no. Instead, I want to buy a flat panel television (I’m a bit obsessed with flat panel everything — monitors too) and he balked at the idea. “But those are too expensive.” Exactly, this is all about waiting until we feel it is worth that much money to get a television. I personally feel no real rush to head out and buy a new tv, not when the house will need a lot of other more essential things.

However, will this actually cost us more in the long run — owning no television at all?

– I have a netflix account that I love for the independent films and things I’d never rent from a store — we’ll lose that cost but also that form of entertainment. Instead of waiting for a movie on netflix, will we head to the theaters, spend about $21 on tickets and $10-15 on popcorn and soda each time? That cancels out the savings from dropping netflix.

– Will we then increase our hobbies since we’ll not be wasting any time watching the tele? Probably not, we only watch an occasional movie before bed as it is. However, maybe it will even save us when I stop watching the crafting shows and start up new projects because of them.

– Will we spend more on magazine subscriptions and books? I get all my books from the library but haven’t taken advantage of their magazines. I like having something light and simple to read for a few minutes. Most of our magazine/book interests are not readily available at libraries though.

– Will we lost out on easy entertainment with friends by inviting them over for snacks and a movie? This is not something we do now but know we would do once we had our own place. Instead of snacks and movie, we’d prolly switch to a meal and wine which may add up to much more. But then again, I love cooking and wine and maybe that is just the cost of enjoying life.

Overall, it looks like not owning a television isn’t going to affect our budget too much. It may cause us to go to the picture show but that is something that we occasionally do now for entertainment when we want to get out of the house and away from the housemates. Spending the money on a flat panel doesn’t sounds like a good way to spend money, but maybe it would allow us to watch films more often in a more comfortable positions (versus lying on the bed watching the tiny screen as we do now with a borrowed tv). I probably won’t drop my netflix because I really like that form of entertainment, and I’ve lived happily with nextflix and laptop and no television before.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 23rd, 2006 at 11:31 am and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.