Sorry, this offer ended. But I will be sure to let everyone know when the new ones come out. In the meantime, you can still order regular gift certificates from the site. Restaurant.com
Any of you who have stopped by this site before might have read that I am, in fact, a Netflix subscriber. (Is there a 10 step program for that?). I have been a member for years and we enjoy our 1 at a time, unlimited subscription for about $12.00 per month. As long as we make sure to watch at least 3 movies a month, we are saving money over going to our local video store. I think we manage about 4 a month, so we are really saving some money over walking up to the store and renting a movie ourselves one at a time at $5.00 a pop.
That being said, I just received an offer to try out the Blockbuster online rental program for 2 weeks for free of charge. Since it was free, I signed up thinking I would compare the two services to see which is better for us. Immediately upon signing up, I was offered a free rental at my local store (5 blocks from my house) while I wait for my first video to be mailed to me. I printed out the coupon and went and rented a video. When I went back to the site to add movies to my list I noticed something; if you return the MAILED movies that arrive at your house to the store itself, you get another free movie in the store that day, and the next one on your online list still gets mailed to you. Wow! The one you rented in the store does not count against your monthly allotment either. So lets say I get 4 movies a month mailed to me and each time I get them I return them to the store instead of mailing them back myself. Blockbuster mails them back for me AND I get a rental from the store free of charge AND the next one on my list gets sent to me. I could end up watching 8 free movies a month for the same price I pay for my Netflix subscription for 4 movies.
My wife and I used to only drink bottled water back in the day; we were afraid of the municipal water supply in our area of town. However, as we became more environmentally aware, we started looking at the facts surrounding bottled water. Adding that to the extra expense of buying gallons of bottled water a week is what changed our minds on tap water. And upon investigating, we found that our water was ok, so now we have a PUR water filter on our tap and get all the clean water we want for about $15 every 3 months (the cost of a new filter). Of course, those of you who pay for your own water at your house pay more, but it is still a lot less than what bottled water would cost you. According to the NRDC, 25 to 40 percent of all bottled water comes from the tap; why pay for a product that gets delivered free or nearly free of charge right into your house? And both Aquafina from the Pepsi-Cola Company and Dasani from The Coca-Cola Company are just both from municipal water systems. It seems silly, but most of the time that bottled water you buy is filtered just like you could do at home for much cheaper. Why pay the middle man?
On this fine Tuesday morning, Fire Finance has gone and put up a great Festival of Frugality. With over 25 great posts on frugality, there is a lot to see over there!
Some of my favorites from this week’s festival are:
Frugal? Cheap? Voluntary Simplicty? Definitions! from No Credit Needed. See, there is a difference between being cheap, being frugal, and living simply. Great post.
Over at Savvy Steward, the Festival of Frugality #56 is up this morning! Be sure to check out all the great posts in this festival, including my post Savvy chose to include titled “The Master List – 66 Ways to Save Money”..
Some of the posts that caught my eye from this week’s festival included:
Go be frugal!
