Our Little Sacrifice

Doc and I are terrible with money. Neither one of us wants to be responsible for bringing home the bacon or frying it up in the pan. We don't like keeping track of it either. As you can imagine, we are, therefore, in debt. Some of it is good debt, some bad. I've been following allong with the Budgeting Babe's blog, looking for ways to unwrap the mystery of money management. She's got some great ideas and some of her topics are over my head. But I keep checking in. I've subscribed to her blog so that I can see it everyday on my homepage and remind myself of the wisdom of Snoop: I've got to keep my mind on my money and my money on my mind.

Fortunately, Edwina, my subconscious, has generated a solution to money management for me. A couple of weeks ago, my parents were getting ready to go to Gatlinburg, Tennesee for a long weekend. They were driving and taking our car DVD player with them. My Dad was flipping through my DVD books seeing if there were any they'd like to watch on their trip. Every now and then, he'd find one he liked or one he was mystified by, like why we have the complete opus of Lee van Cleef.

"What does our movie collection say about us?" I pondered aloud.

"You spend a lot of money on movies," he said, matter-of-factly.

"Huh," I said.

That short interaction stayed with me as we moved all of our stuff into our new place. Boy, oh boy, do we have a lot of stuff. We don't need all this stuff for sure. Doc and I have tons of books, movies and music CD's. Probably thousands of dollars worth. Get this, though: no one will pay us a penny for them. I didn't know what to do about our money situation. How can we save money? How can we still have fun? I didn't have any answers, so I let Edwina handle it.

Last night, as Doc and I sat in the garage, Edwina handed me the idea fully formed. Well, first she handed me an action, then followed it with a justification. I turned to Doc and said, "Wanna make a pact?"

"OK," he replied, "What kind of pact?"

"Let's swear off buying movies for one year. That means we don't go to the movies, we don't buy DVD's, even if they are a buck."

"Alright," he agreed, "I'm game."

I thought for a moment and then said, "We'll let Mom take the girls to the movies, if she wants to, but we won't go."

"Can we ask for movies as presents?" he wondered.

"Sure," I answered, "That sounds fair; it would give us something to look forward to."

This decision felt so satisfying. I knew Edwina had pulled out a winner. I also began to think about what kind of difference this would make in our budget:

• No more Netflix...savings $11.99/month
• No going to the movies $30.00/month
• No buying DVD's $20.00/month
• No renting movis $15.00/month

That's nearly $80.00 a month savings, nearly enough to cover the cable/internet bill. If we can be disciplined about this and commit to a year without movies, we would save almost $1,000 in a year. That's the price of a short vacation or a down payment on a new car.

"A year without movies," Doc pondered, "now there's a book."

"You should write it," I said, as I always do, "We should write about it on our existing blogs." I didn't want to create another blog to monitor.

"OK," he agreed.

So, consider this our first day in a year without movies. I was very pleased with myself until I saw the preview for X-Men 3. Shit. I'm going to have to miss that one. Maybe next year I'll just drive myself in my new car to see the new Harry Potter movie. Yeah, that's the ticket...