Sunday, September 28, 2008

Entertainment Budget

So, having taken personal finance (twice, ha! big surprise I failed it the first time) (but I got an A the second time, whoo hoo!) I know that I should have a budget and that part of that budget can be for entertainment. I haven't completely settled my budget yet because my hours and pay are not consistent each month, but lately I've been wanting to spend all this money on entertainment. Like magazines, Netflix, DVR, DVDs, concerts, theme parks... I've never noticed me doing that before til now. I have a subscription to two magazines, Harper's Bazaar and Teen Vogue and I will often buy Cosmopolitan. Harper's Bazaar is my favorite magazine (the best fashion magazine there is!) and I typically hate Cosmo and Teen Vogue. To be honest, I only got the Teen Vogue subscription for a free poster of the Harry Potter cast that came with it, that is now framed in my room! So when that subscription runs out I will not be renewing it. Cosmo, I don't respect as a magazine at ALL, but I do get dragged into reading it anyway, so I feel like I should subscribe to it because it is usually about %75 cheaper to subscribe to a magazine than to buy it off the shelves. Then, as I was looking into getting a subscription for Cosmo (for only $15, that is the price of 3 magazines, and your getting 12 I was offered to subscribe to Marie Clare and Harper's Bazaar for only $5 each! So, the deal is that I get the first issue of each of those 3 magazines for free, and if i don't want to continue the subscription, I cancel it with no harm done. Or, I pay the $25 in all and now have 3 magazine subscriptions, which can also serve as research and educational material considering I would like work for such magazines someday!
Then, there is the movie/ DVR/ Netflix situation. I used to but DVDs all the time, none more than $15 (unless they were new release must-haves!) but I've stopped doing that because it got expensive and I have Netflix, which I pay $9.95 a month to use. I get one DVD shipped to me at a time and have no late fees. I can trade for another movie as many times as I want to. I have almost 200 movies in my queue and there are quite a few benefits to it. I don't have late fees, they ship back and forth usually next day, they have literally every movie ever, movies you'd never see in stores, and some movies you can watch online instantly from your computer. Now, I have my cable and Internet to pay for too through Brighthouse Cable, and it's actually not too expensive, because my apartment complex pays for basic cable, so I pay the little difference for digital cable, with the guide and on demand movies (they don't have on demand TV shows like Comcast though) so now I would like to watch all these TV shows that are playing; House, The Office, Project Runway, Ellen, Conan... shows I normally am not home to see and when I am home there is nothing on! It's only a $10 upgrade to get the DVR added, but don't know if that's pushing it, when I already have Netflix, and magazine subscriptions, and randomly buy new movies and books.
On top of all that, VERY rarely I will pay to see a concert or go into Disney for they're parties (like Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party) which can be pricey but I don't do very often. And I've really cut back on going to the movies.
Maybe I should just win the lottery and be able to have everything!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

and when do you do your homework young lady??? ;oP