Just canceled Netflix…trimming the budget fat

🙁

It was a sad day here at the Debt Defier household. We just canceled our Netflix account. We were already on the lowest plan available, so it’s not really a huge money saver. But as mentioned earlier the little things can add up, especially the ones that are a total waste.

And that is what Netfix has been to us for over a year.

We started out loving it. 3 movies at a time, no late fees. Friday, Saturday & Sunday night all turned into Movie Night! When the mail man would deliver our movies the house filled with excitement. I filled up our queue with triple feature themes. One weekend was a Hitchcock weekend, the next was documentaries, the following was chick-flicks. It was great!

But then the novelty wore off, and we got busy.

We might only get to one movie in a weekend instead of three, or perhaps we went out of town and god forbid, didn’t watch any movies at all!!!

But the real killer was my wife becoming a wedding photographer.

I won’t expound on it to much in this post, but there’s a lot more to being a wedding photographer than people think. Especially when you’re still working a day job and starting a family at the same time.

A smart person would’ve canceled his membership then. But I was hooked!

I loved my queue, I loved seeing the recommendations I’d get from my friends, but most of all I loved rating movies. In a very short time I rated 1200+ movies. To show you how pathetic I was, I’d come home from work and do it during my lunch hour. Finally I stopped that, but I could bring myself to cut the Netflix cord completely.

Until today.

I was just going to put membership on hold, until I reviewed our rental history. At first it was a fun walk down memory lane, remembering all the films we watched. My wife even got in the act by recalling some of her favorites (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Door in the Floor, & The Notebook). But the fun turned to despair when I noticed the return dates. Since January 2007 we had only returned/rented…10 movies.

10 movies in 20 months. 10 movies for $100. $10 a movie.

We were probably Netflix’s favorite customers. We were where movies were sent to become profitable.

I can’t believe I didn’t cancel sooner. I’ve been talking about it for months. But we all know that talk is cheap, I guess not as cheap as $4.95 month, but it’s still pretty worthless. Well no more!

I hit cancel and and I feel good. Sure it’s tough when an era comes to an end, but we’ll just have to get our movie fix elsewhere. Like the local rental shop where you can get 5 movies for 5 days, for $5. We took advantage of that deal after my wife gave birth (even while Netflix subscribers). Maybe this Thanksgiving we can catch up on some films that were languishing on my queue these past couple of years.

We have one more Netfilx movie to watch, one that has been sitting on our TV for months, Eastern Promises. I sure hope it’s good, because I could’ve bought a couple of copies for as long as we’ve had it.

Goodbye Netflix, I’ll miss you…perhaps we’ll meet again.

Since misery loves company, how about you share some of the things that you have sacrificed in the name of “living like no one, so later you can live like no one.”

I understand that this is a small sacrifice, but like Dave Ramsey says, “Baby steps.”

Until next time,

-DD

P.S. In the near future I’ll be reporting a much larger sacrifice we’ve decided to make. But I’ll wait to discuss that after I’ve had proper time to mourn the loss of my queue.

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