Movies: Rent or Buy?

With the rising costs of going to see a movie in the theaters today, I have actually put pen to paper and figured out if it is less expensive to go to the theater, rent a movie or buy a video. I’m all about saving money when possible, so for me and my wife this is quite an important financial issue because we really love watching movies.

For us here in Texas, the cost of going to the theater to see a movie can get fairly pricy. First, if we go see a matinee showing we save about $2.00 per ticket and pay a total of around $12.00. This, of course, does not include getting drinks or food/snacks while we are there. Second if we decide to buy snacks and drinks this adds an additional $15.00 for a total of $27.00. We see the movie once and pay between $12.00 to $27.00 dollars.

If we are patient and wait until the movie is released on video, we can go to the local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video and rent it for about $4.30. The snacks and drinks are apart of our grocery bill and usually cost about $7.00. Therefore, renting a movie we see the movie once and pay about $11.30.

If we are extremely patient and wait for the movies that we want to see to stay on video for awhile, we can go purchase the video for around $6.00 to $12.00. The snacks and drinks remain about $7.00. Therefore, by purchasing the movie we see the movie more than once and spend between $13.00 to $19.00.

On the surface, it looks like we save more money renting. Certainly those numbers above are the least expensive. However, we actually like to see the same movie more than once. Therefore, this means that when we purchase a movie and watch it several times the actual cost decreases. If we purchase a movie for $12.00 and watch it three times over a period of time, we have already saved money compared to renting or seeing at a theater that same amount of time. If we rent to same movie three times we pay a total of $12.60 on just the movie. So if we watch it more than three times, are savings becomes greater. In other words, the more we watch the purchased movie, the more we save.

Now purchasing movies is not a viable option for everyone. I have had people tell me that they do not like watching a movie more than once. That being the case, then renting saves the most money. But we are not like that. In fact, after about a month or two, my wife will forget the content of any movie we have seen, so for her its like watching it all over again. Even though that is not the case for me, I still enjoy seeing the same movie multiple times.

Moreover, we always buy movies that we know we will actually watch more than once. We also have several friends with whom we have identical tastes in films and we usual buy what they recommend. To this day, their recommendations have all been great. So for us, in the long run purchasing movies saves more money.