now that's entertainment!

Most every Friday I have a little panic over how to entertain myself and my family over the weekend. See, Josh and I both work really hard (between jobs and Young Life) during the week and generally look forward to celebrating on the weekends. The real challenge is not in deciding what to do....but in how to pay for it. Its not that Josh and I don't have money to spend, but more along the lines of i'm-so-stingy-and-no-you-can't-have-any-candy-at-the-movie-dont-you-remember-we-are-trying-to-save-for-a-car-and-pay-off-student-loans-and-save-a-little-along-the-way kind of attitude.

Since Josh and I will be going out to eat tomorrow night, we're going to try and stay in tonight. And all I have to say is 'thank goodness for Netflix!' My sister Lauren and her husband Jon gave us a trial gift-certificate for Netflix last year for Christmas. What started out as a fun gift has turned into a money-saving machine. Josh and I are usually too busy to make it to the great movies of the year....which would end up costing us $30 anyways (hey, I have to get popcorn at the movies---sue me). So what we do is go ahead and put all those movies on the Netflix queue. Then, a couple of months later when the previously hot movies are released to DVD, we get them sent straight to our mailbox. So we get to see great movies, at a time that's convenient for us, for only $9 per month. We end up getting about four to five movies a month. We just watched Rendition; have you seen it? Its really good.

Budgeting for entertainment, or budgeting in general, is really all about planning. So, to fit a movie (and popcorn) into my budget I'm planning ahead....way ahead.

Want to know where I'll be June 5? Lining up to see 'Land of the Lost".