My family budget has an expense category called Phone, Cable, Internet which includes our Cable (actually Satellite) package. The total budget for this expense is $95.37, of which $5 goes to a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) each month. At the time when we signed up for our bundled package, we were unsure if spending the extra $5 per month on the DVR was worth it. After discussing it with my wife for a few days, we decided that it may be nice to have the ability to record shows especially for our 4-year old son. Of course, as always, I wanted to see financial benefits from spending the extra $5 per month as well. I know - If we were truly living frugal, we wouldn’t have Cable or Satellite at all, but I will leave that topic for another day.
After having the DVR for over 3 months now, I have actually been able to see some financial benefits to spending the extra $5. The following list details the benefits that my family has found as a result of having a DVR.
- Movies - We don’t have any of the movie packages offered by our provider and settled for the basic package. However, just a few weekends ago, Starz had a free preview weekend showing several movies that my wife and I had wanted to see. We went through the movies showing for the weekend and ended up recording 13 movies on our DVR. If we were to have rented these 13 movies, it would have cost us around $50 total. Since we are spending $60 per year on the DVR, we have almost made up for the difference just in one weekend! I could have probably reserved all of these movies at the local library for free, but after factoring in gas for driving to the library there is still some savings having the DVR.
- Convenience - Having a DVR has provided an added convenience to our lives. As most parents would agree, having young children leaves very little time to watch television. This is a good and bad thing. We are not the type of people who sit in front of the tube for hours upon hours during the day, but we also like to spend a little time relaxing at the end of the day. Our 4-year old and 1-year old boys don’t allow us much of this relaxation time. Having the DVR allows us to watch our shows that we have taped during the week when the boys are at their grandparents or are asleep.
- Kids Shows - The DVR is also excellent for taping shows and movies for our 4-year old son. While we don’t let him watch a lot of television, having the DVR has allowed us to tape his favorite tv shows and movies that are on the kids stations. We have actually saved money by doing this. We use to be guilty of buying him a movie or DVD collection of his favorite shows every once in a while. We have found that many of these DVD’s that we purchased are actually shown on several of the channels. Instead of buying any of these DVDs now, we tape them all instead so he has a nice collection saved up!
- Entertainment - One way that my family lives frugally and is able to balance our family budget every month is by spending very little on entertainment. In fact, there are many months that we don’t spend a dime on entertainment (other than Cable or Satellite). Having the DVR allows us to record movies (as I mentioned in the first bullet) and other shows that we like. As part of our entertainment, we have the ability to watch these recorded shows and movies on a Friday or Saturday night as part of our weekend entertainment.
I would highly recommend spending the extra $5 on a DVR for anyone who is thinking about it. We have found that it has already paid for itself in 3 months time!
Do you have a DVR or similar device? Do you think the added monthly charges are worth the features offered?
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We have a DVR, and use it for kids shows and special events. We used to have tivo, but now have a dvr through ATT. Tivo was great too, but at $19.99 a month, it was expensive.
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We have a DVR as well. When our promotional package ended with our cable provider, we planned to just downgrade our cable to basic or get rid of it, but when I called to do so, they offered to keep us on the promotional plan for another 12 months.
We love the DVR. We don’t watch a ton of TV, which would be a good reason for us to get rid of it, but at least the TV we do watch is exactly what we want to watch and we spend time “flipping”.
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erk, I meant…
“and we DON’T spend time “flipping”.”
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I’ve had a home-build PVR/DVR for several years now, and I love it. It takes care of taping all our favourite TV shows … lets me run the internet from the couch (like now!) … and best of all, there are no monthly fees!
I wrote up an article about it a year after starting to use it: http://www.bigasssuperstar.com/2005/12/my-year-with-little-eddie.html.
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