Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a great discussion on The Simple Dollar’s Facebook page concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I’m going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.

Connie writes in: I trade books by mail. It costs me about $2 to send out a book via media mail and I have to also spend the materials to wrap it. If I just swap page turners at my local used book store, I can get them at $2.50 a pop if I buy a bunch at once. Am I really saving anything trading by mail?

This sounds like you use PaperBackSwap, a service I love and have been using for years. Much like you, I’ve been curious at times whether or not it’s worth it and I’ve ran the numbers several times. Each time, I’m pretty sure I’ve decided it’s a good deal.

For starters, my estimate of the cost of my supplies is about ten cents. I use a sheet or two of printer paper, a single printed page with black and white ink on it, and some packing tape. Media mail varies by weight, but the typical range for me is $2.41 for a paperback in the mail. So, my total cost for shipping out a book is $2.51.

Now, let’s compare that to the used bookstore. At my local used bookstore, they will take most books in trade for anywhere from $0.25 to $1. They also sell used books at varying prices, anywhere from $1 (for Harlequin romances and the like) to $5 (mostly hardbacks). There’s also sales tax on your purchases, so that tacks on another 7%.

If I were just swapping for Harlequin romances, the local used bookstore would probably be cheaper. I could trade in one for $0.25, buy a new one for $1 (minus the $0.25 credit), and walk out of there having paid about $0.80 for a novel.

However, most of the books I want to read there are on the $3 or $4 shelves. I tend to read a lot of nonfiction, some science fiction and fantasy, and some general fiction, too. I might get $0.50 in trade for the books I bring in, but my net cost is either $2.50 or $3.50 for a book I want to read, plus the sales tax. That means either $2.68 or $3.75 for a new (to me) book after paying the sales tax.

If you add on top of that the fact that I can do PaperBackSwap at home whenever I want and there’s a much more extensive selection there, it starts to become a no-brainer.

In Connie’s case, she’s shipping out books for $2.51 via media mail, or she’s buying them for $2.68 at her local used bookstore. For her, the cost is pretty close, so it really comes down to other values. Would she rather support the local business? Or would she rather enjoy a larger selection online?

As for me, I’ll just keep using PaperBackSwap. It’s a service I’ve used for many years to recycle my read books because it’s convenient and the selection is pretty good.

There’s also another take-home point here. If you’re an avid reader, trading used books is really a bargain. Let’s say I spend eight hours reading a book that I swapped for $2.51. That means I was entertained for a cost of about $0.30 per hour.

While that’s not as cheap as the library, it’s pretty cheap, and there’s no danger of late fees or other such things if you don’t get your book finished or if your son drops a library book behind his bed.

Not only that, if you read something at least a little challenging, you’re growing your mind, too. You’re learning something new and improving your literacy. That’s what I call a real value.

I consider Netflix streaming to be one of the best bargains out there in entertainment. For $9 a month (assuming you have a home internet connection), you gain access to an enormous libraries of commercial-free films and television series. You can choose what you want and, if your internet connection is fast, you’ll be watching it within a minute or so.

One problem-within-a-blessing with Netflix streaming, though, is that there is a mountain of content on there – and a fair amount of it is awful. You have to dig around to find good stuff on there, but if you can dig a bit, there’s a lot of good stuff.

Which brings us to a reader email. Tom writes in:

You’ve mentioned great finds on Netflix streaming several times on The Simple Dollar. Why don’t you collect all of them into one place, so we can book mark it?

Your wish is my command.

Below are 75 things I’ve found on Netflix streaming that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, from television series to documentaries, from comedies to dramas. I’m positive that somewhere on this list, there are a few things that you haven’t seen that you’ll love. Some of these you’ve seen me mention before. Others are new.

I’ve broken the list down into some arbitrary categories. Also, all television series are linked to the first season of the series – many series have multiple seasons on Netflix streaming. I’m also going to challenge myself to describe each entry in the length of a tweet – 140 characters or less. (You can, of course, click through to read more information.)

It’s also worth noting that this list is current as of early April 2011. Netflix constantly makes small adjustments to the programs they offer on streaming, so inevitably a few of these will disappear over time, while other interesting stuff is added.

Films – Animation
Ponyo: A wonderful coming-of-age story that my two older children absolutely love.
The Iron Giant: This is my all-around favorite animated movie of all time.
Up: If the first five minutes of this Pixar movie doesn’t tear you up, you haven’t experienced deep love yet.

Films – Comedy
Bill Hicks Live: Bill Hicks is my favorite stand-up comedian of all. This provides four vintage stand-up sets from him.
Chicago: A comedy-musical-drama that won the Best Picture Oscar several years ago.
Duck Soup: This is, in my opinion, the vintage black and white comedy.
Fargo: Extremely dark humor all throughout this film.
Groundhog Day: One classic debate I’ve had with my wife is figuring out how many years pass during this film.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: If you’ve ever enjoyed Shakespeare, this is absolutely hilarious. It turns Hamlet on its ear.

Films – Documentary
Capturing the Friedmans: An utterly gripping picture of a family in crisis.
Down on the Mountain: A wonderful summary of bluegrass and Americana music. I’ll turn it on and just listen to the music.
Exit Through the Gift Shop: An amazing (and often hilarious) documentary on the commercialization of art.
Hoop Dreams: A great perspective on the challenges and exploitation in youth sports.
In Debt We Trust: A deep look at the challenge of personal debt in America.
Jesus Camp: Incredibly insightful and polarizing look at the practices at a church camp.
Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery: Beautiful coverage of the discoveries that Lewis and Clark made on their journey.
Man on Wire: A look at how a high-wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 was pulled off.
Maxed Out: Much like “In Debt We Trust” (above), a great look at personal debt in America.
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan: A musically and artistically rich look at the impact of Bob Dylan on American music and art.
Restrepo: A documentary about life on the ground for a platoon in Afghanistan.
Super Size Me: An insightful and very entertaining look at the impact of fast food on health.
The One Percent: What does the increasing gap between the rich and poor in America really look like?
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price: A look at how Wal-Mart keeps their prices low and profit high through pushing the costs off onto other aspects of business.

Films – Drama
Amadeus: A very entertaining look at the sometimes seedy life of Mozart.
Barton Fink: A very dark look at the life of a writer with an extreme case of writer’s block.
Bonnie and Clyde: A spectacular classic film about the escapades of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.
Charade: One of the best thrillers of all time. The less I tell you, the better.
Everything Is Illuminated: A quirky look at someone coming to terms with their ethnic heritage.
Following: Christopher Nolan’s (Inception) first movie, a dark look at the challenges of writer’s block.
Gangs of New York: A powerful movie about the early days of gangsterism in America.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Jack Nicholson’s performance as a psychiatric ward patient is one of the best things ever put to film.
Precious: A heartbreaking story about personal redemption.
Sling Blade: Billy Bob Thornton is amazing as a developmentally-challenged man in a small town.
The Graduate: One of the small handful of movies I’d call essential viewing.

Films – Foreign
Amelie: A quirky French romantic comedy. If I weren’t married, I’d fall in love with the main character.
Blind Shaft: A bleak but powerful Chinese film about life in the Chinese coal mines.
Oldboy: An amazing South Korean action film that is best if unspoiled at all.
Seven Samurai: A classic Japanese Kurosawa film upon which the American film “The Magnificent Seven” was based.
The 400 Blows: A French film with a very memorable main character about the challenges that juvenile offenders face in their lives.
Yojimbo: A classic Japanese samurai film about a lone warrior caught between two gang bosses.

Films – Sci-Fi/Fantasy
District 9: A powerful film about loss of identity through the eyes of humans and alien refugees.
Escape from New York: One of my favorite films as a teenager, this is a classic sci-fi action film.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: A gorgeous epic film about the harrowing journey of an individual with a great burden to bear and those who help him.

Series – Comedy
30 Rock: A quirky comedy about the production of a television show.
Archer: An animated humorous take on James Bond style spy movies.
Arrested Development: A wonderfully self-referential comedy about a clueless rich family.
Better Off Ted: A comedy about the challenges of working for a soulless corporation.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog: A short musical series about the emotional conflicts of a supervillain.
Futurama: What will the year 3,000 look like?
Scrubs: A great series about hospital workers… for the first five or six seasons or so.
The Guild: A warped look at the lives of obsessive players of online RPGs (a thinly-disguised World of Warcraft).
The IT Crowd: A darkly comical look at how IT workers deal with life.
The League: An amusing but sometimes serious look at the members of a fantasy football league.
The Office: A great series about professional life at a “typical” office environment.
The Office (UK): The superior (in my opinion) British predecessor of the above series.

Series – Documentary
Cosmos: The best documentary I’ve ever seen. Carl Sagan looks at the universe.
Frontline: Not a single series, but a large collection of short documentaries on various subjects.
God in America: How Religious Liberty Shaped America: A great look at the ties between religion and the history of America.
Ken Burns’ The Civil War: Moving coverage of America’s Civil War, and surprisingly effective at humanizing it.
Ken Burns’ The War: An emotionally (and factually) powerful look at the second world war.
Ken Burns: Baseball: A deep look at the history of baseball and how it’s intrinsically tied to American history.
Ken Burns: Jazz: A look at the history of jazz music and the deep ties it holds to the twentieth century in America.

Series – Drama
Bones: A great series about forensic anthropology and human relationships.
Damages: The single best legal drama I’ve ever seen.
Friday Night Lights: If you think this show is about football, you haven’t watched it.
Sons of Anarchy: A harrowing look at an anarchist motorcycle gang and the conflicts they create.

Series – Sci-Fi
Battlestar Galactica: The single best sci-fi television series I’ve ever seen. If you’ve ever even considered watching one, watch this one.
Doctor Who: A quirky British series about a time traveller who pops up at different points and locations.
Firefly: The second best sci-fi series I’ve ever seen, and a bit more tongue-in-cheek than the first.
Flashforward: A great series about the consequences of being able to see six months into the future.
Lost: A wonderful (and deep) series about isolation, life, death, and hope.
Stargate SG-1: A very fun and light series about humans who visit other planets and cultures.
The X-Files: You couldn’t pay me enough to miss this series throughout the 1990s. This is the grandaddy of modern sci-fi on TV.
Torchwood: A great series about a team that investigates abnormal events.
Twin Peaks: A very quirky series about a strange small town and a murder investigation.

Grab some friends (or your honey), pop some popcorn, and settle in for some low-cost entertainment!

Over the past week, the fast food restaurant chain Taco Bell was sued for claiming that the taco mixture used in their products was actually beef. According to USDA standards, a beef mixture served by businesses must contain at least 40% beef in ordered to be labeled as such, and the lawsuit alleges (with some evidence) that their taco mixture only contains 36% beef., not the 88% beef that they claim.

Taco Bell themselves list ingredients in their “meat filling products” that include “water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, maltodrextrin, soy lecithin, maltodrextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch, sodium phosphate and silicon dioxide.”

Silicon dioxide?

Our homemade grilled chicken-salsa burritos, costing $0.30 apiece

Here’s the thing: the lawsuit itself isn’t really all that important. It’s the broader issue that scares me. Consider that the USDA only requires that something contain 40% meat to be called “meat,” whether at Taco Bell or anywhere else you might buy a “meat product.”

If you start digging into the standards for what can be labeled as particular foods, the issues get quite disturbing. Check out this article in which it’s revealed that the standards for meat in school lunches are lower than the standards for meat in fast food.

The point of all of this is that whenever we buy a product, we’re relying on both the company being honest with us about its contents as well as government regulations that do not always have the best interest of the consumer in mind. This goes for not just food, but for all manner of things from toothpaste to makeup to even product placements in television and film.

Our homemade bean burritos, costing about $0.20 apiece

The most common arguments in favor of such products revolve around convenience and cost. All right, let’s look at those.

For comparison’s sake, I took a look at Taco Bell’s value menu. An $0.89 value menu five layer burrito there – which you’ll also have to pay tax on – weighs 248 grams.

In the picture above, you can see my homemade bean burritos. I weighed one of these out of the freezer (because I have several frozen). The weight? 340 grams. It costs $0.20, while you’re dropping $0.95 at Taco Bell.

What about something “better”? I compared Taco Bell’s Chicken Ranch Taco Salad with our own burrito bowls, pictured below. The Taco Bell salad weighs 420 grams, while my homemade one weighs about 470 grams (excluding the bowl). The homemade one costs $2.25, while the Taco Bell version costs $5.69 plus tax, carrying the price up to $6.

And think of the “meat” you’re getting in that “bargain”!

(Yes, I’ve made similar comparisons in the past with McDonalds in my sights.)

The best solution for this problem is to stick with the most basic ingredients possible and exert the most control you can over those ingredients. Be picky about the ingredients you buy for your food – don’t just settle for whatever prepackaged meal has a tasty picture on the box. Be picky about what you watch on television – don’t just settle for channel surfing (or, better yet, read a book from the library).

Our huge vegetarian burrito bowls, costing $2.25 apiece

I think it’s fairly clear at this point that there are huge cost savings that can be found from being more involved in the things you consume.

The biggest challenge facing everyone is the issue of time and convenience. People eat at fast food restaurants because it’s convenient and it takes time to prepare your own food. People channel surf because it’s convenient and it takes time to prepare other entertainments.

The phenomenon of convenience, from my experience, comes down to time and energy bottlenecks. I see this in my own life. Weekdays are often very tight, with both Sarah and I needing to get professional work done, three young children to attend to, and regular household upkeep as well. The convenience of simply eating a premade meal or watching whatever television program happens to be on is very tempting simply because it allows us to conserve energy and time for other purposes.

At other times, though, we have large windows of time – and it’s in those time windows that there’s a lot of value in improving the options during those time bottlenecks.

I’ll find good programming to watch and add it to the Netflix queue so I don’t have to think when I’m bottlenecked – just click and go.

I’ll prepare healthy food with good ingredients in advance so I don’t have to exert a ton of energy or thought when we need a meal – just toss it in the oven and go.

Such actions enable me to enjoy convenience without losing quality. I can have food quickly without having to eat “meat.” I can watch something worthwhile without having to surf.

This spreads throughout life. The same philosophy explains why it’s worthwhile to install a programmable thermostat (it saves you money whether you’re pinched for time and energy or not) or air seal your home.

Our homemade breakfast burritos, costing $0.72 apiece

In the end, if everything else evens out, the long term factors win out. If you consistently consume healthier food, you increase your chances for good health throughout life. If you consistently entertain yourself with things that challenge your mind (at least gently), you increase your ability to think through situations as well as having a warehouse of knowledge that can help in many situations.

You’re rewarded with lower health care costs and greater long term earning opportunities.

Convenience can be a very good thing. It can help us survive some of the time and energy bottlenecks that modern life foists upon us. The problem with convenience, though, is that it can often lead us into overcosted and questionable choices like Taco Bell’s “meat product” featuring silicon dioxide. Yum.

We can combat this by simply planning ahead a little bit. Turn on some music this Saturday and make a batch of burritos for the freezer so you’re not left with a fast food stop this week. Install a programmable thermostat so you don’t have to remember to adjust the thermostat every time you go to bed, get up, or leave for work (and you’re not paying for it if you forget in a bottlenecked period). Seek out some documentaries or other programming on topics that really excite you and record them so that the next time you flop on the couch, you can just hit a buttion and watch something fulfilling instead of channel surfing through a wasteland.

You save money. You eat healthier. You don’t lose convenience. And you’re not left eating “meat product.” It’s a win all around.

As I’ve mentioned before, I consider Netflix to be an excellent low-cost alternative to cable. Having Netflix gives you access not only to almost every DVD known to man (sent to you in the mail), but you also have access to their extensive streaming library. In other words, if you have high speed internet at home, you can watch a lot of movies and TV series (without commercial interruption) at no additional cost with just a button click. Not bad for $9 a month.

So, what do we use it for? In the evenings, we certainly do use it for a bit of entertainment to unwind a couple nights a week (we’re watching Doctor Who seasons right now), but my wife and I often dig deep into the documentaries in order to learn about a new topic and give us some food for thought on a particular subject.

Two big caveats. First, documentaries can definitely be as biased as anything else. I watch a documentary not because I believe it’s hard fact, but because it can often be a very compelling way of introducing an idea or making a case for another idea. A good documentary shouldn’t leave you thinking you now have all the answers, but should encourage you to follow up by finding more facts and different viewpoints.

Second, a good documentary should do just two things: it should make a particular idea or perspective clear to you and it should entertain you along the way. If it fails at either, it’s not a good documentary.

Over the past decade, I’ve watched a lot of documentaries. Some of them have been awful and failed on both the entertaining and clear perspective counts. Some of them have succeeded on one side or the other – they entertain but don’t have a point, or they have a point but are dreadfully boring.

Below are fifteen that succeed on both sides of the matter – and every one of them is available on Netflix streaming. If you have such an account (and I’m basically encouraging people to ditch their cable bill in exchange for it), then you’ll be able to just click any of the links below and either start watching immediately or add it to your instant queue to watch later.

Consider this an encouragement to cancel your expensive cable or satellite bill.

Cosmos
This is, hands down, the best documentary I’ve ever seen. It’s far and away the best science-related documentary I’ve ever seen, but for me, the take-away message was the fragile nature of human life. We are not invincible and the universe around us is very, very large, indeed. There are scenes from this that have stuck in my mind for many years.

Maxed Out
Maxed Out covers the nature of overspending in America during the buildup to the 2008 financial crisis incredibly well, digging into the specifics of why it happened and the roles both individual choice and companies played into it. If you want more on this topic, In Debt We Trust is solid but nowhere near as good.

Food Inc.
If you’ve ever wondered what the process of moving food from the fields to your local grocery store and onto your dinner plate looks like, this is the show for you. I came out of this with two notable ideas: first, I wanted desperately to change my dietary habits, and second, my opinion of Wal-Mart went up significantly.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
For the flip side on Wal-Mart, this makes the case that Wal-Mart’s business practices in bringing low-priced goods to many towns is often harmful in multiple dimensions. It reduces the quality of work and customer service available in the towns and also forces larger companies into some very shady practices in order to provide the goods at the very low prices that Wal-Mart demands.

Babies
This documentary compares how babies are raised in four distinctly different cultures and economic levels. What can be concluded from this is that you don’t really need to give your baby everything – all it really takes to raise a happy and healthy baby is care from the parents. No mountain of stuff will really make a difference if the parents are involved to begin with.

Hoop Dreams
My feelings on college sports changed significantly after watching this film (and, in similar ways, after reading The Blind Side). Individuals from very broken backgrounds are trying very hard to take advantage of the germ of basketball talent that they have so that they can make a new life for themselves, because their background assures them that many other opportunities in life are going to be closed to them. This is why collegiate athletics are important, in my opinion.

Super Size Me
This is a good one to pair with Food Inc. It documents the effects of eating nothing but fast food for a month on a human body, and the results are fairly ugly. Again, it’ll make you question what you eat, which is a powerful question to ask both for your health and for your finances.

Jesus Camp
This one has provoked more discussion with other people that have watched it than anything else I’ve ever seen, hands down, so it certainly fits here. That being said, it’s going to cause a reaction in you, but that reaction is going to be different depending on who you are and your beliefs. It’s a surprisingly unbiased look at a very conservative Christian youth camp – it almost feels like they turn on the cameras and just let them roll. From my eyes, there are good things and bad things about what’s shown regarding the camp, but some people are going to be much more strongly inclined to see the “good” and others are going to be strongly inclined to see the “bad.” Be prepared for some… discussions if you watch it with others.

Man on Wire
This one stands out to me not just because of a compelling story, but because it shows what can happen if you bring enough passion and repeated effort to the table. It tells the story of a man who walked a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the 1970s without a rope, and how lots and lots of training and planning made such a seemingly impossible stunt possible.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
In many ways, this is similar to Man on Wire in that it documents the result of sustained effort and hard work, as two men compete and train to achieve the highest score in the world at the video game Donkey Kong. I genuinely watched this for a laugh, but it turned out to be incredibly compelling and rather thought-provoking. What drives people to be the best in the world at something? Can I harness that myself?

One last note: the Seven Up! series of documentaries is one of the best things I’ve ever seen, but the series isn’t wholly available on streaming, particularly the first one. However, you can get the disc if you so choose.

Now cut your cable and save yourself some money!

It’s Saturday evening. The kids are in bed. Sarah and Trent want to stay up late watching a movie. What’s the least expensive option?

Redbox If we’re already thinking about this earlier in the day, there are several Redbox machines within ten miles of us that we could visit as part of our shopping trip. Renting a film there lets us choose what we want that day and the cost is only $1 per night. However, we also have to be sure we’re going to return it the next day or else we’re going to be spending $2 … or $3 or more on that rental. Good selection and potential low cost … if you can return it easily.

The local video store It has atrocious selection (the only new release they had in there the last time I visited was Marmaduke), but the price is fantastic – $1 for three days of rental. Plus, I can walk over there and return it whenever I like. Cheapest rental option overall, but the selection is abysmal

Online rentals In terms of giving us the most convenience combined with the best selection, this is the best option. We have several ways of renting a movie online, starting the download, and watching it starting in about fifteen minutes – Amazon Video on Demand, iTunes, and the Playstation Store all allow this. Unfortunately, most of the time, you’re going to be paying at least $2 for that movie, and often more for newer releases. The most expensive per hour of movie watching, but the most convenient.

Netflix It costs $9 a month, but you always have a disc of some sort sitting there that’s a movie that you at one time wanted to watch. On top of that, there’s streaming – but the selection on streaming is very random and loaded mostly with older releases and independent films and documentaries. The best option if you watch more than one or two films a month.

Watching a DVD we already have We have a shelf of DVDs – why not just watch one of those? It’s free, but you’re almost always just rewatching something you’ve already seen.

Given those options, here’s how things flush out for us.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, that alone takes care of the vast majority of your rental needs. We subscribe to Netflix because we watch a movie about once a week and watch some non-commercially interrupted TV shows on streaming, especially during the winter (like Doctor Who, for example). That takes care of almost all of our needs for about $9 a month, which brings our cost per hour of entertainment well under $1.

Without Netflix, Redbox is probably the best option – if it’s convenient. In other words, if you can rent the movie, watch it that night, and return it the next day, you’re paying about $0.50 per hour of entertainment – a very good price. On top of that, the selection is usually quite good at a kiosk. However, if it’s not convenient for you, the cost goes way up – if you can’t return it for a few days, it gets pricy quick.

Wait on renting online until you have a gift card to burn. The prices are so high compared to other rental venues that we’ll just find something on streaming rather than renting a new release for $4 or $5. The exception to this is if we have a gift card of some sort to use more or less for this specific purpose.

One big problem that many people have when they adopt a frugal lifestyle is the perceived reduction in enjoyment they’re going to have in their hobbies. Entertainment spending is one of the obvious places to cut in a budget because it’s not a base need, but it is a very painful cut. If done recklessly, it can certainly reduce one’s enjoyment of day to day life.

This is certainly something that has challenged me over the past few years. I’ve got several hobbies that could seemingly be very expensive on their own but, with some footwork and forethought, I’ve found ways to trim their costs down to almost nothing while still retaining what I enjoy about each one.

Over the last week, I’ve also talked to several people I know who simultaneously have seemingly expensive hobbies yet enjoy them with minimal cost. I made a list of many of these hobbies and the methods used to reduce their costs. If you don’t see your hobby listed below but have a great idea for how to reduce the cost of it, mention the hobby and the cost-cutting method in the comments.

Antiquing Focus on really mastering how to value particular types of items – vintage toys, etc. Save your buying impulses until you’re absolutely sure you spy an underpriced item that you can turn over.

Board games Hit thrift stores regularly as you’ll often find great, complete games for almost nothing. Before you buy new games, attend sessions at your local game store where you can demo such games and try them out. Build friendships with other people who enjoy board games and play their games as often as they play yours.

Camping Buy equipment that will last and will work in lots of environments (so you don’t have to buy multiples). Don’t get too much equipment, as you can make a lot of things with what you find on hand – a tent, a sleeping bag, and a utility tool will work for many people. Don’t buy stuff because you think you might use it or need it.

Coin collecting Know your hobby. Know what rare coins have value, particularly ones that look similar to coins made today. Sift through change you get and find ways to accumulate more change without spending (like getting rolls of pennies or dimes at the bank). Understand what you really enjoy about coin collecting and focus on that.

Comics Check your local library if you enjoy reading comics – they often stock annuals and other collections. Start a “comic circle” where you each buy certain comics then swap them around the circle. For collectors, know the market cold and look in unusual places for bargains, like yard sales.

Cooking Minimize your equipment – you don’t need dozens pots and pans. Cook for yourself, not just to impress others (this improves your skill and saves money on meals). Master the use of ingredients you can easily grow (like our chive patch and our asparagus patch, which require no maintenance at all and just produce free food for us).

Gardening Compost as much as you can as it will reduce your fertilizing costs. Build friendships with other gardeners and share equipment. Harvest seeds and save them for spring.

Golfing Try golfing at the community courses near you instead of at the country club, as municipal courses are often far less expensive and yet still a lot of fun. Once you have a set of clubs, stick with it and only “upgrade” when there are liquidation sales or something else that’s completely exceptional. Don’t be afraid to use “lost” balls – balls hit out in the middle of nowhere and considered “lost” by other golfers – pick them up and toss them in your bag. Get a golf bag with wheels or a pull cart and get some exercise instead of renting a golf cart.

Hunting Handle the meat packing and processing yourself. Don’t buy “special clothes” for hunting beyond what’s required to keep you safe – just add layers in the winter. Focus on specific types of hunting instead of buying a weapon for everything.

Magic: the Gathering Instead of playing in the expensive competitive Standard environment, play Limited instead. Build a “draft cube” (basically, a big, diverse pile of cards) and play using that, particularly when you attend events. Ask to borrow full decks from players that have lots of cards.

Movies Eat a snack and drink a big glass of water before hitting the theater. Don’t buy a DVD unless you’ve already watched a movie multiple times in a theater or as a rental. Swap DVDs (temporarily) with friends. Go to discount theaters instead of “first-run” theaters and you’ll save most of the cost of a ticket.

Pets Volunteer your time at a pet shelter, as it will allow you to bond with lots of pets, help to make sure those most in need are cared for, and also help you to find the perfect match. Learn what an animal’s true dietary needs are and focus on meeting that instead of just buying a big bag of Ol’ Roy – not only is it better for them, it’s often cheaper.

Reading Join your local library – or even volunteer there. Swap books with your friends. Join a service like PaperBackSwap and swap online.

Scrapbooking Keep in mind why you’re scrapbooking – it’s to preserve memories. Don’t spend your money on expensive decorating elements that don’t really mean anything at all. Use highly inexpensive or throwaway items for your decorative elements instead – let that be another channel for your creativity.

Video games Trade games with friends. Play through games all the way before picking up a new one. Buy used games – and trade in any games you have that you won’t likely play again. Never buy new releases – wait until the price starts to drop and you save money while still enjoying the same game.

There are a few themes that run through many of these tips that bear repeating, because they help save money with any hobby.

Build friendships with people who have the same hobby. You can share ideas and equipment with them.
Minimize your equipment. Don’t buy stuff just because you think it might have a use. Go minimal, then expand if you have a true need.
Avoid the “cult of the new.” Never buy a new release. If you wait a little while, you can usually get the same item for less.
Understand what aspects of the hobby you truly enjoy. Maybe it’s just the collecting nature. Maybe it’s just the act of what you’re doing. Whatever it is, spend some time figuring it out, as it will often lead you to savings.

This is part of an ongoing series about how to trim the budget of the average American. As this series focuses on such broad-based tips, some will work for you and some will not. You’re invited to mention in the comments the tips that you found to be the most useful for inclusion in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of this series.

Entertainment – $2,698

Clocking in at an average of $225 a month in a family’s budget is entertainment – and that excludes reading. Going out to shows, watching movies, listening to music, playing games, participating in sports – they’re all incorporated under this banner.

The breadth of this category means that what one person considers “entertainment” spending doesn’t overlap much at all with what others consider “entertainment” spending. Take me, for example – roughly half of my entertainment spending in 2009 was spent on board games, something which likely doesn’t overlap with a ton of other people.

So what universal tips can be offered to reduce entertainment spending and actually be useful? Here are some suggestions, no matter how you spend your entertainment dollar.

Focus on what you enjoy. What do you enjoy the most? Don’t pay any attention to what your friends find enjoyable – what do you find enjoyable? Don’t burn up your entertainment dollars in some sort of race to “keep up with the Joneses.” Instead, focus on accentuating the hobbies you personally find enjoyable. You don’t have to buy a giant flat-screen television just because your pals insist on watching in high definition. If they do, let them host the football parties.

Join a club. Joining an interest-based club is often a surprising money saver. Why? If you join a club, it will draw you more into a specific hobby because you’re spending social time with other afficionados. Quite often, time spent in such social activities is relatively inexpensive, plus such clubs are usually powerful sources for bargains and great suggestions when it comes to a particular interest.

Don’t be afraid of used items. You don’t need the latest and greatest items to thoroughly enjoy your hobby. There are quite a few board games I love to play that are beat-up old copies from the 1960s. I play golf with piles of old golf balls, many of which were actually fetched by my previous boss’s dog (seriously). For a long time, my wife used a homemade golf bag she made herself. Yet, in each case, we still thoroughly enjoyed the activity we were involved in.

Let others foot the bill when you dabble. Interested in trying a new sport? Before you go invest in a bunch of equipment, see what’s offered at your city’s parks and recreation service. Want to learn a new hobby? Visit stores that specialize in that activity and see what classes and groups are offered there. If you’re just dabbling in something to see if you like it, don’t immediately start shelling out the cash. Find opportunities to sink your teeth in a bit first to find out if it’s right for you.

Trade instead of buying. If you’re a movie buff and have friends that also are movie buffs, trade with them instead of buying new DVDs. Have a “swap meet” where you go through each other’s collections and borrow a big pile of DVDs from each other, returning them when you’re finished. You can essentially do the same thing with any sort of collectible form of entertainment, from video games to CDs to books. Similarly, there may be stores in your area that allow you to swap your used copies of items for other used copies.

Don’t go high-end immediately. Often, when people begin to engage in a new hobby, they invest in high-end equipment and materials with which to enjoy the hobby. They’ll buy shiny new clubs, loads of new balls, an entire kitchen full of new cooking supplies, and so on. Don’t. Start off using low-end equipment. Only move up to the high end when you’ve used the low end equipment enough that you can actually articulate and understand exactly how the higher-end equipment will help you go beyond where you are now. One should absolutely invest in higher-end equipment if they find themselves truly enjoying a hobby and can actually articulate real reasons why a high quality piece of equipment will improve their hobby. Until then, go with the entry-level stuff.

Master what you have. This simple technique went a long way towards trimming my video game hobby from one new game a week to roughly one game a quarter (and that one’s often used). If I buy a new game, I commit to finishing it before buying another one. The same rule can be applied to many hobbies – if I buy a book, I’ll read it before buying another one. If I buy a DVD, I’ll watch it at least twice before buying another one.

Maintain what you have. If you enjoy bicycling, take the time to maintain your bicycle. If you enjoy woodworking, take the time to maintain your woodworking equipment. If you enjoy playing on your computer, maintain it by running software updates and occasionally cleaning the dust out of the case. Investing a little bit of time and money now to keep your equipment in good shape means that the life span of the equipment will be greatly extended, saving you a lot of money over the long run.

If you’re a frequent consumer, look to renting. If you’ve already honed in on the fact that you deeply enjoy video games or watching movies or something similar, look for rental solutions instead of buying new ones constantly. Services such as Netflix and GameFly allow you to rent media for as long as you want with one low monthly fee which, if you’re heavily into those hobbies, is much less expensive than buying new items constantly.

I want your help! In the comments, please let me know which of the tips you find most useful for trimming these costs. I’ll include the top choices in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of the series.

Jenna writes in:

My husband and I have been talking about signing up for Netflix, but we’re just not sure if it’s worth the extra monthly bill. Do you have any thoughts or pointers?

Sarah and I have been on-again off-again Netflix users for most of the past decade. Our experience taught us a few things about Netflix – and about some broader money and personal issues related to watching DVDs.

First of all, Netflix really does what it says that it does. You get DVDs in the mail along with a return prepaid envelope. You can keep the DVDs as long as you want and watch them at your convenience. When you’re done, drop them in the envelope and stick it in the mail. It takes between one and two days for you to get a DVD in the mail. Plus, you can watch many of the items Netflix has available directly on your computer via internet streaming.

In all my years as a Netflix customer, the only issues I ever had were a few scratched DVDs, which were handled easily on the Netflix website. As a service, it does exactly what it claims to with very nice customer service.

The question really is do you actually need this service?

One reason that many people subscribe to Netflix is that they believe they’ll use the service a lot. They think of all of the movies and other media they’d like to watch, imagine receiving it in the mail (meaning no hassle at the video store), and they sign up.

But that’s not the reality of the situation.

Before we ever tried Netflix, we would watch about three movies at home per month. When we first signed up, we blew through a big pile of DVDs in the first month or two – a honeymoon period.

After that, we watched about three movies at home per month. And, to put it quite frankly, that wasn’t enough to warrant paying a monthly subscription fee to Netflix, not when we have quite a few friends who are happy to swap DVDs with us all the time and Redbox is easily available to us if we want to watch a new release.

Having Netflix doesn’t change your movie viewing habits beyond the honeymoon period unless there are other adjustments in your life. If you enjoy watching films or watching television series on DVD – and you do this quite often already – then Netflix will probably be a service that you get your money’s worth from.

However, if you don’t watch many movies now and you’re only considering subscribing because you imagine you’ll watch a whole lot more because it’s more convenient, you probably won’t, at least not after the honeymoon period (where you watch a flood of them at first).

That’s not to say no one who subscribes to Netflix doesn’t begin to watch more movies – I know of at least one person who unquestionably does. However, Netflix wasn’t the root cause of that change. That change in how he spent his time was a personal choice to spend more time watching films than to engage in other activities, such as World of Warcraft. This could have been done without Netflix at all – Netflix merely made his new hobby substantially less expensive.

If you watch less than a movie a week at home, Netflix probably won’t be worth it to you. If you watch a movie or more a week at home, Netflix probably will be worth it to you. What matters is your already-existing film watching habits – Netflix alone won’t change them.