Saving money at the Movies ~ how even a simple 'Date Night' became a blog entry

This is a repost - 'oldie but goodie' - I thought the new readers might like to see it...

So for the first time in a long time my husband and I went out to a movie at 1. was not animated and 2. without children in tow - a legitemate 'Date Night'

As everyone knows, we are on a hard core budget trying to pay down all our debt early (we are down to a few months left on one credit card & then we will owe on NOTHING but the house - yay!).  In addition to that we are trying to build up our 'emergency fund' AND our 'adoption fund' all while saving a wee bit more for retirement AND we've got two (hopefully soon to be 3) kids who are gonna need college funds - my point is - we have turned the frugal dial up a notch in our house just to kick start all of these projects.

And back to what I was saying - we went to the movies - San Marcos' Edwards Regal Cinemas and saw 'Date Night' at an evening showing - that should have run us $22.50 just for tickets alone - what?!

Luckily we have an Entertainment Book ($15 plus free shipping) that we bought through Ebates where we saved 25% off that $15 cover price (PS - if you do NOT have an Ebates account - you will get an extra $5 rebate on top of that!) There are TONS of movie tickets alone in the Entertainment book - but this one trip to the movies pretty much paid for the Entertainment book alone for us!  Because of our Entertainment book coupons - we spent only $14 on tickets!

We also used our Regal Crown Club card which is free - points add up & you get free stuff - ours gave us a free movie ticket to use anytime before July - yes! You basically get 1 point for every $1 spent. You can combine your card with discount coupons too!

We also became a 'fan' on Facebook which gave us a FREE small popcorn (normally we don't buy concessions - but I do LOVE popcorn & hey - it was free!) no purchase necessary.

I noticed while we were there that on Mondays Regal Crown Club members can purchase candy for only $1 and on Tuesdays RCC members can purchase a small popcorn for $1

Thursdays Regal Crown Club members get 5 bonus credits for each dollar spent!

I think in this economy AND with the prices of movies going up most people are probably cutting back a bit - I just thought I should point out these cost effective opportunities that are out there.

Enjoy ~
Kate

*update* we are now debt free! (i mean other than the mortgage that is) - yay! thanks to our awesome money saving skills being applied to all areas of our lives - including 'date nights'!