What is the actual price of a movie? Consider these four costs before you decide to hit “play”.
Watching a movie has four major components. These are the fixed cost, the one time cost, the opportunity cost and the second order effect costs. Let’s briefly visit each. You of course cut cable a long time ago – or you are about to do that so lets use the streaming services as our example.
Fixed Cost
Netflix offers a standard plan for $10.99 a month ,
Lets say you watch one show and three movies in an average month. That is $2.75 per show.
One Time Cost
By Mrexcel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
And Amazon Prime offers lots of movies for a low a $2.99 each and sometimes over $10 but you are frugal so the one time cost in this example is about the same as Netflix.
Either way each movie you watch is around $3 bucks. And before you binge a show to get that cost per movie down lets consider the opportunity costs.
Opportunity Cost
More pressing than the movie cost is the opportunity cost of watching the big screen for two hours. For example, yesterday, we changed the headlamp bulbs in our car. This cost $30 in parts but according to online quotes the service price is between between $100 and $214. I am not clear if that is per bulb or for both but lets assume it’s $150 to replace both bulbs, parts and labor. We saved $130 bucks on that expense in 20 minutes, got to chat while doing so and didn’t have to take off work to take the car to the shop.
Too tired for such efforts? No problem ! Spend 20 minutes praying or meditation. This is a bit lower energy and has numerous benefits.
In both examples you still have lots of left over time to wander around the house (more health benefits).
The Second Order Costs
The second order effects are the most expensive. Many movies are action packed thrillers which can use a lot of your emotional energy up. These dynamic natural scenes impact your brain chemistry
and in extremes might reduce both the quality and length of your life. It’s fun stuff but for the most intense movies you might need a mental break afterwards and changing the bulbs after a movie might be too much – anyway you have so little time after using two hours of to someone else’s script. This time compression is the worst offender and might end up with a dinner out ($40) since there is no time or energy to cook. Plus the world just blew up on the big screen so what’s the big deal with ordering delivery?
The True Cost
Lets compare the numbers!
The movie abstainers saved $130 bucks and the movie watchers spent $3 on the movie and $40 on take out. That puts the active family ahead by $173 dollars *and* they have a free hour to themselves. Time and money in abundance.
The Take Away
I am not against movies – and they can be made into wonderful family events or a mental break if you are feeling ill. With that said if you work hard during the week to pay for tuition it seems a shame to not know the full price you are going to pay before you hit play as something to do.
“Time is your most important resource. You can do so much in ten minutes. Ten minutes; once gone is gone for good.”
– Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA Founder)
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