For our family fun nights, we usually either play a card or board game, or rent a movie to watch together.  There are so many different options available for renting movies: local video stores (although few of these are around anymore), from DVD rental machines like Redbox or Blockbuster, through your cable or satellite provider, and from companies like Netflix and others where you can order a movie to watch on your TV or online.

Being the frugal family that we are, we mostly rent our movies for family movie night from Redbox.  They have many convenient locations, usually in or outside nearby pharmacies and grocery stores and are very inexpensive – only $1.00 to rent a movie.  Additionally, you can browse on-line to see what is available and then even reserve your copy.  We also like the convenience of being able to return the movie at any Redbox location, not just the one you got it from.

But you know what?  I’ve found an even cheaper way to rent a movie.  Cheaper than $1.00 you ask?  Yes, for free.  Where you ask?  At your local public library.  I mention this to you because our family has been getting a lot of our movies there lately and when I recently told this to some friends, they seemed surprised and said they hadn’t thought of going to the library to get a movie.

Now getting your movies from the library might not appeal to all because they don’t have all the current new releases.  But, you’d be surprised at the collection of movies they do have – dramas, comedies, TV series collections, musicals, suspense, documentaries, and lots of children’s movies.  They have many older movies that our family did not have the chance to see before, and now we can watch them for free from the library.

Some movies that we recently rented (for free) from the library and really liked were Evan Almighty starring Steve Carell and Morgan Freeman, Radio starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ed Harris, 5 People You Meet in Heaven starring Jon Voight and Jeff Daniels, and Tuck Everlasting starring Sissy Spacek and William Hurt.  These are older movies, but we hadn’t seen them, and we got to watch them for free.  But, they do have some more current movies, and the selection at the library has really grown in the past years.

Everybody looks for ways to have some inexpensive, fun family time.  Our two choices for movie night are renting from either Redbox or even better, the library.  You can’t get cheaper fun than that.  So next time you are at the library to get a book for yourself or your kids, check out their movie collection.  I think you will be pleasantly surprised at what you will find.