Do you buy the Entertainment Book?

Are you familiar with the Entertainment Book?  My parents get it every year.  They come out with a new book every year, and the books are all regionalized, so the coupons apply to places in your area.  They have tons of restaurant coupons, that are mostly, one free entree with purchase of another.  They have discounted movie tickets, discounts to places like Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, and Sea World.  It includes discounts to local professional and college sporting events (like the Lakers, Dodgers, USC and UCLA).

It's only $12.99 for the remainder of the year, as savings I could realize on one meal.  But I'm not sure it's such a good idea to buy one.

Here's my thinking.  Like I said, I could realize savings on one meal to make up for the book.  Throw in a movie or two, even car rental and hotel discounts.  It could save you hundreds of dollars over the remaining seven months in this year.  All for $12.99.

So, again, why am I uncertain?  I am wondering if I will end up spending more, despite the discounts.  In other words, will we go out to eat more because we have the book?

For example, the other night after work, my Fiancee and I went to Target to pick a couple of things up.  We had been planning on using frozen ground turkey and jar pasta sauce that we had and stopping by the store for zucchini, and some penne pasta to make a simple, inexpensive, reasonably healthy meal.  On the way back from Target, it was already 7:30pm.  Recognizing that by the time we shopped and cooked, we wouldn't eat until at least 9:00, we almost stopped at this new place near her home called Wild Noodles.

Her sister has gotten food from there before, and it's pretty good.  But you're going to pay like $7-8 for one serving of pasta.  Well, at the last minute, I said, "no, let's go to the grocery store."  For $13 we got two packages of pasta, two zucchinis, a pound of mushrooms, a box of cereal, a half gallon of milk, and three mangoes!  We used one box of pasta, the frozen turkey meat (which cost $1), the jar of sauce (which also cost $1), the zucchinis and the mushrooms.  It was enough for both of us, plus her sister, plus leftovers for all three of us!  The cereal and milk were obviously for later, and the mangoes were our healthy dessert.

Now, obviously cooking is generally much cheaper than eating out.  But consider if we had the Entertainment book and they had a buy one entree, get one free offer for Wild Noodles.  We were getting food for three.  We would have paid around $15 for three meals.  Instead we paid like $8 for six meals!

So, I'm thinking that the Entertainment Book would probably cost us more than it would save us.

What do you think?  Have you ever used this book?

Comments

[Seattle Simplicity]

I tooootally agree with you! Coupons can be deceptively expensive. A classic example is the coupon inserts in your Sunday newspaper. If you're not careful, you'll be tempted to purchase items you wouldn't have bought otherwise, or you'd purchase a brand name item that, even after the coupon discount, is more expensive than the store brand.

[Her]

We've never purchased the book, on the grounds that most of the businesses in it are chain stores. We prefer to patronize our local mom and pop stores instead and support our local economy. Also, some people buy these books then sell the individual coupons on eBay. If there's a specific coupon you want, you can always get it that way for a lot less than the entire book costs.

[MedicatedMoney]

We have bought the book for the last two years, and to be honest, we love it. Unfortunately, we do not use it as much as we should, but we do use it. We pay $20/book for it, and we probably save close to 10-15x that much from it. The most common coupons we use are: movie coupons, restaurants deals, grocery store coupons, and dry cleaning discounts.

I completely disagree with that you will spend more buying the book than not buying the book. Example, we all love to go to the movies, right? We do not go often, but when we do, the price of tickets in our area are $11/ticket. The EB book offers same tickets for $7. $8 right there in savings. Do that 3x a year, book paid for. We also love to try new restaurants (especially the non-chain ones, which in our book, is most of them). Nothing drives me nuts going to a restaurant, paying $45, and finding out it was so-so. With the book, most are 2 for 1 coupons. We can try new resturants for about $20 all said and done. Not bad! And we have found that many of the places will allow you to the use the coupon (card) at their place again just to get your business.

In the end, spending money is based on personal decisions not coupons! Great post!

[Cecilia]

I remember having to sell those beasts for orchestra in high school. Mom always bought one of whatever I was trying to sell, so we ended up with a three of them over the years. I remember that we used one or two coupons the first year, but that the subsequent two were useless.

It may still be a great value for those who eat out often or who have large families. For me, as a single gal, they're a waste of money.

[2million]

I love it. I typically buy it at this point in the year (Spring) when the payback is very quick, 1-2 restaurant coupons and its paid for.

Here is how I make sure its profitable to me. I only buy it if 1) if it has coupons to places we like to go anyway and 2) I can convince some of my co-workers to buy it as well.

To make it a very-profitable "investment" my coworkers (who all live in different areas of town and therefore frequent different places) and I trade for coupons to our favorite places that we will be going anyway.

I'm not saying its cheaper that easting in, but if you go out every once and awhile (like myself) it can easily pay it self back ten-fold in the course of a few months.

[Amy]

I buy a book every year. Usually they run a buy one get one free offer (at some point during the beginning of their sale) and we buy one as a Christmas gift (for the grandparents) and use the other one.

We do not eat out a lot or use it as an excuse to eat out more often. We always do, however, go out to eat for our birthdays and special occasions. The birthday dinners can be chosen from the coupon book and we end up saving money on an evening where we would have spent more.

[My Boaz's Ruth]

My husband LOVES eating out so we go at least once a month. It's in our budget. So we got the Entertainment Book to help out with that expense. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to check it :(

But pretty much, it's just been used when we are going out anyway.

[Tschepsit]

For our region, there are $5 off of $50 grocery coupons for each month. We almost always have at least one $50 grocery trip per month, coupons or not, so it is very easy to get our money back from the book. Also, there are plenty of mom & pop place coupons in our book, but for some reason I just feel guilty using them, so I normally just stick to the grocery coupons.

[MrSwapper]

I've used the book & never thought I'd got my money's worth out of it, but now I trade coupons on http://www.entertainmentswap.com and it's more than paid for itself many times over...

[J]

Love it, used it 5 years in SD and 1 year in LA. I typically buy it when we go on vacation for more than a week too. The coupons for stuff like skiing are good. Typically we like to eat out once a week, so the book forces us out of our comfort zone to eat at different places and new types of food.

In LA I used it on this ethiopian place in downtown.

[Carol]

I used to buy Entertainment Books but I am a regular restaurant person and don't try out new places since so many places have MSG in their food even though they insist they don't use it. Bar-B-Que restaurants are the worst. I never go to movies, I just wait until they come out on DVD and then buy a used DVD and re-sell it on Amazon when I am done. I don't borrow them from the library which is across the street because I tend to forget to return stuff and then get overdue charges. I am a tightwad to the extreme though. I cut my own hair, trade for services on Craigslist, re-sell stuff I no longer use on eBay and buy used whenever possible. It used to be that the coupons were not tradeable or sellable and that a vendor could ask to see the card that correponds with the coupon used.

[Paul]

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[Paul]

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