$20 Date and Harry Potter

Movies are so expensive these days. I remember when I was in high school (1999-2002) a matinee ticket cost $5.50. Today, those tickets cost $12.50 and $14-16 if you watch the movie in 3D. Gulp.

Usually, a movie date would cost $25 for tickets and another $20 for snacks. That's no bueno for Project $$$. So how could we watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 on a $20 budget?

Well, as I was browsing movie times on Fandango, I noticed my favorite four-letter word: FREE.



Out of curiosity, I clicked on it and found that I could get a free movie ticket just by signing up for a free trial period of a service. I chose eMusic because they offer a free $10 credit to download music. It took less than one minute to cancel the trial after I downloaded $10 worth of free music and I got an e-mail with a code for a free ticket within 48 hours!

All it takes is a bit of planning - you can't get the free ticket that same day but for us it was worth it. For the second ticket, I accidentally used the same PayPal account for both TrialPay offers so I couldn't get the second ticket for free. But, two tickets for Harry Potter cost $18 after all the online fees. We printed the tickets and were on our way.

Knowing ST, you know we have to have snacks. When we got to the snack counter, tía Kim (it was a double date) saw four magical letters again - FREE. This time, an offer for a small bag of popcorn. Huzzah!

Using deft texting fingers, we quickly whipped out our iPhones and clicked over to popcorn.yahoo.net (this web address only works on cellphones). In about 5 minutes we had 3 bags of free popcorn (minus one for me since I'm still on the cleanse).

We probably won't do this for every movie we watch (since we only have so many e-mail addresses to use for TrialPay and the free popcorn offer will surely expire) but it was fun to do it today.