Sometimes it can be hard to justify the cost of a home theater to a significant other. Despite the obvious advancement in picture and sound quality offered by home theater sometimes a long hard look at the money you’ll save by being entertained at home can open up your finance committee’s purse strings.

Going Out Costs Money
Babysitters, restaurants, tickets, concessions, transportation, and time all add up to make a night out alone or with the whole family a costly adventure. Dinner and a Movie for a family can easily cost $100+. A home theater can make your home entertainment facilities so great that you can minimize the need to go out.

The time and hassle count as well. Any time spent not traveling is extra entertainment time. $50 here and $80 there adds up to a whole lot of savings every year. Just spending $100 less a week in entertainment is $5200 a year in your pocket, and you can get a lot of home theater with that extra money.

The Average Life Span
A home theater’s life span can be anywhere from 5-30 years. TVs will likely need to be replaced every 7-10 years depending on technology advancements, breakage, and your personal desires to upgrade. Well made audio components like receivers, amplifiers and speakers, can last 20-30 years with little maintenance. 

In short, a home theater can last a long time while providing a much more entertaining experience with movies, TV, music, and gaming.

$36,400 over 7
Assuming a $100 a week entertainment savings you could save $36,400 in entertainment expenses. Of course it’s up to you to argue whether that’s money in the bank or justification to spend 36K on an absolutely killer home theater.

Media
With a home theater you will likely buy more movies, music, and games to use on your home entertainment palace. However, the cost of media is diluted over time/usage when you add the reusability of the media purchased and the hours of entertainment that it provides.

The Sweet Spot of Pricing
The best way IMHO to build a home theater is one step at a time. Unless you’re a music connoisseur, a big HDTV will have the most impact and value on your home entertainment. An HDTV, upscaling DVD, and HD Cable or Satellite is a great place to begin. Followed by a receiver, speakers, and subwoofer.

Here are a few major advantages to building a home theater piece by piece.

1. It’s less of hit monetarily and doesn’t force you to buy cheap equipment that you otherwise would not due to cost. Also spending less tends to be more “spouse friendly”
2. Adding one piece at a time is a lot less stressful as you can connect, setup, and learn at a slower pace.
3. It’s slows down and focuses purchasing decisions. It’s easy to get frustrated/overwhelmed when looking for all the pieces to the puzzle at once.
4. Adding slowly enables you to enjoy the impact each addition makes to your home theater.

Having had to rebuild my home theater from scratch due to fire I can attest it’s much more special bring individual pieces of home theater nirvana home piece by piece.

So go out there and fight for your home theater dream, or kindly plead your case!

Whichever method works for you there’s no denying a home theater is a great luxury to have.