While going through our monthly budget, my husband and I filled out responses to standard budget categories, such as food, clothing, etc. One of the entries was for magazine subscriptions.
Anyone looking around our house would think that we pay a fortune for magazines (and books). I’m continually working on paring down the number of magazines that come and stay in our house. Most of us are great readers and will resort to reading toothpaste tubes if we must, so this isn’t easy (but that is a subject for the Home blog).
We also tend to have at least one Sunday paper laying around waiting for everyone to get to it before it get used for kindling or gets recycled.
But, believe it or not, that line item on the list had no dollar amount o put into it. We had only one subscriptions fee, an one educational science magazine subscription for our very curious son, a gift from the grandparents–so technically we weren’t even paying for that.
Here are all of the ways that we keep ourselves in books, magazines and newspapers without spending a dime.
Free subscriptions.
There are many different free subscriptions out there. Just do an Internet search and you’ll find so many of them! Publishers boost their subscription numbers by giving away complete annual subscriptions. We’ve gotten everything from Tim Magazine to Family Fun Magazine.
Online
Most magazines and newspapers either put their entire current content online for you to read, or at least post some current content and the rest full in the archives. As a bonus, your house will be less cluttered with reading material.
Library
At the library, you can read current newspaper and magazine issues, take out past issues and even buy old issues for pennies. This is a completely free resource!
Friends
Ask your friends to save their magazines for you when they are done. Most people subscribe to more magazines than they will ever really read, so you may even get some that are completely current for the month and pristine.
So cancel those paid subscriptions and stop buying them in the stores!
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