Media Junkie in a Frugal World

I’m glad to know that I’m not the only media junkie who is trying to survive in a frugal world. I recently clicked over to The Frugal Duchess blog (always a fun read), that Miami Herald writer Sharon Harvey Rosenberg pens. She was talking about breaking herself of her magazine addiction as a way of saving money. Sister, you are preaching to the choir.

If you were to look around my home, you would find more stacks of newspapers and magazines than food in our cabinets. All four of use are media junkies and read everything we can get our hands on–backs of cereal boxes included. But paying for and then having to dispose of hundreds of magazine issues and newspapers in a given year isn’t good for the budget and probably isn’t so great for the environment. (A recent Waste Age report says that only 34% of recovered newspaper gets turned into recycled newspaper print. At the same time Co-Op America reports that less than 1% of magazines are printed on recycled paper.)

Getting my news and information online is a great way to save money and the environment, especially now that The New York Times is planning to drop its fee-based Times Select program. So is using my local library to catch up on my reading. Bookstores with well-endowed magazine and newspaper racks are also an option, but they’re not my first choice. I don’t know about you but I’m always tempted to buy a delicious and expensive snack whenever I’m in one of these bookstores. That means that if I spend $3 on a cup of coffee and $2 on a baked good, I’m not really saving money in the long run.

I recently discovered that Freecycle can be a great way to get rid of magazines and pick up magazines I’m interested in but don’t want to spend money to buy.

If you must get magazines to read at home, do your bank account a favor and don’t succumb to check-out-line impulse purchases. I mean, why do you think they put magazine there in the first place? So that when you’re waiting in line and you pick up a copy to pass the time, you’ll find something in there you wanted to read about, and then the next thing you know, the magazine is on the conveyor belt and the cashier is ringing it up. In the long run, it’s cheaper to buy a subscription. I’ll admit that I finally broke down and got a subscription to People Magazine. That subscription, while not cheap, was only about 1/10 of the price of buying each issue of the magazine on the newsstand.

Another inexpensive way to get magazine subscription is to use up unused airline miles. I’m always getting offers in the mail, and last year we were able to subscribe to a ton of magazines without spending a dime.

My daughters school is about to start a magazine drive as part of a school fundraiser. Luckily, I can use the regular order forms to renew my subscriptions, which I would have renewed anyway, but by doing it through this program, I can usually get a discounted renewal price. If that wasn’t possible but I wanted to support the fundraiser without adding to the recycling bin, I would see if I could buy a gift magazine subscription to my local library.