Magazines

We really love to read in this house and ever since I was little and my Mum would buy Woman and Woman's Own every week I really enjoy reading magazines. For a while I would buy at least one a week and in addition several monthly glossy publications. A few years ago I realised that I was spending as much as a book on each monthly copy and over that on weeklies so I just stopped, saved up the money and bought books instead ! This led to last year's book spending being into the hundreds of pounds, a discretionary expense we could easily cut.

So now I get one free glossy a month as a perk from our bank account, so that is free as we pay in enough to get the account free just now. We use Tesco vouchers to pay for Mr Shoestring's National Geographic, which we all enjoy and also get The Economist courtesy of ShoestringUSA, that's a lot of reading. However, once I have read the monthly glossy, which doesn't take long at all I look around for something else, sometimes this can be the free magazine from the supermarket and sometimes I try a free magazine from the library. The library also offers e-magazines but they take so long to load on our internet connection that I usually give up.

This week was a holiday and I was looking for a magazine or two, I even stepped into the newsagent ! Freecycle to the rescue, a wonderful lady advertised that she had a few to offer, I volunteered to help her declutter. I was so surprised when I arrived to collect them to discover a couple of years worth of several major titles. What luck ! They are now carefully organised on shelves in month order and I have promised myself not to read ahead, there should be no more magazine temptation this year as there are even Christmas and Easter special magazines in with the others. I shall just have to watch that those home decor magazines don't make me start thinking about re-decorating !

What do you do about reading magazines ?