SAVING ON READING

Did you know that today is World Book Day?  In honor of everything literary, today’s Money Saving Monday blog post is dedicated to savings tips for the book lovers out there. Here are our Top 3:

TIP #1: LITTLE FREE LIBRARY

Make a Little Free Library in your neighborhood.  Essentially, you can set up a tiny book exchange station or “little free library” to share and borrow books for free from fellow book-lovers in your community.   The company Little Free Library is the go-to place when looking for information on this popular trend.  If you do decide to set one up in your community, please note: most states require that you register them.  To see some of the adorable little libraries people have made, check out some of these amazing Little Free Library set ups here.

TIP #2:  ORDER BOOKS ONLINE

While the novelty of roaming around a book store, sipping your coffee and sniffing the freshly printed book pages, is nothing short of blissful, the sad reality is that, at the end of that book store trip, you are going to leave with a book that you paid way more than you needed to.   Book store prices are significantly higher than online retailers like Amazon, and even sometimes, higher than their own website.  What’s our budget-friendly advice?  Go to the book store and roam around, but hold off on purchasing until you get home.  Order the books you browsed in store, online at the retailer’s website using your BeFrugal cash back option and don’t forget places like Amazon as well.

TIP #3:  USE YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY

I know, I know, in this day and age, “the library” sounds so old school.  The truth is, however, most libraries have a vast wealth of up-to-date book titles.  In addition, it’s FREE to register and their policies are quite generous and lenient at the same time. (My local library allows members to take home up to 50 books at a time and the fee is nominal for late book return.)  Into audiobooks?  Most libraries are linked to 3^rd party apps like Hoopla allowing you to download audio titles without leaving the comfort of your home…free with a library membership.  Do libraries sound so ‘old school’ now?