Cancel Your Newspaper and Magazine Subscription

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Are you a newspaper and magazine subscriber? We used to subscribe to the local newspaper and several magazines, but we canceled them all over the last few years. I think this is probably just me being cheap, but lately I hate hate hate paying monthly fees. I’d rather save the money these days.

The local newspaper costs $21/month for a 7 day delivery. This is not expensive, but why should I pay $21 when I can see all the major stories on their website? We can also see reader comments to each article. Sure, if everyone thinks like this, then all the newspaper subscriptions will decline and they’ll go out of business. Oh wait, that’s already happening. Anyway, that $21 will go into my retirement fund instead of going to the newspaper.

We actually love reading the Sunday paper while lingering over a nice breakfast and we occasionally buy a Sunday paper just for that purpose. The real problem with the paper is we don’t have time to read it. When we subscribed, the papers would be piling up for a few days before we had any chance to go over it. By then it’s old news. Mrs. RB40 often felt stressed because reading the paper became one more thing on her already-extensive to-do list. I also felt guilty for throwing out the papers without reading them. They were useful for cleaning our glass windows, but how many papers does one need for that chore?

We also subscribed to a few magazines (fashion mags for Mrs.) and had gift subscriptions for travel/living magazines given to us from relatives. While it was fun to thumb through these magazines, after awhile, we came to realize that there weren’t any really new ideas being imparted. Reading monthly magazines became a chore instead of a fun pastime. We asked our loved ones to not subscribe magazines for us anymore, and cancelled our subscriptions for the ones we purchased. While the money we saved was nominal, the time (and stress) we freed up was exponential. When we need to find an answer to something, we tend to log onto the internet. Does this mean we gave up reading newspapers and magazines completely? Our city has a free weekly that keeps us up-to-date on local news. The Mrs.’ coworker brings in magazines which gets passed around (so what if they’re a month out of date)? We also live in a condo tower with a shared laundry room, so one can find various discarded reading material available for sharing. And there is always the local library if we really want to read a specific magazine.

Do you still have newspaper and magazine subscriptions? Why do you subscribe if you can get the same information online? Would it be better if they move to a totally online model? That way, we wouldn’t have to cut down trees to print newspapers.

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