How Books Made Me A Better Shopper

The year is 2007, I have a Barnes & Noble Membership, with the member’s discount I pre-ordered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and life couldn’t be better. I had no concept of the money my Mother spent on me in those years of youthful ignorance, especially on books. I loved Manga, and Manga did not love my Mother at $9.99 a volume, not including tax.

Now, there is no shame in buying new books, of walking into a Barnes & Noble or Waterstones, grabbing what you want and checking out with it gripped in your hands like a coveted prize! I still do this when the fancy takes me, but the fact of the matter is that I have to be more frugal if I would like to keep up my book purchases.

Enter in my years of undergrad and being utterly horrified at textbook costs and constantly poor. Now City of Bones certainly didn’t cost Mom three to five hundred dollars, but I realized that I couldn’t afford the luxury of buying new books. I relied heavily on the library more than ever during that period, and I still do, on average I go to the library once a week and have been for about five years.

One day though, I entered my first Goodwill (before I knew their sadly deplorable views) and I realized I could indeed afford books again! They were cheap, usually in pretty good condition and just there for the taking.

Eventually, I branched out to buy at Half Price Books and the best one of all, the little store inside my library’s main entrance. I was buying books I had wanted for years, snatching them up for a couple of dollars (these days for me it’s in pounds instead of dollars) and if it was something that I knew I wouldn’t read again, I got to donate back to the library I used so often, so my money and books kept going back to it and that was important to me.

These days I’m no longer near that library or its dear little store, I’m across the pond but our library here as a small shelf to buy books, and as a family, we go often down the High Street to do our ‘Charity Shop Finds’ that I’ve now taken to blogging about. We also utilize eBay and Amazon of course, mostly still buying used. There’s three of us to buy books for and we have to be mindful of our spending in our case. Recently I purchased a history encyclopedia for my Mini-me and it was 2 quid (about 2.56 in dollars) and free shipping via eBay; where our main seller we purchase from is bookstores that promote literacy here in the UK.

And it’s not only books we save money on, but we’ve also taken buying smarter with other things too thanks to books! Toys, games, clothes, you get the picture.

Let me make it clear though that if I can afford it and it’s a new upcoming author, I buy new/pre-order but I’m in a financial situation that dictates I don’t always have that choice. And I would never ever ever ever [you get the point] judge someone for only buying new or buying a billion books a month, it’s none of my business how other people spend their dough lol.