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I finally got the Harry Potter book from Costco for $18.19 since it was the best deal I could get after a little bit of a research. This is compared to Amazon’s $17.99 price plus shipping (For free shipping, I needed to get over $25 worth of literature). Below are the few places I search around when I need a book or magazine.

Books
For most people, having boxes shipped to their house is not a problem so Amazon is usually the least expensive choice if we can group purchases together so each order is $25 (This gets us free shipping).

The other choice would be Costco, Sam’s Club or Walmart which often sells books at a discount. The advantage of going to the store is that we can get the book the day we want it instead of having to wait for the package to come.

There is something new at the airport newsstands lately called borrow and return. For many people, this is a better choice than buying a book outright because we can buy the book and then return it, getting half of the money back. However, buying a book at the airport is usually the most expensive choice to begin with, so getting half back might still not be the best deal, not mentioning the fact that we don’t get to keep the book.

The recommended option is going to the library as mentioned in this article (Remember to read the comment section for more things you can do in a library). You can read to your heart’s content free!

Magazines
Magazines are a little bit of a different animal. Since magazines are a series instead of a single issue, it would make sense to wait till there is a special going on. For example, Amazon lets us subscribe to Money for $19.95 per year (or $29.95 for 2 years), but you can get a year of subscription for $10 using the coupon from the current issue of the magazine.

Another point worth mentioning is that magazines always have promotions that allow people to subscribe to it for free. One that is running right now is a free one year subscription to Games for Windows (use promotion code lostplanet).

If you really want to own a special issue, discount stores like Walmart, Sam’s Club and Costco has magazines for sale at a small discount.

Often, people just end up going to bookstores like Barnes and Noble, or Borders to read the latest issue. The library is actually better for magazines for this since they not only have the current issue but also past issues!

We used to do this with comics all the time in school but you can share the magazine with your friends! Why do we and all our friends buy the same copy of Forbes when we really only read the magazine once and throw it away (or store it and never read it again)?

Lastly, it is amazing how much content the website of the magazines give away. On top of that, blogs of the same niche cover many of the same topics anyway so magazines are not as attractive a purchase as before.

Just do it
Many people know everything I have mentioned and it’s just a matter of putting it in action. If we are committed to saving as much as we can, we should follow some of the things discussed above.