Books, books and more books; Banishing the book buying habit

December 3rd, 2007 | Money Saving

Books and Books and … - Originally posted by leoofborg

They say the first step on the road to recovery is admitting you have a problem, and I have finally come to the realisation that I have a problem. I am addicted to books. I have no idea how much I have spent on books over the last few years, but I know it must easily run into thousands of pounds.

The book buying habit was one I think I developed early on and largely due to my parents. There were constantly reading to me and encouraging me to read. I also learnt very early on that if I asked them to buy me a book, they would almost never say no. I think that this has somehow led to me having the subconscious belief that spending money on books was ‘good’ spending and somehow didn’t count towards my total expenditure.

While there is nothing wrong with buying books on occasion, I made a conscious decision to drastically reduce my spending on books in a number of ways;

Use the library - I have an excellent public library near me and my membership card has been languishing unused in the bottom of a drawer since I got it. That must change. I am going to make an effort to get every book I want to read from the library first, and then make a decision as to whether I still want to buy it.

Christmas & Birthdays - I am lucky to have a number of generous relatives who always ask what I would like for Christmas or for my birthday. I am going to start compiling a list of books (hopefully ones I have already rented from the library) and suggest these to my relatives next time they ask for suggestions.

Sell my books - Over the next few weeks I have decided to go through my existing book collection and cull any books that I am just not interested in any more and that I will never read again. I am going to hopefully sell the majority of these to a second hand book shop, and I will donate the rest to charity.

Budget - I am going to make sure that there is a category in my budget that will include a SMALL amount for buying books each month, & I am going to stick to it. No more buying a ton of books every time I feel like it. Amazon is the other habit that I am going to be trying very hard to break. While I do love Amazon, and they offer some great deals, I have completely lost the habit of shopping around when it comes to books. More often than not, I end up just logging on to Amazon, and buying whatever it is I want at the time. Easy - yes; convenient - yes; money saving - NO!

I would love to hear what items you find it hard to resist buying and what methods you use to resist the temptation. Hopefully you will have some suggestions for me and for other readers.

Best of the Rest;

One thing I am particularly keen on is highlighting posts from other bloggers that relate to my posts and that I believe are worthwhile additional reading. I plan on including these ‘Best of the Rest’ links is as many of my posts as a I can.