Getting The Lowest Subscription Cost On The Newspaper.
I haven’t gotten the newspaper delivered to my house in years. Every once in a while I would pick up a Sunday paper back when I lived in Los Angeles, but ever since I moved to New Mexico and now to Colorado I haven’t been buying or reading the local papers…until this past week. For my own “green” reasons I don’t buy the paper Monday – Friday, but now that I have limited my internet time on weekends I have decided to subscribe to the paper on Saturday and Sunday only. Having the physical paper in my house on the weekends makes me take the time to enjoy the coffee and do some reading rather than just jumping right on the computer like I do every other morning. However, as I discovered, reading the paper can cost you either street price OR a heavily-discounted price, depending on how/where you get it from. Which one do you think I went for?
If you buy the paper at the store, you pay the “sticker” price. So buying the paper here in Denver on each Saturday and Sunday would cost me $.75 and $1.50, respectively. That’s $2.25 per week, $9.00 per month, $108 per year. Pretty pricey, if you ask me. While I thoroughly enjoyed walking to the newsstand with my grandfather when I was younger, it’s not as fun when it’s your own money you are spending. I will pass on buying it at sticker price.
Subscribing is cheaper. However, not all subscriptions are the same. If you go directly to the newspaper website, you will probably get the least “cheap” subscription. That’s because this is where they expect most people to visit when they want to subscribe, so they want to charge as much as they can get away with. Sure, it’s cheaper than sticker price, but not by too much.
Subscribing from different places can save even more money. I got the deal I finally signed up for off the back of a receipt from the grocery store. (See, sometimes it pays to read the receipt) I also saw special subscription offers on flyers inside the Sunday paper, on a bulletin board at Starbucks, and on a business card stuck in my front door. It pays to look for an offer before you sign up for the first one you see.
So how much was my subscription for the weekend paper? $9 for a full year. That’s a savings of $100 off the sticker price and about $30 off the rate offered online. Not bad for 52 weeks worth of newspapers! Having that paper show up at my door every weekend will ensure that I stay off the computer on weekend mornings until I read it, check out the crossword puzzle, and drink a few cups of coffee. It’s a small price to pay for some sanity on the weekend.
Do you subscribe to the paper? If so, how much did you pay off sticker price?
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