When you pay postage costs related to belonging to PaperbackSwap.com, of course, you know exactly what books you are getting, unlike the Library Sale. But as Java Monster pointed out, you’re not guaranteed that the books you receive will be in good condition. At least at the Library Sale, you can see for yourself what shape the books are in. Plus, you’re helping the library to earn money to buy more books. Come to think of it, I have a TON of books in excellent condition that I need to part with. I’m going to take them to our library for their next sale. Thanks for the idea!

I finally figured I’d get a better bang for my book bucks by selling what I could to Powell’s Books, and giving the books Powell’s didn’t want, like well-loved paperbacks, to the local Friends of the Library fund-raising bookstore. No money out of MY pocket anymore, and the good feeling of helping a library in my local area raise money. Heck, the FofL store has all kinds of paperbacks for a quarter each, and hardcovers for a dollar. Darned good deal, if you ask me.

Do you ever worry aobut having too many New Year’s Resolutions? If I try and make more than 2 or 3, then I will lose focus. Just curious…

Again, there ARE costs involved in the library to consider. I cannot walk to any of the neighboring libraries (as is the case with many city dwellers). So that’s a minimum of $4.50 each way to pick up and return books, DVDs, etc. (And if you have to drive, there are costs involved in driving to/from libraries even if you tag on to other errands.)

We, too, can order some books and DVDs (all are not available for this feature) but there are many more people competing for the same books, and now, with budget restrictions, you can only put 10 books on hold. At one point, no books were available on hold for over six months. That meant any books I wanted were hit and miss on a visit to any given branch. That GREATLY reduces what you want being available and also reduces the ROI of one’s time/money investment of a trip to a library.

Finally, even if you get one or two DVDs, they are all due in a week. So if I’m lucky enough to get 2 DVDs and they are due in a week, that’s a cost to me of $9. For that same price, I can watch unlimited from netflix (much more on their streaming list than is ever available from the library!) for a month and if I’m careful how/when I watch, a minimum of 6 and possibly 9 “in the mail” DVDs can be watched. That really is a cost-saver for me and our family (We can have movie nites and invite friends over.)

I will ALWAYS try the library first for a book I’m interested in and sometimes I actually end up purchasing a book after getting it from the library because I do want it for my own library.

Paperbackswap has been great, but you have to be patient. We check out prices on amazon.com for used and also on ebay. For a few things you won’t see much difference in price between new and used.

What I’d love to see (and what we used to have) is the old “paperback” bookstores in our neighborhood where you could exchange books and get used for really cheap. Alas, the rents are such that this does not work anymore.

We also used to buy books at Salvation Army. UNTIL people stopped donating (they’re all selling them online now it seems!) and dealers started buying stuff in bulk.

Buying local saved a lot more money than buying used online with the postage costs.

Half of the books in our rather large library came from local purchases of used stuff. I miss that a lot.

When it’s time to get rid of books, we first offer to friends and family. THen post on paperbackswap. Then donate to library and charities that will actually use them.

PS: We used to spend quite a bit of time hanging out at local bookstores checking books out. In some cases, if we had enough visits, we did in fact get thru books (non-fiction). I didn’t feel bad about this because we also purchased a lot of books (albeit with a discount). We no longer have those visits because I could no longer feel good about using the bookstore as a library since we can no longer afford new books.

That doesn’t stop tons of other folks who bring notebooks, netbooks, laptops and are clearly using books as textbooks.

I’ve often thought that some bookstores should sell yearly memberships that allowed people to take out books like an actual library. It could still be an economical option for both the readers and the bookstore. The existence of libraries has certainly not diminished sales of books that’s for sure.

I would personally love it if htere was an alternative option to a public library that had more of the books I wanted. I love libraries but I realize the inherent limitations, especially these days.

(a) travel to those groups should count as entertainment spending (along with any incidentals along the way)

(b) being around people who are passionate about board games is going to spark more interest in more titles, not less. you MIGHT be able to trade away a few, but you’ll also be interested in ever more.

Half seems too drastic to me. You were more generous with yourself and weight loss, laying out an unreasonable goal and then trimming it down to something more manageable.

Simply bringing more attention to this area should usually lead to at least some degree of success.

Also, keep in mind that statistically, the odds of your kids being good readers goes up if you have a lot of books in your home–irrespective of whether you read to them, or how much fun you make it.

We pay our term life insurance yearly but budget it every 1/2 month budget. For discretionary spending categories that accumulate we track it in a spread sheet.

I think it comes down to a budget (planning on how to spend your money) verses figuring out how you actually spent your money later.

One is a budget(planning on how to spend your money), the second is not.