Thursday, October 11, 2012

Subscriptions: It comes and it goes

My love affair with magazine subscriptions started in college when I had hourly jobs.  I'd plunk down the $12 to get a year of Glamour, Cosmopolitan, or InStyle and loved getting new issues in the mail.  After a stressful day of math and physics it was great to lose myself in something mindless, plus it gave me new reading material for the treadmill.

When I got a "real job" after grad school, I got even more crazy.  Buying a house meant I needed a subscription to Sunset "the magazine of Western Living" so I could get recipes, travel ideas, and other domestic stuff.  Their recipes are awesome and always turned out perfectly. 

I also loved Real Simple which is pretty and domestic, but not at all simple, just expensive minimalist design.   Cooking Light was another favorite for healthy recipes, when I learned I could trade in frequent flyer miles for free magazines on airlines where I wouldn't accumulate enough to get a free flight.  I had a job which required plane travel weekly, so having all these magazines helped pass the time.

When we moved to Seattle and my job became more demanding, the magazines piled up.  My new swanky gym had its own subscriptions to things I liked to read.  I didn't have much time to be domestic.  So slowly I cancelled all the subscriptions, except for a few.  I loved the topics and writing at Wired, and got a free subscription to Blender, a music magazine that was surprisingly interesting and well written.  But still, I didn't *need* them so I let my subscriptions lapse in the interest of saving money.

I also had a portable satellite radio gadget so we could listen to XM radio in the house or at the gym.  I LOVED the variety of music, but not so much the monthly fee.  When we were getting ready for T's arrival, we looked at all of our expenses and cut where we could - no more XM, no more DirecTV, no more home phone.

I have acquired my husband's dislike of monthly subscription fees.  I get it - from a financial point of view, it's a regular outflow of money that you're often locked in to, you may not be using it as much as you're paying for it, and it's sort of "invisible" because you either pay up front or it gets billed automatically, making you more out of touch with where the money is going.

So for a long time I had no regular subscriptions to anything - no magazines, no online services, no TV, nothing.

But they've crept back in.  I signed up for a subscription to the gorgeous CARDS magazine.  I also found out from my friend Jenn that there are scrapbooking kits you can subscribe to monthly.  I didn't need to know this, given my tendencies to shop for and hoard craft supplies.

I signed up for Scrapscription, which is a monthly mini-album kit.  They're wonderfully complex, and the projects take me days to complete.  In fact, I've only finished two and I've been subscribing for 4 months now (yikes!).   But they're beautiful and I feel a huge sense of accomplishment when I finish one, not to mention they make fantastic gifts for relatives, or quick mini-scrapbooks to capture things we do.  The one I'm currently working is going to be about our girls' trip to Portland in July.

And of course craft hoarding begets more craft hoarding, so I also bought a small monthly subscription to the Silhouette Online Store, which allows me to download files to use with my electronic die cutting machine.  I've made T's birthday invites, lots of cards, and doo-dads for my Project Life pages this way.

Roller Rink Kit by Studio Calico. Droool.
My biggest temptation/money sink is my Studio Calico subscription.  Every month they release a new kit, plus several "add on" kits that coordinate.  I'd be fine if I just stuck with the main kit, but the "extras" are so gorgeous and fun that I usually end up getting one or two of those.  And recently they came out with a Card Kit, which I also "had" to have.  The nice thing is that everything in those kits matches, so for projects I can just grab a kit and get going and end up with a nice cohesive look.

So really, I just need to STOP with the monthly subscriptions.  I certainly have enough supplies to last me a long, long time.  Probably more than I'll ever be able to use!  In a month or two, I'm planning to re-evaluate these choices and see if I really need to continue *all* of them.  I'm sure I can scale back and still feel like I'm getting my little "treats".

What's your financial "vice" - the thing you can't get enough of?

19 comments:

  1. I have only one subscription. I have a subscription to Us Weekly and I read it cover to cover as soon as it shows up every week! Every time it comes up for renewal, I feel guilt that I spend money and time on something so stupid but OMG I LOVE IT and Jon encourages me to renew.

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    1. That is a good hubby right there :0 And OMG US Weekly? How trashy :D

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  2. My financial vice? I'm a bit of a Living Social/Groupon/Dealfind/Specialicious junkie. So it's not any particular thing that I spend my money on, it's the whole aura of cheap that I'm sucked into.

    Speaking of which, Living Social is advertising a couple of cheap magazine subscriptions today! ;)

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    1. Hah, I had to unsubscribe from the craft supply versions of those daily deal sites. too much temptation! thanks for visiting :)

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  3. I don't subscribe to any magazines - I maybe buy 3 issues of Ideas (a south african home/ crafts/ food mag) a year (the christmas issue plus a couple of others) but my financial vice is Amazon Kindle books!!!! Oh, and handbags!

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    1. I used to have a (cheap) handbag problem, but when I finally convinced myself to spend over $100 on a bag, I no longer coveted other ones. Once I have one that I absolutely love, I'm happy to stick with it until it falls apart :)

      But the Kindle books are a real problem for me.

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  4. ha, i hear you! cant help yu with the sc:)

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  5. SC is my only monthly subscription but somehow even that adds up! :D Otherwise, I can't stop buying handbags and purses. Can never have enough!

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    1. As I mentioned above, I had this same vice with handbags, but finally broke it when I spent some $$ on one that I absolutely loved. I carried it for 6 years, until it fell apart and wasn't worth repairing.

      I found another one I love, too, but now I'm back to carrying a diaper bag so I had to put the cute purse away :(

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  6. We've been subscribers to Cuisine - a New Zealand cooking and travel magazine - for several years now. I also subscribed to Donna Hay magazine for a year too. I think Cuisine mostly fills a 'homesickness' gap for my husband, but the food is mostly to fancy to make it onto the everyday rotation. Donna Hay, on the other hand, is great. Lots of simple, fast recipes with a limited set of ingredients. But - I've given up Donna Hay for the next year because the cost to have it delivered to NZ is just silly.

    I would be seriously tempted by a digital subscription to Mollie Makes if I had an iPad.

    Mainly though, I struggle against a tide of medical magazines that seem to turn up every month and clutter my living room with articles about unsavoury diseases. I am frequently tempted try to work out how to unsubscribe my husband from them...

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    1. Your comment about "unsavoury diseases" made me laugh out loud at 3am (feeding a baby) - thanks for that!! I am often tempted by digital subscriptions, but I like to read on real paper. Though it might be a different story with an iPad.

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  7. My financial vice isn't magazines but expensive cheese. Every time I go to Whole Foods I come home with some cheese(s) that pretty much cost my entire weekly grocery budget in college. And now I have the kids hooked on good cheese too!

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    1. MMMM, cheese. Maybe I should be glad my kid is just outgrowing a dairy allergy and she won't go anywhere near cheese ;)

      I love the little basket at WF that has the cheese remnants you can buy. I've tasted all sorts of yumminess that way. Come to think of it, I've never met a cheese I didn't like, except for the one from Norway that's brown - Gjetost?

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  8. I was going to say "hand cream" - seriously, regular lotion? Feh! lotion specifically for hands? NEED!!! - but then i had a conversation with a friend today and i realized i cannot resist a free tote bag. I get email offers from drugstore.com for reusable bags (filled with samples, SQUEE!!!!!!) and i almost always take them up on it. The aforementioned conversation was about Old Navy's Stuff and Save event starting Wednesday - i'll get 40% off anything i can stuff in what looks to be a really cool quilted tote bag. Do i need anything from Old Navy? Not really but maybe i can get a few pairs of socks for my poor neglected and sockless middle child. Do i need another freaking tote? NO, NO I DO NOT. Will that stop me from coveting it and rearranging my Wednesday schedule to get one? NO, NO IT WILL NOT. Sigh.

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    1. LOL at your tote bag fetish :) I used to do the same thing with those "free gift" cosmetics packs at dept stores, until I finally realized they didn't come in shades flattering to my brown self :)

      I know you need to fill your Old Navy bag but I do not recommend their socks. We had much better luck with the ones from the Gap.

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    2. Because i know you care...

      I *did* go to Old Navy for my (squee!) tote and it's very cute/cool and TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM THE FIVE MILLION OTHER BAGS I HAVE. Ahem. I did also get some great deals, including a pair of black capris for under $2, including tax. All that, and it wasn't out of my way or a time hassle or anything so, you know: Meant to be.

      Also, i just got an email that Mindy Kaling's ebook is ready for me! Life is pretty good right about now, even with two non-napping children...because that means early bedtimes. Whee!

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    3. Early bedtimes that stick are awesome!! We're having a lot of night waking by BOTH kids around here (sigh) but some of those are due to Pull-Up failures, so I'm hoping we fixed that with a trip to Target today.

      Yay for your tote bag and the deals at ON! I love their baby clothes. Their toddler sizing is a little wack, though.

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  9. Do the studio calico kits come with a layout suggestion? Or do you have to figure out on your own what you want to do? I waiver between wanting to just copy someone and being creative.

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    1. They don't come with any instructions or sketches, which is a little overwhelming, but their designers do post a lot of stuff in their gallery online before the kit comes out, so you can use that for inspiration.

      What I love is that they're not "themey" - no overtly holiday stuff, no dumb sayings, etc. Occasionally they'll have stickers or embellishments with words on them, but they're pretty general. So it's pretty open-ended and you can use it for lots of stuff. I just love how modern it looks and not cutesy.

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