Groxie

A long time ago I read Your Money or Your Life. I’m not usually impressed by self-help books, but when I read it I had just graduated from college and had over $12,000 in debt. I figured it couldn’t hurt to try something new.

The book is great, and I can’t recommend it enough. The book really taught me to take an honest look at my spending and the value I derived from the crap I bought. I learned how to look at each dollar spent as life-hours spent.

One of my favorite concepts from the book was the gazingus pin—“A gazingus pin is any item that you just can’t pass by without buying. Everybody has them.” Isolating my gazingus pin took a little time, but when I finally looked at the cold, hard numbers, I was spending way too much money on magazines. Apparently, I am not alone.

The magazine gazingus pin presents a trio of problems:

• First, I become enamored of a recipe, art project, household improvement, wedding idea, money saving tip, travel destination, etc. that I see on the cover. I spend from $5 to $10 on the magazine
• For the first 20 minutes of reading/flipping past ads, I enjoy owning the magazine. I rip out articles to share with friends and jot down interesting ideas. Then I spend the next couple of months anxious over whether or not I will ever get around to throwing that great theme cocktail party I read about.
• Finally, I have to figure out what to do with the carcass of my used—up magazine. I can move it along to friends, leave it at the gym, or recycle it. None of these options are particularly appealing.

So that was the dilemma. For the sake of my pocketbook, my anxiety level, and the environment, I needed to give up magazines. It sounds easier than it was.

First I stopped buying magazines on impulse at the grocery store. Next, I had to stop signing up for trial and free subscriptions. I eventually stopped renewing my existing subscriptions.

At first I felt sorry for myself, but then I became angry. Why didn’t my favorite magazines offer online subscriptions? I started scouring the web for magazines with an online only subscription option. Being a true addict, I also wrote countless e-mails to my old favorites requesting online subscriptions.

Here are my finds so far:

• There are tons of different magazines at Zinio. They’ve got a huge range—if your favorites aren’t there, don’t be too shy to dash off a quick letter to the magazine editors asking them to consider going digital.
• I also found many old environmental stand-bys and new web magazines, too:
  • Mother Earth News
  • Ecologist Magazine
  • Plenty Magazine
  • Greenlight Magazine
  • Groovy Green

I think this is only the beginning of a much larger list! Now I pay less for my magazines, read and refer to them whenever I want, and I don’t worry about cluttering up the apartment or the landfill.

In addition, I’ve come to rely more heavily on blogs, podcasts, and online news sources. It’s great to read and hear so many different perspectives, and it reminds me constantly how one person can truly have an impact. The big environmental news sites that I love are Grist and Treehugger. Both have lots of personal commentary and very active reader communities.

I’ve also mentioned the podcast More Hip than Hippie before, but I haven’t had the time to search out any news ones recently. The Grist blog area has tons of links to some very useful environmental blogs, and I check these out from time to time as well. Happy reading!