Add to favoritesWelcome to #ThrowbackThursday! Every Thursday we’ll be celebrating the wisdom of our foremothers with a themed tip or hacks from the Great Depression era. Feel free to get in on the fun! Write your own Throwback Thursday tips on our Facebook wall, or tweet @CatchyFreebies with the hashtag #ThrowbackThursday. If we choose your tip for a feature, we’ll send you a sample from our stash!
We’re kicking off #ThrowbackThursday with a timely back-to-school-inspired theme: books! Books definitely aren’t a waste of money, but if you aren’t careful you can bust your budget picking up all the books you need for school – current college students, we’re lookin’ at you! Even pleasure reading can be expensive if you grab all the latest titles off the shelf.
If you don’t need to own the book, just head to your local library instead of buying. A library card is a fantastic gift for friends and family, too: instead of one or two books from a pricey brick-and-mortar store, they’ll have free books for life that they can pick out themselves! If you’re a student, rent your textbooks from your school library instead of purchasing them. Try the local library for more resources, too! You can make photocopies of pages you need for cheap, or take pictures of them with your phone to keep that info handy.
If you just have to have that book, try finding your reading materials at a local used bookstore or search online at sites like half.com, thriftbooks.com, or bookfinder.com. Another great option for tech-savvy readers is buying ebooks instead of paper books – they’re usually much cheaper, and a lot lighter for lugging around campus!
Our best advice for saving money on books is to be patient. That new title by your favorite author will still be there in a few months, and it’ll probably be a little cheaper. Need your book sooner? Prices on used books (sold online) vary day-to-day, and even minute-to-minute! If you check back the next day, a seller might have posted a cheaper edition of the textbook you need.
What are your favorite ways to save on books? Leave us a comment on Facebook or send us your thoughts on Twitter using the hashtag!
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