Modest Goddess

In our ever-more-pressing quest to economize, I periodically ask my husband if there is anything else in our household budget we can cut back on. (I have to keep asking because I keep forgetting what he said last time.) We keep coming back to the luxuries of basic cable and the DVR, for which we are paying about $30 a month. Well, $30 times 12 is, umm ... $360 a year ... right? I suggested to Big Big Man that maybe we should just chuck it. Poor peole who are in debt don't deserve to have cable or a DVR, or have any fun whatsoever. Big Big Man got an annoyed look on his face, went out for a run, then came back and said one way we could eliminate even MORE money was to cancel our subscription to The New York Times. For which we are paying $40 a month.

Holy cow. $40 a month for the Times? My own paper, Newsday, costs $10 a month (with my employee discount). $40 times 12 is ... (wheels turning in brain) $480 A YEAR!

Damn!

Do I have to give up my beloved Times? And isn't that hypocritical of me, a journalist, whose job depends on people who read newspapers? "You can get it online," BBM said, even offering to leave me his laptop fired up at the breakfast table every morning so I could go through the news. But I can't think of anything more depressing than staring at a computer first thing in the a.m. I already spend a good seven or eight hours a day staring at one. And it's so much better to pore over a paper spread all over the table.

But such sacrifices have to be made. And from a strictly objective viewpoint, it's stupid to pay a lot of money for something that you can get for free, albeit in another medium.

But this is gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt even more than no longer catching old B movies on TBS, than missing Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and "Reno 911."

Goodbye, Times. Maybe we'll get back together again someday.

Labels: newspapers budgeting