Guilty Pleasure

I have an undeniable guilty pleasure that costs me at least $30 a month.

Magazines.

Fashion magazines. Home Décor magazines. Money magazines (Oh, the irony). Real Estate magazines. Business magazines. Cooking magazines. Yoga magazines.

It’s like buying a newspaper everyday, only I read my news online.

I know. I know. If I can read my news online, why can’t I read the rest of it online? Well, it gives me something I can read on the bus. I like reading novels, but I tend to get quite absorbed in what I’m reading. It makes missing my stop a greater likelihood…

I have piles of them. Some, like the cooking magazines, get archived and saved for future use, but most of them end up collecting dust on the floor afterwards. Not good, I know. I’m half considering building a coffee table out of them. Maybe something like this one over at http://www.treehugger.com/

Anyway, more to the point. I know that I would save a considerable amount of money if I just subscribed to them rather than picking them up at the grocery or book stores. I did that last year with one of them; I used my Airmiles to subscribe to Money Sense, a finance magazine I particularly enjoy reading. I also requested a subscription to Fine Cooking magazine for Christmas when my mom inquired.

I received an e-mail last week from my phone company about magazine subscriptions. Normally when they send promotional e-mails I promptly delete them, because they’re usually offering TV bundling packages (I don’t have a TV), or promotions for signing a contract (not going that route again). This time I paused and read it. I completely forgot that my phone company is also a publishing company, and they were offering magazine subscriptions tacked onto existing accounts for about $1/month per magazine. It didn’t make you lock in for a specific amount of time, you can opt out any time, and the shipping was included. I’m still hesitant that I might get slapped with an extra fee somewhere, but I added a couple magazines to my cell phone bill. If spending $4/month on my cell saves me from spending $20 a month in the grocery store (they don’t print all of my favourites), I figure that’s a decent deal.

What's your guilty pleasure?