Bucks For Books: How Using Your Library Can Save You Money
By: Susie Lee
Tags: Personal Finance, Books, Saving, Libraries, Investing

Five years ago I was destitute. I had so little money that Bank of America was charging me to keep my own money at their institution. I decided that my life needed a major overhaul: I needed to get frugal or stay broke. I cut or completely eliminated costs as much as possible. In my former life, I used to buy stacks of books regularly. I was a bookseller at Barnes and Noble for a good chunk of my twenties and was surrounded by new, shiny books every day. I ended up giving into temptation and buying them with my meager paycheck week after week.

Eventually I left the bookstore business to work in libraries where I was again surrounded by books. I realized then and there that there was no need for me to buy them if I could just borrow them. My library card could end up saving me boatloads of money every year with all the services that they offered! In fact, according to the School Library Journal, the average list price of an adult fiction hardcover title in public libraries this year was $28.20. For a nonfiction book it was $34.33. For argument’s sake, let’s just say that each book you read is $30 a piece. Let’s say you read one book a week. If you were to borrow all of these books at your local library, it would save you $1560 a year! And let’s not forget that libraries also have e-books, magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals to borrow.

Let’s say you also like to watch movies, documentaries, and other media. You could pay for a Netflix membership, which runs $8.99/month for the basic plan. But if you were to borrow DVDs at the library, you would save $107.88 in subscription fees a year. But you’re really a lazy person. On a Friday night the last thing you want to do is march into a library, go to their media section, and thumb through DVDs (à la Blockbuster). Many libraries have streaming services thankfully, which you can use from the comfort of your home. For instance, the Seattle Public Library has Kanopy, which is a service you can use to watch thousands of movies for free. Right now you can stream Lady Bird and Moonlight. There is also a lot of educational content on there for kids as well. They can watch Anne of Green Gables and Sesame Street. Who needs a DVD player or cable nowadays?

Many customers also come to the library to print research papers, package labels, tax forms, and other documents. At the Queens Public Library (where I work for full disclosure) you can print up to 20 pages per day for free. According to Techradar, one of the best cheap printers to buy is a HP Laserjet Pro M15w, which retails for $108.90 on Amazon. The toner for that printer is $49.89 and a ream of HP paper is $4.47. If you were to print exclusively at the library, you would save that $163.26 while also saving space in your home office.

The other thing to note nowadays is that the public library has evolved. It is no longer the quiet place where you are shushed repeatedly and where the card catalog is king. Libraries have programs or events that are free and open to the public. In fact, there is even a Let’s Move in Libraries project whose aim is to encourage fitness and healthy living in libraries across the United States and elsewhere. Let’s take an exercise class as an example. On Groupon right now, you can get a package of five classes at Brooklyn Zumba Fitness for $26. That works out to about $5.20 per class, which is already a steal. However, let’s say you were to take one zumba class a week that is offered at a place like the Catawba County Library in North Carolina. (These programs are virtual or take place outdoors for now because of COVID-19). That would work out to a savings of $270.40 per year.

At my library branch, we also used to have knitting classes that were wildly popular and organized by one of my fellow librarians. Knitting classes can be exorbitant. On Coursehorse, a virtual knitting class that runs for 90 minutes is $40 a pop. At my library, knitting classes were ongoing. Students would work on new and different projects weekly or continue previous projects whether it be pom-poms for hats or scarves. Let’s say you attend two knitting classes per month at the library, which given the Coursehorse example would be $80. If you continued doing that for a year that would work out to savings of a whopping $960. Plus, at my library, we provided customers with yarn, needles, and whatever other supplies you would need. There was no need to go to a craft store.

Another benefit that many libraries offer are museum passes. In New York City, the three public library systems offer something called a Culture Pass. You can go to the Culture Pass website and reserve free passes to museums and other cultural institutions. There is an available offer right now for a pass to the Brooklyn Museum, which covers admission for two people. Ordinarily one general admission ticket to the museum is a suggested $16 so for two people that would come out to $32. Let’s say you were dating and wanted to do something beyond the typical, bland coffee or drinks at a bar and liked to drag your dates to museums. If you were to use the free museum passes once a month for an entire year, you would save $384. That’s obviously more money to spend on dinner afterwards while talking about that Alexander McQueen exhibit. Heck, you could even buy a few glasses of wine at the restaurant with the money saved!

Of course, this doesn’t cover everything you can do and obtain at your local library. Some libraries have social workers, who can link patrons who are struggling to resources and services. Others have beer brewing classes. Many have classes on Excel and Photoshop that would be huge resume boosters. Last year the Brooklyn Public Library even had a seed library. You could visit the library with your card and get three packets of seeds, which could be anything from flowers to vegetables. And of course, there’s the free wifi.

Finally, saving money is fabulous, but what can you do with that money? Spend it all on a cruise? (This is probably a horrific idea in the middle of a pandemic!) Well no, of course not. You are savvier than that because you’ve read some personal finance books at the library. Let’s say you took all the money that you saved from the books borrowed to the museum passes mentioned previously. That would add up to $3,445.54 in one year. But you also have a long-term plan for that money! If you were to invest that money in the stock market and not put a penny in afterwards and have it grow at an average annual interest rate of 7%, in 30 years that money would become $26,228.33. That’s right! (Look at the graph, if you don’t believe me.) Through the miracle that is compounding, a year of library use grows to tens of thousands of dollars over the long haul not to mention the personal enrichment that you would get. If you ask me, that’s not too shabby and definitely useful in retirement.