Do me a favor and go look at your bookshelf. How many books do you own that you’ve opened only once or twice and never read cover to cover? How many books do you own that you’ve read once and never looked at again?
Compare those books against the number of books that you’ve read time and time again or use frequently as a reference. I’m going to bet that if you’re like most people, you have a lot more books that you’ve only glanced at than books you use frequently.
At the time you bought these books that are now gathering dust, I’m sure figured each was a good purchase; you wouldn’t have bought them if you didn’t find the topic interesting, or you didn’t think you’d read it at least once or twice.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is you would probably be better served saving your $20 (I’m just throwing in an arbitrary number) per book and just getting the book from your local library for free!
Let’s say you spend $20 on books each month – that’s $240 per year. Even if you end up regularly using half of those books, that’s still $120 sitting on your bookshelves doing nothing but collecting dust.
The next time you feel like buying a book, check out your local public library and see if they’ve got it on the shelves. If you like the book after you’ve checked it out from the library and think that it’s something you continue to use, by all means, go out and buy it (preferably used, but that’s for another article).
But, if you decide that maybe the book wasn’t as good as you’d hoped or you’re probably never going to read it again, then you’ve saved yourself between $10 and $40, depending on the book.