Stephen Withers
Friday, 06 March 2009 04:41
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
You can't even navigate quickly to the end of the list to see if there are any gems worth mining from the lower stratum. The only option is to click through a page at a time.
So as of this writing, the top tip out of 278 in the At Home category is "Get your books from the library. It's hard to beat free."
There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Visiting the public library instead of the bookshop will save you money. But how much is at stake? The latest figures I could find suggest the average Australian spends less than $90 per year on books.
That excludes personal imports (eg purchases from Amazon), but it appears to include textbooks. In terms of discretionary spending, it's probably not going to have a huge effect unless you've been buying a huge quantity of books and hadn't heard about public libraries.
It's hard to believe this tip isn't right at the bottom (so to speak): "Use the toilettpaper on both sides." It's stuck on page 16 or so, which means hardly anyone sees it and so it doesn't get voted down.
The lowest-ranked tip (with what looks like three No votes for every Yes) is "Instead of paying for a ton of channels you never watch on cable, buy only the episodes you watch for $1.99 each off iTunes".
Depending on your viewing habits and your TV provider's tariffs, that might save something, but $1.99 a week for each of two shows is $16 or so a month - is that really cheaper than dropping channels from your package?
More to the point, it's ranked way lower than urinating in the shower. The person who suggested that must be paying a motza for water. Or, and I think this is the likely explanation, they were just acting the goat.
So what's the answer? Please
read on for my suggestion.
