Too much

This year as part of our New Years resolution to stop spending (so much) money, I've been letting most of my magazine subscriptions and online subscriptions expire. 

My online subscriptions were mostly memberships in genealogy clubs.  I am letting those expire until I actually have time to use them.  I know that I initially subscribed to these memberships at a time when I could use them, and then probably renewed them last year with the intention of continuing to use them, but I really was unable to do any research at all in the last year or so.  As they have come up for renewal this year, I ignore them and will do so until I have need for them again.

I didn't get a lot of magazines, but more and more I've become really unimpressed with most magazines overall.  They are full of "articles" that are simply lists of things to buy.  I am so sick of reading about stuff I can buy.   One exception is when it is truly a research article like in Consumer Reports, where the author truly is recommending one product over another.  Otherwise the "article" is completely untrustworthy, just another commercial advertisement disguised as news.  I understand that the magazine does get paid for promoting these items even if they don't believe in the product.  Nearly every magazine you pick up in the doctor's office is guilty of this.  Martha Stewart publications, InStyle, American Baby, Parents, Real Simple, etc etc are all full of these phony articles.  I'm so annoyed with this that I don't want to spend my money this way.  The only exception to my own rule, I would possibly make an exception for InStyle which I actually only buy for the advertisements anyway.  Believe it or not I was actually annoyed with the latest issue for having too few advertisements.  If this keeps up I will cancel that magazine as well.

My informative magazines like cooking and genealogy magazines are also getting the boot.  I save those, but after subscribing for a few years I have found that some articles are repetitive, and also that I have not fully utilized all of the info in the back issues that I have saved.  Therefore, rather than amassing many more issues, I can just revisit my existing issues whenever I am bored and need a cooking project or genealogy inspiration.

The one magazine we are not giving up ever is Backwoods Home.  It is never repetitive, always informative, and does not disguise lists of things to buy as clever articles.