For the Love of Books: Saving Big Time Using the Local Library

If you're an avid reader, you likely know the savings benfits of borrowing books from the local public library. For those who aren't aware, it can add up to the tens of thousands in a year's time.

Some local homeschooling families are testifying to the savings, including Elizabeth Livingstone, who's son is six years old.

"At the bottom of the receipt that you get after you get your books out, it has a total of how much you saved during the year if you would have bought all the books that you take out," she shared. "The other day, I looked at my receipt, and it said we saved so far this year $16,268.00."

Livingstone said before COVID, they spent a lot of time at the Weyburn Public Library.

"Now we just go in and pick up our books or activities or whatever we have going on that week," she explained. "Some of our books have to do with the school that we're doing at the time, and some of them are just storybooks that we read at bedtime."

"We use our library a lot, and we are very, very thankful for having this resource available," noted Livingstone. "Most of the staff, even with our masks on, they always know us when we walk in, and they're always so friendly and willing to help, and it's definitely awesome."

Livingstone said most of her total has added up because she spends so much time browsing the inter-library loan system online.

With a family of six, the Richards family's savings is exponentially but proportionally higher even still.

"In our house, there's six of us, and four us that have cards, and we managed to clock in as of [Wednesday], just a little over $52,000 in savings," shared Leslie Richards. "We're there, like four days a week."

She explained how they were able to achieve such huge savings.

"We're very avid readers, we read a lot as a family," she noted. "We just read a whole bunch. A lot of our curriculum is based on reading books, and the kids are interested. So they love to browse, and I usually have to put a limit on how many books our littler kids can take out, because we have a 100 book limit, so I'm often juggling, like giving them a limit of three each."

Richards said they also enjoy the programs offered at the Weyburn Public Library, even if they're mostly virtual these days.

"It wasn't as surprising to me that we ended up using so many materials. My husband sometimes jokes, because he does work for the Regional Library, that our family probably has enough circulation to support one of the rural branches," she laughed.

Richards noted their children don't necessarily have limits on screen time, they just naturally refer to books and their children see that. She added her two older (reading) children love to read certain books to her two younger children.