What is the return on investment for your newspaper subscription?

Our newspaper recently announced a price increase, but if you pre-paid for the year you received the 2008 price and you received a coupon book with thousands of dollars worth of coupons, kind of like a mini entertainment book. We are long time 7-day a week subscribers so I took advantage of the offer. The pre-pay price for the seven days a week subscription was $247.

When we need to trim our budget, my husband always suggests nixing the paper subscription, but I can't bring myself to doing it.

I love to read the newspaper. I read it everyday while eating my breakfast. I love the comics, the op-ed columns and the letters to the editor. I also like to stay informed on local, state, and national events and politics. The Monday edition has a healthy living section, the Wednesday edition has a food section, Thursday has a home and gardening section and of course Sunday's edition has all of the circulars and coupons. I also love Sudoku and my hubby grabs the sports.

This week, over granola, as I was reading I started wondering if I was getting my money's worth with the 7-day subscription? What is the return on my pre-paid investment? I clip coupons on Sunday, but I don't know if I use $247 worth of coupons a year. The newspaper offers other money-saving opportunities though. This week, there was an ad for free vegetable gardening seminars at a local nursery that I would be interested in taking. Also, a local favorite restaurant had a B1G1F coupon and a department store had a 15% coupon.

What do the savings add up to? On April 1, I am going to start tracking my savings from the newspaper as an experiment. Besides the Sunday coupon packets, what money-saving gems await me in my newspaper?

Do you have a newspaper subscription? Does your subscription pay for itself? How much money do you think you save?