Remember back in the day when you had to go to the store to buy CDs? First you had to put pants on, get in the car, drive, park, find the store in the mall, and then spend almost $20 for a piece of plastic that would wear out quickly. Fortunately, those days are in the past and market conditions have thankfully bankrupted and shuttered most CD stores. All you need to do today to get new music is to log onto iTunes – no pants required!

 Digital music is a vast improvement over CDs for many reasons, one of them being its much cheaper to produce. iTunes sells music at a great price – about $1 per song, and usually around $10 per album – so frugal shoppers can rejoice. iTunes is great for frugal entertainment because you can also get cheap movies and TV shows. Miss the Mad Men finale? iTunes will let you download it for like $3. They also have free sneak previews and you can get iTunes coupons that will net you free downloads from select artists.

 If you’re really looking for a deal, iTunes also offers an amazing amount of free content in the form of audio and video podcasts. This alone warrants iTunes on any frugal dad’s desktop; there are literally 1,000s of free podcasts that update daily or weekly. Additionally, the new iTunes U. has hundreds of free audio and video lectures from colleges across the nation. So skip the CDs and the mall and the pants, and take advantage of all that iTunes has to offer.