Money Crashers: 11 Things You Can Get for Free

My latest Money Crashers article is about something everybody loves: free stuff. There are lots of articles out there about "freebies," of course, but this one's a little different: instead of telling you where to find a coupon code for a free movie download or a free sample of hair gel, I talk about how to cover major expenses - food, housing, clothing - on a budget of nothing. This article discusses, among other topics:

How extreme couponing can whittle your grocery bill to nothing
How (and when) to dine out for nothing
How to get new-to-you clothes in exchange for your old ones
How to get a free ride to work every day
How to get free cell phone service
How to enjoy free books, music, video, and live entertainment
How to get free flights, car rentals, and accommodations

Naturally, this involves a bit of creativity, and in some cases, a bit of luck. You won't be able to use this article to shrink your entire household budget to zero. But you'll pick up some interesting ideas that you may not have known before, and if even one of them is useful, it can make a big dent in your budget. And even if none of them is useful, reading about them should provide a bit of entertainment—also for free.

Here's the article: 11 Things You Can Get for Free – How to Get Free Stuff

Thrift Week 2015, Day 6: Birthday freebies

Some of the birthday goodies I got this year weren't from family or friends; they were from companies I do business with. There are lots of businesses—mostly eateries—that will give you a little something extra on your birthday for no extra cost, like a free slice of birthday cake with your meal, or a special buy-one-get-one-free deal. (You can see a list of many such deals at Hey! It's Free!) But there are a few that actually offer birthday freebies that are completely free, with no strings attached, and I happen to belong to three of them:

1. Baskin-Robbins will give you a free mini cone on your birthday, plus a discount on an ice cream cake. All you have to do is sign up for their Birthday Club. They send you an e-mail during the week before your birthday with a link to a coupon you can print out (or display on your phone, if you actually live in the 21st century and aren't a dinosaur like me). There's no age requirement to join, but I once met with resistance from the server at our local Baskin-Robbins, who turned away my coupon on the grounds that "This is for kids." So I ended up going to the one at the New Brunswick train station for my cone that year. The following year, I came prepared with a printout of the FAQ from the Baskin-Robbins site, which specifically says the Birthday Club is not just for kids but for "everyone who loves ice cream." Since then, I've never had any trouble getting them to honor the coupon. The only catch is that there's a fairly narrow window to collect your freebie. They used to give you a full week before or after your birthday, but it's now dropped to 5 days, as Brian discovered when his birthday coupon expired before he had a chance to use it. So to make it up to him, I split my free cone—vanilla with Snickers—with him on Sunday. Granted, a 2.5-ounce scoop doesn't go far split between two people, but it's practically guilt free that way.
2. DD Perks, the rewards program at Dunkin Donuts, includes a free drink of any size as a birthday bonus. Like Baskin-Robbins, they give you your freebie by sending you an e-mail with a printable coupon. However, this one is a bit more liberal as to when you can redeem it; when I printed mine out, it said it was good until March 9. However, since I already had one other Dunkin freebie in my wallet with the same expiration date, I decided to go ahead and cash this one in on Monday. Once again, I opted for something I could split with Brian—in this case, a large mint hot chocolate, which turned out to be REALLY large. I checked the website and found that a large drink at Dunkin is 20 ounces, the same as a Starbucks Venti. It was plenty for Brian and me together, and we were agog at the idea that one person could polish it off singlehandedly before it got cold.
3. Speaking of Starbucks, their My Starbucks Rewards program also includes a free birthday drink. It's actually less complicated than the other two; instead of sending you a coupon to print out, they just automatically credit your account for a freebie, so all you have to do is hand over your Starbucks card and request your free drink. (They still send you an e-mail the week before your birthday to remind you about it.) The redemption period is pretty loose, too; according to my e-mail, the offer is good until February 10, so I don't have to go out of my way to get to a Starbucks before my credit expires. And it means I'll still have one birthday present left to enjoy when Thrift Week is over and done with.

Local Shopping Challenge, Day 3: A feast for the senses

I knew going into this weeklong challenge that Friday would be the easiest day to meet it. For starters, Friday is the only day when our local thrift shop is open all day. (It's also open on Saturday mornings and for a few hours on Thursday, but even if you manage to get there during its alleged business hours, you may find the doors shut.) This store, as I've noted before, has a very limited selection that seldom changes, so most of the times I go in I leave empty-handed, but on those rare occasions when I find something I like, I can walk out with it for a dollar or less. Moreover, the store has recently expanded its selection to include several shelves of books, which are priced even cheaper than the clothes: just 25 cents for hardcovers and 10 cents for paperbacks. Plus, if you buy three of either, you can get a fourth free.

Friday is also the best day for finding free samples. While you can sometimes find samples at the Stop & Shop on other days of the week, Friday is the day when you're likeliest to see them. It's also the day when the local farmers' market is open during the summer months, and a couple of the vendors there either routinely or occasionally offer samples of their wares. And on top of that, there's often live music, which is a freebie of a different kind.

So I decided that when I headed out for my walk today, I would try to catch as many of these different freebies as I could. First I tried the supermarket, and I found that, sure enough, there was a big tray of bakery items cut into nice bite-sized slivers. There were fragments of both corn muffins and chocolate chip muffins, as well as one little chunk of doughnut, but the tray that was most picked over was the apple crumb cake. It certainly looked the most appetizing to me, and when I tried a piece, it did not disappoint: moist and flavorful and small enough that I didn't feel too guilty about indulging.

After that, I popped over to the Reformed Church to visit the thrift shop. It was open, but as usual, I didn't find anything new and exciting on the racks. I could have tried the bookshelves as well, but I decided that since I already had several unread books waiting in the queue at home, I shouldn't add to the pile.

Outside the church, in the community parking lot, the farmers' market was in full swing—and I mean swing in more than one sense of the word, as a local jazz trio had set up shop between the stands. When I emerged, they were playing an instrumental version of Pink Floyd's "Us and Them," which sounded really odd to me without the words. After that, they moved on to more traditional fare, like "Paper Moon." I also scouted the stands for free samples, but the only stall that had any was the pickle vendor, and he was already swamped. So I just bought some apples and a dozen free-range eggs and came home.

So I didn't find as many under-a-dollar items as I'd hoped, but I still think I did pretty well. Without spending a penny, I got to indulge all five of my senses: sight and sound with the free music and carnival atmosphere of the farmers' market, and touch, smell, and taste with the moist, cinnamon-y sweetness of the crumb cake. Three days down, and so far this "shopping" challenge hasn't cost me a cent. Though that may change tomorrow when we hit the town-wide yard sales.

Local Shopping Challenge: Highland Park on $1 a Day

When I successfully completed my first local shopping challenge last spring, I was so pleased with the outcome that I planned to come up with several more of them, possibly even making it a regular feature on the blog. Over time, however, I became a little less satisfied with the whole idea. For one thing, I found that the outfit I'd put together for the local shopping challenge, while acceptable, wasn't really ideal. The skirt and sweater were fine, but the camisole top I bought from the Rite Aid wasn't a very good fit, and I eventually ended up giving it away. So while the local shopping challenge helped me find two nice pieces for my wardrobe that I might not have bought otherwise, it also led me to throw away seven bucks on a top I didn't really need or like, just because I "needed" it for the challenge. (As it turned out, I found a tank top not long afterwards at a yard sale that fit much better and also looked better with the skirt, so if I hadn't been in a hurry to finish the challenge by April 30, I could have just waited and completed the look for under $10 instead of $18.)

So I made up my mind that if I did another local shopping challenge, it would have to be set up in a way that was more consistent with my ecofrugal mission. Instead of forcing me to buy something whether I needed it or not, it should help me find something I needed—or at least wanted—for as little money as possible. After all, it's not as if there's any shortage of bargains here in Highland Park; between the library, the wide assortment of community events, and the free samples often to be found at local stores, it's often possible to go out into town and treat yourself to a little something without spending a penny. Throw in the stuff at the thrift shop, grocery store, and dollar store, and there's an even wider variety of goodies to be found for $1 or less.

So that, I decided, would be my next challenge. For seven days in a row, I would venture out into town and bring back something costing no more than $1. (The nice thing about this rule is that there's no way the entire challenge can cost me more than $7.)

To keep it from being too easy, I set myself a few additional rules:

1. Since the object is to avoid waste, the item I find must always be something I can actually use. It can be practical (e.g., a new shirt from the thrift shop) or purely decorative (e.g., a flower for the kitchen table), but it has to have real value to me. Bringing home a free copy of a booklet advertising used cars for sale and then throwing it straight in the recycling bin doesn't count.
2. However, the item doesn't have to be tangible. If I go out in the evening to a free event at the library or the outdoor film series, that can count as my freebie for the day.
3. Every day, I have to find something different. Bringing home seven different books from the library doesn't count. If I bring home a library book as my challenge item on Thursday, I'm still allowed to pick up another one on Friday, but I can't count it as part of the challenge.
4. Each day, I have to write a new blog entry about my find, including a photo if possible, stating what the item cost, where I found it, and how it's useful for me.

Today's find was the new Healthy Ideas magazine from Stop & Shop (free). The supermarket puts out a new issue every season, filled with recipes, coupons, and tips for using different foods. I always pick up the latest version when it appears at our local Stop & Shop, and I almost find at least one recipe or idea in it that looks interesting. Paging through the fall issue, I found several items of interest:

• An ad for Stop & Shop's "limited time" line of pumpkin-based goodies, including fresh pumpkin ravioli. Normally we don't buy a lot of prepared foods, but pumpkin ravioli might be worth making an exception for. (We've tried making our own ravioli in the past, and it's more trouble than it's worth.) Pumpkin bisque and pumpkin muffins, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure we can make at home if we have a hankering for them.
• A recipe for curried acorn squash soup that looks intriguing. It's made with peanut butter, which means it might have that same odd fascination for Brian as his favorite Garlic, Chick-pea and Spinach Soup out of Vegetarian: The Best Ever Recipe Collection, which contains tahini (sesame paste). It can also be made with butternut squash (which is easier to work with), but since we our whole harvest this year was only six squash, I'm not sure it's worth wasting one on an untried recipe.
• A recipe for a Greek butternut squash tart (actually more of a pizza). I don't care for feta cheese, but if we substituted in some mozzarella, I think it would be quite tasty.
• A technique for making pizza crust out of mashed cauliflower, mixed with egg, spices and Parmesan cheese. This will be worth sharing with (or trying on) our friends who have problems with gluten.

So that's actually four useful items, for the price of...none. Zero dollars spent so far, and six days left to go.

Toothbrush hack

Brian and I both use Fuchs Ekotec toothbrushes. The main reason I like these is that they have replaceable heads, so instead of having to replace the entire toothbrush every three months, I can replace just the part that's actually worn out—the bristles—and keep using the same handle. They're also a bit cheaper to use in the long run than most other toothbrushes, since the replacement heads cost less apiece than a whole new toothbrush. But there's a third thing I really like about them that has nothing to do with ecofrugality: they're practically the only toothbrush you can find these days that fits into a standard toothbrush holder.

Look in the bathroom of any house built before, say, 1980, and you'll probably find a built-in ceramic piece mounted next to the sink that holds a cup and anywhere from two to six toothbrushes. Back when these houses were built, this was a really useful feature, because it made use of wall space to store the toothbrushes and freed up much needed surface space on top of the sink. The problem is that, in the intervening decades, toothbrushes have become much more "advanced," with angled bristles and big, chunky, ergonomic handles that no longer fit in the holders. Thus, in most of these older houses, you'll see the built-in toothbrush holder sitting unused, just taking up space on the wall, while the family toothbrushes sit out by themselves or in a cup of some sort, taking up counter space.

Every six months, when Brian and I go to the dentist, he gives each of us one of these new, modern toothbrushes for free. And every time, we come home and stick the new toothbrushes the linen closet, while our Ekotecs retain their place of honor in the toothbrush holder over the sink. Over the years, we've accumulated quite a collection of these freebies, and it's gotten to the point where we've both started muttering, "We really need to find a way to get rid of these." We could, of course, just throw them out, but there's not much point in buying toothbrushes with replaceable heads in order to reduce waste and then throwing out a bunch of perfectly good toothbrushes, head, handle, and all. I found myself wondering: is it really ecofrugal to keep buying replacement heads for our Ekotec toothbrushes when we have a bunch of brand-new, free toothbrushes sitting unused? And I must also confess to a tiny bit of curiosity about whether maybe these sophisticated modern toothbrushes might actually do a better job.

So finally I decided to give one of these free toothbrushes a try. It felt a little gentler on the gums, maybe, but aside from that, it didn't really seem to have any significant advantage over my old Ekotec. However, having used it once, I figured there was no point in discarding it until it was worn out. The problem was where to keep it. It wouldn't fit in our toothbrush holder, and because of its curved, molded handle, it wouldn't like flat on the vanity either. And if I tried to stand it up in the drinking cup, it would just fall over.

For a while I just kept the toothbrush in the plastic package it came in, but it wasn't the most attractive solution. I kept thinking there must be some way to modify our toothbrush holder so that one of these chunky modern brushes would actually fit in it. Simply making the hole bigger, even if we had a way of doing it, wouldn't really work, because the head isn't much wider than the handle; any hole wide enough to accommodate the handle with ease would also be wide enough for the whole toothbrush to slip through completely. Finally, it hit me: the only way to hold this kind of toothbrush upright is to slide it in from the side, just like the glasses in this stemware rack Brian built for me.

Once I had the idea, it was just a matter of figuring out how to make it. I tried wrapping a wire twist tie around the existing toothbrush holder and it sort of worked, but it wasn't terribly sturdy. Finally, Brian hit on the right material for the job: coat hanger wire. He cut a straight piece of wire, bent it double, and then bent the middle of it in on itself to form an indentation the right size to hold a toothbrush handle. Then he threaded the cut ends through one of the holes in the built-in toothbrush holder, bent them up to run flat under the bottom, pushed them back out the hole on the other side, hooked them in place, and snipped off the excess.

Thanks to this simple and inexpensive hack, our toothbrush holder can accommodate my chunky modern toothbrush for as long as it remains useful, and it still has plenty of room to hold my old Ekotec toothbrush while it waits patiently to come back into use. Because frankly, having tried the new one, I think we're just as well off sticking with our Ekotecs and donating the rest of these free toothbrushes to the food bank. Yes, they'll still end up in the waste stream eventually, but they'll be used by people who would probably have been using a regular disposable toothbrush anyway.

Getting my fix for free

One of my hobbies, which I don't believe I've ever discussed in detail on this blog, is filling out online surveys. I enjoy surveys partly because I'm just a nerd who actually likes taking quizzes and questionnaires, and partly because I appreciate the chance to influence the folks who design products and services. (If even one asinine reality show fails to make it to TV because of my input, it will all be worthwhile.)

But an additional perk is that these surveys bring in a little extra money for me. I belong to several survey panels, including Harris Poll, MySurvey, Opinion Outpost, and Global TestMarket, and I also get some through MyPoints. I receive maybe a dozen survey invitations a day, of which I actually qualify for maybe three or four, and they take anywhere from five minutes to half an hour each (usually around 15 or 20 minutes). In exchange for my input, they award me points that I can cash in for gift cards or PayPal deposits. Last year, I earned about $375 doing this, so it's not much of an income stream, but it's a nice little bonus for doing something I enjoy anyway. And because the money comes to me in the form of gift cards, or goes into my PayPal account rather than my checking account, I can feel free to treat it as "fun money" and spend it on little extra treats, rather than part of our regular household funds that I shouldn't "waste" on anything frivolous. (When you've been in the habit of living frugally as long as I have, you get to a point where you actually have to trick yourself into spending money instead of saving it, rather than the other way around.)

Each survey site offers a different selection of gift cards and other rewards, but one of my favorites is a Starbucks gift card. In fact, the main reason I prefer to get my occasional coffeehouse treats from Starbucks is that I can pay for them with my survey rewards. Given my druthers, I'd prefer Dunkin Donuts to Starbucks—partly because there are two of them within a mile of my house, while the nearest Starbucks is across the river in New Brunswick, and partly because they use Fair Trade beans in all their espresso drinks. But since none of my survey sites offers a Dunkin Donuts gift card as a reward, I've been settling for Starbucks cards instead.

To get some extra mileage out of the deal, I took one of the first gift cards I earned and registered it at My Starbucks Rewards, which gives me a free drink on my birthday and access to occasional coupons and special offers. (There are additional perks when you get to "gold level," but that doesn't happen unless you buy 30 drinks in a year, which I almost never do.) I can still cash in points for additional gift cards, because I can log into my account and transfer the points from the new card to my registered one—but it's a bit of a hassle, and I end up accumulating a pile of depleted cards that can't easily be recycled. So I prefer, when possible, to cash in my survey points for PayPal cash and use that to fund my Starbucks account. That way, I can indulge my once-a-month Starbucks habit without having to spend any "real" money on it.

I was thus quite pleased to discover, on a recent visit to Dunkin Donuts, that they are now offering a rewards program of their own, called DD Perks. Their card works much the same as the Starbucks card—load money onto the card, pay with it in the store—but the rewards pile up much faster. In addition to giving you a free drink on your birthday, it also gives you one when you join and one for every 200 points you earn (the equivalent of spending $40). I figured with one of these, I could use my survey rewards at Dunkin rather than Starbucks, support Fair Trade, and get a couple of free mochas into the bargain.

So after registering my new DD Perks card, I cashed in some survey points to fund it. It took several weeks for my reward request to go through, but yesterday the money finally showed up in my account, and I went to the DD Perks site to add cash to the card...and discovered that they don't take PayPal. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, even something called JCB that I've never even heard of, but no PayPal.

So here I am with this nice shiny new card and no way to use it. I could just fund it using one of my credit cards, but I'd feel silly spending my own money at Dunkin Donuts when I can continue to go to Starbucks with "free" money. I could check all my survey sites again and see whether they offer a reward option that's a prepaid Visa card, which I could then use to fund the DD Perks card, but that leaves me once again stuck with a bunch of of extraneous slivers of plastic to deal with. Or, I guess, I could just hold onto the card in the hopes that eventually they'll add a PayPal payment option.

I guess that even if I never get to use the card again, I'm not really in a position to complain. I already got a free drink just for signing up, so if I walk away now, I'm ahead of the game. But it does seem a bit silly of Dunkin Donuts to give me something for nothing, and then make it unnecessarily difficult for me to fund the card so they can get some business out of me in return.

Fabulous prizes

A thought just occurred to me as I was browsing through the list of weekly giveaways from Tip Hero. Some of these are for fairly small prizes, like a $100 gift card, while others are for really big items, like a car, a cruise, or a big lump sum in cash. As I looked through these, I reflected, as I do every week, that most of them really didn't interest me, but what struck me this time was that the ones that did appeal to me were all the smaller prizes. Winning a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card, for instance, would actually make me a lot happier than winning $10,000 in cash. This may not seem to make much sense, because with $10,000 you could buy the equivalent of 200 gift cards. But the thing is, if I won $10,000, that isn't what I'd do with it. If I suddenly had an extra $10,000 in the bank, it would merely be an extra $10,000 in the bank—nice to have, but not really exciting. But a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card would be $50 that could only be spent at Barnes & Noble. I wouldn't have the option of putting it sensibly away in the bank; I would have to spend it frivolously, on the sorts of things they sell at Barnes & Noble—books, games, music. In other words, the $50 prize would be $50 worth of fun money, as opposed to $10,000 worth of useful money. And fun money is, well, more fun.

Intellectually, of course, I know that if I won a larger prize, there would be no reason not to take $50 of the money and spend it on something frivolous. Skimming $50 off the top of a $10,000 prize would still leave plenty of money to set aside for a rainy day, or pay down the mortgage, or whatever. But I know I can't be trusted to do it. I might tell myself I was going to spend the money, or some portion of it, on something fun, but when it came time to withdraw the mad money from the account, I'd just think, "Well, there's really nothing I need at Barnes & Noble," and I wouldn't bother to do it. The advantage of the gift card is that it forces me to spend frivolously, when my own conscience won't do it.

How pathetic is it that I have to trick myself into listening to my id instead of my superego?

Thrift Week 2012: The green version

Happy Thrift Week, everyone! When I first instituted the celebration of Thrift Week here on the blog two years back, I noted that the 20th-century version of this holiday included different themes for each day of the week (Have a Bank Account Day, Invest Safely Day, Carry Life Insurance Day, etc.) When I was trying to think of topics for this year's Thrift Week series, my first idea was to take these old themes and talk about ways to update them for the 'teens (such as changing Have a Bank Account Day to Dump Your Big Bank for a Credit Union Day). But last week, I came up with what I think is a much better idea while shopping. What, shopping? Well, allow me to explain.

It happened like this: A new comic-book and game store just opened up here in town, so naturally I had to stop in and browse. (What can a comic shop possibly have to do with thrift? Just wait, I'm getting to it.) During that first visit, I ended up spending ten bucks on a small game—something that's out of character for me, since I definitely didn't need it, hadn't been actively looking for it, and hadn't shopped around for it. But I soothed myself with the thought that even if it wasn't strictly necessary, it was worthwhile to support local business. From there, it was but a short step to, "You know, that really ought to be some sort of national holiday, Support Local Business Day." And then, with a flash of inspiration, I realized: wait a minute, there's already a perfectly good national holiday going unused, with seven whole days in it that could all be devoted to different aspects of the ecofrugal life.

So that's the theme of this year's Thrift Week celebration: instead of focusing on specific topics related to money management, each day will focus on a specific topic related to the ecofrugal life. Moreover, this year, I'm planning to do more than just talk the thrifty talk: I'm going to walk the thrifty walk as well. Each day this week, I'm actually going to go out and do something specific in keeping with that day's theme. And we'll be kicking off the week with the one that started the whole idea in the first place: Support Local Business Day.

What exactly is ecofrugal about supporting local businesses? Well, first of all, it means less driving. In a town like ours, you can shop for a lot of things—food, toys, office supplies, some kinds of clothing—without getting in a car at all. Even if you live in the boonies, though, the more local your businesses are, the less you have to drive to reach them—and that means less gas burned and less CO2 emitted. Also, supporting local businesses helps keep them afloat, which helps ensure that there will still be businesses in walking distance in the years to come. And in a more general way, having places to shop in town helps tie a community together, and close-knit communities are better at providing a lot of the amenities of the ecofrugal lifestyle (a topic we'll be discussing more on day 6 or 7).

So how did I celebrate Support Local Business Day? Well, I could have gone out and bought yet another new game, but that would be kind of stretching the definition of ecofrugality. So instead, I ran a more practical errand and brought my watch, which was in need of a new battery, over to Jimmy's Watches on Raritan Avenue. This little hole in the wall not only sells watches but actually repairs them, a service that's becoming increasingly difficult to come by in the modern world. With many local businesses, better service comes at the cost of higher prices and smaller selection, but Jimmy's is a rare exception; this tiny store actually has more choice and better value than I've seen anywhere else in our area. I popped up there on foot, handed over my stopped watch, and walked out with a working watch in five minutes. (From there, I went on to visit my local Baskin-Robbins, but that doesn't really count as supporting a local business, since I didn't buy anything; I just stopped in to pick up my free cone, courtesy of the Birthday Club. Birthday freebies—my favorite kind.)

So, that's how I celebrated Support Local Business Day; how about you? (It's a bit late for today, but Thrift Week lasts until the 23rd, so you can make a local shopping excursion at any time this week and still count it as part of the event. Then leave a comment to say how it went, and we can all celebrate together.)

Holiday freebies

Just a quick post to say that Amazon.com is once again running their "25 Days of Free Holiday Music" giveaway. This musical advent calendar offers a different holiday-themed track each day, in a variety of genres. Selections to date have included "Greensleeves" as rendered by Mannheim Steamroller, Bing Crosby's version of "Adeste Fideles," and a version of "Deck the Halls" by, I kid you not, Twisted Sister. Even if you don't like the songs, reading the user comments can be highly entertaining: a remixed version of Duke Ellington's recording of "Jingle Bells" prompted such comments as "A good song ruined," "The worst holiday mistake made since colorizing It's a Wonderful Life," and "This took talent...I didn't think anyone could make Duke Ellington sound terrible."

Happy frugal holidays!