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Posted
Sep 18 2007, 12:25 PM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Something for nothing? Sign me up!
Sign up a whole bunch of us, apparently. Readers of the Smart Spending message board recently revealed the best ways to troll the Internet for freebies. Seems their mailboxes spill like busted piñatas with toys, gift cards, sample toiletries, OTC meds, T-shirts, magazines – and even cold, hard cash.
And then there are those freebie endorphins.
"I just like the idea of getting stuff for free," said Karen, a Pacific Northwest reader, who got "a nice Adidas tote bag" from My Coke Rewards.
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Posted
Sep 22 2007, 05:06 PM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Re-used any dental floss lately?
All together now: Eeeewwww!
Yet a reader of the Smart Spending message board knows a guy who did this. "There’s nothing grosser than dental floss hanging over the towel rack," said the reader, who posts as "Willowtears."
Sure there is. How about the folks who flush their toilet only once a day? Or the guy who would re-use wash water "until it was black"? Or the woman whose mom strained and re-used cooking oil regardless of pedigree: "Doughnut-flavored taquitos, yum."
All this came from the "Most Extreme Savings Tactics" thread on the message board. I’m pretty extreme myself, but I flush my toilet each and every time, thanks.
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Posted
Oct 02 2007, 07:27 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
People who call themselves freegans take frugality to the extreme -- going through garbage for food, giving up cars -- in the name of protesting consumerism and waste in modern society. Writer Raina Kelley detailed a month spent as a freegan. Some people find fault with their methods and thinking.
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Posted
Oct 02 2007, 07:46 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
The top 20 blogs for finding freebies online are compiled by The Frugal Panda , offering "anything from clothes to pet food." Panda also lists other sites providing free job-hunting advice, music, games, recipes and more.
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Posted
Oct 03 2007, 06:55 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Simple Dollar . A while back, I introduced the very popular concept of a money-free weekend , when a person, a couple or a family elects not to spend any money over a weekend as an experiment in frugality. To aid this, I made a 15 free things to do list during such a weekend, then followed it with a list of 15 more free things . Recently, my wife made a very astute point related to this, almost off the cuff. She stated that most of the things she finds really fulfilling don’t cost a thing. I asked her what she meant and she started rattling off all sorts of things that bring fulfillment to her -- and most of those things really are free. Call a family member or a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. Most people in the United States have a cell phone, and most plans feature unlimited nights and weekends. Take advantage of those free minutes to call someone you’ve felt some disconnect from lately and have a nice chat. Deep clean the room in your house
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Posted
Oct 19 2007, 03:19 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
The Internet provides numerous ways to get free books (usually for the cost of shipping), but the most unusual is BookCrossing . We learned about this site in an invaluable post by The Bargainist about online book exchanges. BookCrossing members leave books "in the wild" in hopes that other avid readers will pick them up and, hopefully, notify the site. A worldwide map gives updates on their "catch" and "release." You can find out about books "in the wild" in your town. (For instance, 44 books are ready to be picked up in Forsyth, Mont. Twenty-three books were set free in Glasgow, Ky., in the last three days.) The Bargainist also describes how to use BookMooch , Paperback Swap , Readers United and other free or cheap online book sources.
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Posted
Oct 24 2007, 05:39 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog Five Cent Nickel . I recently asked readers how they would handle finding a large sum of money in a wallet with no ID. My wife and I ran into this situation just over 10 years ago. We were living on a shoestring and about to have a baby. In fact, my wife's due date had passed, and we were out walking to get things moving. We ran across a wallet containing 11 $100 bills and nothing else. No identification, no credit cards, nothing. I must admit it was tempting, given our situation, to pocket the money, but $1,100 is a lot of money, and walking off with it would have been not only wrong, but also possibly devastating to the person who lost it. My wife's first reaction was: "The mall security office is just inside the door. We have to turn it in." I was less sure. After all, there's no guarantee that mall security (or the police, for that matter) would do the right thing and hold it for the owner. I wanted to tell them that we had found a wallet with a large
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Posted
Nov 14 2007, 02:29 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Frugal Panda provides an invaluable service with " 17 ways to get free books ." Panda describes Bibliomania , with all kinds of online books, study guides and book discussions, and other online libraries like WOWIO and World Public Library . Many of the sites offer free book swapping (you pay the shipping). Among them are SF-Books , PaperBackSwap and BookMooch , which also allows you to donate points and books to charity. Check out Children's Books Online and Memoware , which provides books and documents for handheld devices. Sociolbib enables college students to recycle used textbooks for free. You can swap books, video games, DVDs and other items at several sites, including Zunafish . We've written previously about one of Panda's picks, BookCrossing , which encourages people to "release books into the wild" and track their journeys online.
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Posted
Nov 28 2007, 05:42 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This is frugal giving at its finest. The Happy Rock directs us to a Web site where you can play a word game for free, expand your vocabulary in the process, and provide free rice to feed the world's hungry every time you correctly choose -- or guess -- the meaning of a word. That's right. FreeRice will donate 20 grains of rice for each correct answer. The rice is paid for by companies whose advertising appears on the screen when you play the game, and will be distributed by the U.N. World Food Program. The word game apparently is designed to push your vocabulary but not make you feel stupid. It's multiple choice, and if you get one wrong, you'll move to an easier level until you get the right answer for three words in a row . According to FreeRice.com , almost 188 million grains of rice were donated Tuesday, bringing the total since the game began on Oct. 7 to almost 4.2 billion grains. The word game has 50 levels of difficulty. The Rock happily reports that he made it to level 40.
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Posted
Dec 10 2007, 05:04 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Our thanks go to Less Than a Shoestring's poetloverrebelspy for directing us to a list of freebies available to birthday girls and boys at restaurants and other businesses around the country. The list, which you can find at Hustler Money Blog, includes a mouth-watering assortment of free treats you can enjoy just for getting one step closer to the proverbial banana peel.
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