Before you buy a pricey tablet e-book, visit Project Gutenberg, a massive repository of more than 50,000 free e-books, including many required reading classics like Huckleberry Finn, Frankenstein, and A Tale of Two Cities.
Many titles can be read directly online or downloaded to an e-reader—but if you prefer to listen to your literature, visit LibriVox, where you can download thousands of free audio books read by well-spoken volunteers. (You can even learn how to volunteer yourself .) Finally, visit OpenLibrary.org to join a free online book-lending service carrying more than a million titles.
Millions of free coupons
www.retailmenot.com/Before you shop—online or in stores—look for the bounty of free coupons available free online.
RetailMeNot allows you to search through more than 50,000 stores for free coupons and highlights current deals for big-name retailers on the homepage. Meanwhile,
GoodRX provides huge discounts for expensive pharmacy prescriptions.
Free college education
www.class-central.comWhat do you feel like learning today?
Class-Central pairs your interests with free online college courses from institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT.
Khan Academy provides thousands of free video lectures on all subjects. Learn any language under the sun with
DuoLingo, a free app that turns language-learning into a fun game. Boost your resume on
Edx.org by taking courses from top universities, then buying cheap verified certificates to prove you’ve learned from the best. And if your brain is still not satisfied, scroll through this
list of every free learning site out there.
Free documentaries for life
http://documentaryheaven.com/Uninspired by Netflix? Worry not: There are literally thousands of free documentary films just waiting to be streamed on websites like
Documentary Heaven and
Documentary Storm, arranged by categories ranging from mystery, to nature, to even mockumentary. Don’t know where to start?
Browse the Top 100 for inspiration.
Free tax filing
https://www.irs.gov/uac/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-freeSites like TurboTax make filing your returns easy, but come with significant costs. If you earn below $62K a year, take advantage of
IRS Free File, a complimentary government service that guides you through your tax return quickly and effortlessly. Sites like
TaxSlayer, meanwhile, allow you to deduct the cost of filing right on your return, making it next to free. Check out these
secrets tax planners won’t tell you.
Free logins to thousands of websites
http://bugmenot.com/Don’t feel like building an account for a new website? Try
BugMeNot. This handy site shares thousands of pre-created login credentials when all you want to do is get to your content without the hassle of setting up an account. Alas, some sites (like Amazon and YouTube) are not available.
Free therapy
www.7cups.comJust want someone to talk to? At
Seven Cups, you can connect with a trained “active listener” for free, completely confidential therapy. You can pick a listener based on location and life experience, or let the site assign someone to you for an instant compassionate conversation.
Background noise for free productivity
http://www.noisli.com/Studies show that a little background noise can boost creativity and focus, but going to a coffee shop just for the ambience is a pain. Recreate the gentle buzz of humanity in your own home or office with free sites like
Noisli, a customizable list of natural and synthetic background noise loops (including rolling train, rolling thunder, and much more), or
You Are Listening To, a shockingly zen service that pairs ambient music from
Soundcloud with real-time police scanner transmissions from cities around the country. Check out these little
ways to boost your productivity.
Free photo editing software
http://www.gimp.org/Want to give your family snapshots a Photoshop touch, but can’t afford pricey Adobe software? Download the next best thing with free apps like
Pixlr ,
GIMP, or
Paint.net. All are completely free, and mimic the vast image editing capabilities of Photoshop. Make sure you try these
tricks to look better in photos.
Free disposable email address
http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.htmlNeed to sign up for an account to view a website, but don’t want to deal with their daily email badgering? Grab a free, disposable email address from
10 Minute Mail. Why the name? Ten minutes after you click onto the page, your one-time email address will disappear forever, giving you just enough time to confirm a subscription, then never have to think about it again.
Free furniture, moving supplies, and everything else
https://newyork.craigslist.org/search/zipMany people don’t realize that Craigslist, the popular resale website, has a free section for every city in America. Here, generous donors list the items they are willing to part with free of charge (provided you are willing to pick it up). In a busy city like New York, it’s not uncommon to see hundreds of free listings every day. Give it a try with your hometown.
