Getting food for free:

• Be a ‘Freegan’ – if you’ve got no qualms about ‘best before’ dates, then this is right up your alley. It involves rifling through bins at the back of supermarkets to get a hold of munchies destined for the scrap heap. Most of the stuff thrown away is perfectly all right to eat, just past its sell-by date. Currently supermarkets chuck out about 5% of their food each day because they’re required to by law, not because it's bad or harmful. The more Freegans cleaning up, the better, they say. Not for everyone, we know, but if you hate to see good food go to waste, dig in.

• Get green fingers – grow your own food. It’s not as difficult as farmers would lead you to believe and will save you a bundle, while providing you with a healthy alternative to fast food. No space? Set up a herb garden on your window sill. A spare corner on your balcony? Buy a tomato plant to give you yummy fresh ripe tomatoes.

• Pick for free - blackberries, elderflowers, shellfish, seaweed, nettles are all there for the picking and eating. Check out the excellent Little Gem book Food for Free to find a range of edible, wild, and free plants. Our 'food and family' blogger, Sarah Lockett, also has some useful recipes on her blog using free food.

Day-to-day living for free:

• Live rent-free – consider a job as a caretaker in a National Trust property or as a house parent in a boarding school. There are various jobs around that include free accommodation - see our article here for loads of ideas.. If money is tight, think about one of those.

• Give and get for free - Freecycle is an internet swap meet. You sign up for an email group servicing your community then you can announce items you are offering away for free. Other members who want items that were posted can simply arrange with the poster to pick them up. It's all free! Craig's List is similar to Freecycle but you don't need to join, just browse or post.

• Take a day off spending - since its launch over a decade ago, National Buy Nothing Day (connected to Adbusters) has grown into a worldwide celebration of people power and simple living. It normally takes place in the month leading up to the Christmas celebrations and has created a debate about how the need to consume dominates our daily lives. Do your own Buy Nothing Day once a month and see how much you can save.

• Pick up free things by mystery shopping. You will be enjoying hospitality at all sorts of places - shops, pubs, restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, ticket offices etc. and most of the time get to keep products in return for commenting on them. Find out more about mystery shopping here.

• Get free samples by setting up a website that reviews a specific product. e.g. games, CD's, gardening books. Then get in touch with the relevant PR for those companies, requesting free samples in exchange for a review. You can even make money from them by setting up a shopping cart and selling products that you review.

• Get free cosmetics from cosmetic research online. Try, review and keep new hand-creams, moisturisers, cleaning products, children's products and all sorts of other goodies.

• Have a swap shop with your friends. Get everyone together with clothes none of you want anymore and throw them in a big pile. Rifle through till you find something you like!

Entertainment and keeping busy for free:

• Sign up for free shows, tour and live events with BBC. Be in the audience of your favourite TV show, check out new music with promotional events or watch the recording of Radio 4's '15 Minute Musicals'. Find the latest show information here.

• Learn to freeload – there are loads of parties, launches and other free events that ‘those in the know’ attend. Free food and drink and entertainment are all there for those with enough front to blag their way in. Go on, you know you want to.

• Get some fresh air. It doesn’t matter where you live, going for a walk a few times a week will do you good and it doesn’t cost anything. Combine it with a kick around of a ball in the park with friends or family and you have a whole free afternoon’s entertainment.

• Catch up on your reading – visit your local library (remember your library? It's the big building in town that has free books and other stuff in it that we will lose if we don't use). Borrow some books and read them - why buy? Read newspapers and magazines online. Most are free and you can always print some top bits out.

Live for free online

Companies are always trying to market and promote their stock – whether it’s free samples of shampoo, breakfast bars, washing powders, razors, cameras, books, pens, perfumes, CD's, cinema tickets, T-shirts, chocolates, sweets, tea, coffee, sim cards, toys, posters, magazines – websites are gathering all of these freebies in one place so you can go and find what you want.

It’s not just samples either, they also group together free trials – for example six free DVD rentals to try that company’s service – or coupons and vouchers that you can print off and take in to stores to get your discount. We have all the latest freebie giveaways in our Free Stuff article but you can have a look on other sites too.

There are a lot of sites out there and we’ve gathered together some of the best.

• www.freebietown.co.uk

• www.britishfreebies.co.uk

• www.freestuffjunction.co.uk

• www.free-stuff.co.uk

 

• www.freebiesanddiscounts.co.uk/free.html

• www.freebieholics.co.uk

• www.bobsfreestuffforum.co.uk

There’s also a great site called www.pigsback.com which emails you discounts and coupons according to your interests, check it out to see the cute little pigs.

What’s the catch you ask?

For most of the free samples you just need to provide a mailing address so they can get to you. Sometimes you may have to join a program or sign up to get the offer, so always check the details before signing onto anything. Also, we suggest that you set up a separate email account, perhaps with Hotmail or Yahoo, that you only use for these sites. Loads of them like to spam you with nonsense once you have signed-up so if you set up a separate email they can all go into that and not clog up your real inbox.

Some sites cannot update fast enough and there can be expired links on there but the good sites enable you to let them know about expired links. None of the sites are overall fancy in their style, but who needs to be when you’re getting free stuff!

There are many more sites but we’re only listing the best ones because after you search the first two or three the specials begin to repeat. Anyone can make up a freebie site, they are just taking the work out for you by finding the information first.