Freebie Sites – The best part about Freebie sites is that you get to try out products before dropping serious money on them. I know that I’ve been on the fence about dozens of personal and household products that I ended up buying before trying and completely regretting the decision.

Plus, it’s just fun to get free samples. Like how it’s fun to walk through Costco and accumulate those little white cups and toothpicks. Almost nothing is free in life, which is why it’s so much fun to get a bunch of free samples. It’s like being a kid again.

Freebie Sites

I was going to repost the massive collection of freebie links we have from an earlier article, but after clicking on a few I realized that that many of them are expired. Considering that ad promotions come and go, it’s better to just pick out sites that update daily on the best freebie deals.

My Free Product Samples – A great site with a huge selection of goodies. Seems to update daily and had a great beauty product section.

Shop 4 Free Samples – Also has a decent selection, although kind of random in its selection. Homepage is the “daily” free stuff, updated every 24 hours.

I Love Free Things - Has a truly eclectic assortment of goodies, but I personally found the site to be set up poorly.

My Savings – A site that offers for freebies for all English speaking countries around the world.

Free Sample Hub – This site has tons of really expensive-type organic product samples for free.

Actual Free Stuff – A site with all sorts of free goodies.

As you can see there are loads of sites out there with free stuff for people to get sent to them. If you’re looking for free household products, beauty products, or even little samples of food these are the sites to go to.

There are also loads of sites out there that offer free condoms. It’s important to practice safe sex, and therefore important to try different kinds of condoms to see works for you. The more comfortable you are with a certain type of condom, the more likely you are to use it and prevent unnecessary trouble down the road.

Trojan Official Website:

Here you can get a free sample of either their Trojan Enz, Trojan Her Pleasure or Trojan Magnum including free delivery. Click here to get the sample.

Trojan Natural Lamb
They are offering a free sample of their Natural Lamb completely latex free condom, again with free delivery. Click here to get the sample.

Beyond Seven
Sadly, these are not delivered in Canada. They ask you to fill out a survey first, but it is a totally free sample of a condom in their range. Click here to go to their form.

Relax Condoms
I think these are only available in Canada as they are Licensed by Health Canada. Anyway, they will send you a completely free sample. Click here for more.

Play Lubricants - Free lubricant sample from Durex Play.

Freebie Sites

Freebie Sites

Whatever you do, do not forget to give your Valentine or just your best friends a card or something this Valentine’s day. Conveniently we have some cards you can print off for free!

Valentine’s day is just around the corner so I thought it would be cool to offer some free printable valentine cards designed by me. I am not opposed to spending cash on Valentines day but I certainly don’t think any of that cash should be going to Hallmark. The important thing is not how much you spend on the card but rather what you write inside, so I have left the insides of these cards blank as I think it’s important to form your own message to your loved ones! Do you think I am right on this one?

Plus new designs added for Valentines day 2012

I really think that Valentines Day should be made much more non commercial… but that’s just me. No fluffy teddy bears, expensive musical cards or plastic hearts will be given by me but I do like giving my money to local run restaurants or cooking a nice meal at home.

Anyway here are some special free printable valentine cards created by me as my gift to all you readers this Valentines day .

Each card is set up for 11′x8.5′ US Letter paper and can be printed and then simply folded in half. You will get a better feel if you print on a matte card and fold using a ruler very carefully. For the image that bleeds off to the top and right it may be best to use a printer that can print edge to edge or print smaller and then trim the edges. All images are large resolution jpg’s…. If you are having any issues getting them just mail me (forest@frugalzeitgeist.com) and I can email them to you.

Free Printable Valentine Cards

To download: Click on image to show full size and then right-click and save to your desktop.

I hope you like these free cards. I would love to know what you are doing this Valentines day and if you are arranging anything specially frugal. I am still undecided what to do this year but I do know I will be in New Zealand, that alone is awesome! I will probably home cook a meal or go to a small local restaurant. Seeing as a couple of friends will be around too I am sure we can make it a bigger celebration too!

If you don’t want to spend the cash on printing card (is could be seen a waste) then you could always consider cropping these and sending as eCards via email. I have absolutely no problem with receiving an eCard for Valentine’s Day but I do understand some people may not feel like that just yet (I am sure the iPad generation would be fine with it).

Also if you have any comments or suggestions for these free printable valentine cards I would be very interested in hearing from you. I’m also proud of the new additions (top 3) and would love to know which one is your favorite.

Have a fantastic Valentine’s Day.

PS, if you liked these cards you may also be interested in my post Free Printable Thank You Cards.

Ok everyone, it’s the time of year when you are allowed to be cheesy and it’s time for the 2011 Christmas wallpaper to don your screen. So I thought it would be nice to offer you some free christmas wallpapers and some resources where you can find more and not pay a penny for them.

I very much enjoy it when you walk around the office and everyone has different wallpapers on their desktops, it gives a joint feeling that the holidays are coming and everyone is getting closer to those magic days relaxing and enjoying time with friends and family. It’s nice to have that reminder while you wrap up your work for the holidays or even just on your home comp to compliment the decorations in your home.

Frugal Zeitgeist Free Christmas wallpaper 2011

I decided to create some minimal wallpaper for you this year in 4 initial designs. If you show enough interest in the comments I will expand the set and if you need any colour changes or size do not hesitate to ask in the comments or email me at forest.parks@gmail.com.

In each case click on the image and the full size version will load. Then right click the image and select save as to save to your computer.

1. A simple blue wallpaper featuring a white christmas tree branch.

2. Red and snow flakes, easy on the eyes.

3. Simple greyscale silouhetted Christmas tree.

4. A Christmas ornament for your desktop.

I hope you like these Christmas themed wallpapers I created for you. I created them using some excellent free brushes from Green Eyed Butterfly and Keep Waiting both on Deviant Art.

Finding Christmas wallpaper on Google Images

Another excellent way to get a massive selection of wallpapers (not just at Christmas) for your deskop is to click on the 2nd navigation tab at the top of Google that says images. Once in the image search type whatever you want. For example Disney Christmas Wallpaper brings up a ton of images of your favorite Disney characters. Some is fan made (and may not be legal use of imagery) and some is official that has been passed around for free use.

When you want to see an image large, click on the image and then click see full size image. If it redirects you or gives you hassle then hot the back button. Once the image is loaded you can right click the image and select save as to save to your computer.

Christmas wallpaper downloading safety

If using the search engines (either regular search or image search) to find free wallpapers be very careful about where you download from. Any site that has you download other software to get images is potential dangerous and always make sure you have your virus checker on (I use AVG Free on Windows XP and it has been great so far).

I hope you get the Christmas wallpaper you are looking for this holiday and please leave a comment if you have anything to say.

Where to find the best deals online? – When I can I almost always choose to shop online. I don’t enjoy going into crowded stores and having to pay for all the overheads that go with it! Generally shopping online is likely to net you the lowest prices and best deals but where should you be going for those deals?

Where to Find the Best Deals Online?

Retailers

Where to Find the Best Deals Online?

Amazon – It’s probably best to start with Amazon. Although they started off as a book store they now sell almost everything. Anything from a baby walker to wholemeal pasta can be found alongside electronics and of course the Kindle range, it’s now signature product. Prices are often the cheapest out there and for many items there are choices of multiple third party retailers trading through Amazon.

Amazon.com | Amazon.ca

Best Buy – For electronics I like Best Buy doesn’t always have the best deal but when they do put on a good deal it is the best and often available in-store or online. So starting at their website is always good and saves you the journey.

Bestbuy.com | Bestbuy.ca

Ebay – Don’t forget Ebay. Although known for used stuff a lot of people sell brand new or nearly new through the site and with a bit of looking you can pick up some unbelievable deals.

Ebay.com | Ebay.ca

Deal sites

Sites that aggregate deals from various retailers or provide user generated forums often will find you the best prices with minimal efforts. Many sites will also send newsletters straight to your inbox with the latest offers, vouchers and more. Here are a couple of the best.

Slick Deals – An awesome site which immediately shows you a ton of the most popular (using a user voter system) deals on the homepage with the chances to search or drill down by category.

Slickdeals.net

Fat Wallet – The Fat Wallet forum is one of my favorite places to go for vouchers and coupons for money off online purchases. They also feature a ton of deals on the homepage.

Fatwallet.com

Price Grabber – Price Grabber aggregates data from online retailers and is effectively a slick comparing website. It can also be set up to provide alerts and they have some great buying guides and useful content on the site.

Pricegrabber.com

Search Engines

Both Google and Bing have shopping tabs on their engines and you can use these to find data from a variety of sources and simply, cleanly and quickly hunt down a bargain.

When looking for a deal always check multiple sources, deal, websites, manufacturer sites and maybe just to be safe phone a few stores direct. Often the online price is the best buy you never know. Also always search for a coupon, often you come up with something that helps you save more.

Where to Find the Best Deals Online, Your Input?

So do you use any of these sites or possibly a site not listed? Have you had much luck with any other methods or are you lazy and just use one place to shop? As always I look forward to your feedback.

Related: Average Christmas Gift Price

Thanks for reading – Where to find the best deals online?

Let’s talk Southwest airlines frequent flier makeover program. And first off, I want to start with how much I love this company. I remember being in graduate school and taking Management 386. This is the class where we had to emulate running an airlines company and dealing with all the issues that they take on daily. Let me just sum it up and say it is crazy to be in this business.

However, out of that class came my appreciation for Southwest and their consistent practice to be different, customer focused, and efficient. You have to love a company that dares to be different, not follow all their competitors, and willing to bend over backwards for their customers and employees. Especially in the airline business, where each business has been operating the same way for so long. You come along doing something different and everyone looks at you funny. You get a lot of resistence from people talking about how things have always been done a certain way. And even getting resistence from your employees that don’t want to change with the times.

Southwest Airlines Frequent Flier Makeover

Southwest has never been afraid to be different. And this change in the their frequent flier program is just another example of how they are not scare to take a step into the unknown to do what they think is best for the company. You may be thinking that changing up their program isn’t so significant, but you have to understand that the airline business model doesn’t cause for change. Yet Southwest has continually embraced changed and excelled in the face of it. I would venture out to think that this time is going to be no different.

1987 Upgrade – I think it is about time that Southwest upgraded their program. It has been the same program since 1987 and frankly, it has not been very friendly to their best customers. Customers have complained about they system for years and now it is time for Southwest to take action. Glad to hear they are springing forward to make the people happy.

Several Hundred Million Dollars – Obviously, the company isn’t doing this just for kicks. They stand to significantly profit from the changes. Not sure exactly how they will earn more money as the more details are just coming out. But I suspect that the better plan, combined with their lower prices, will result in more and more people doing business with the company than going to competitors.

No Blackout Dates – This is the biggest change to the plan. Southwest is officially going to no blackout dates. This means that any frequent flier points that you accumulate over the year can be used any time of the year. This is something that has been a thorn in the side of most airline travelers as they don’t understand why anyone would blackout dates they want to fly. But the companies across the board were doing it, so there was no choice. But in todays competitive market, things are different and it is time for companies like Southwest to honor the credits on any day the traveler wants to use them.

Credit Card Holders & International Flights – Another key point in the change is the fact that if you have a Southwest credit card, you can even gain addition points for flying with other airlines. You just have to use their credit card. This is a great idea because Southwest doesn’t fly on every route or even do international flights, therefore, they were missing out of a lot of possibilities. Now they won’t and I am sure the people are appreciative of this decision.

The bottom line is this. The change in the rewards program will benefit the customers like you and I, therefore, we are happy with the decision. What do you think about Southwest Airlines Frequent Flier Makeover?

FREE Printable Thank You Cards courtesy of us, FrugalZeitgiest.com

I was playing around making some images for another site of mine and I thought it would be an excellent idea to create some free printable thank you cards that you can print easily using your home printer.

Thank you cards have a million uses. You can give thanks for people attending an event, thanks for people helping you out with something. A personal thank you for a close friend and much much more. However lining Hallmark’s pockets with more money is not something I or many people want to do. It’s much more cost effective to print the card from one of our free online files.

So here they are (feel free to remove my website credit before printing):

Free Printable Thank You Cards To Download

To get the file

• Click on the image and the large size will load.
• Right click and select save as. Save the file to your desktop. Then double click it to open and select print…. Easy peasy!
• These files are set up for US letter size. 8.5in x 11in so print them on standard paper and then fold into quarters.
• If you want to use a nice card then you will have to cut the card in half, once printed.
• …If you really want a file for printing two up on a sheet of card just send me a message (forest.parks@gmail.com) and I will send one your way.

Comic – Thank You

Thanks you are a *

Thanks you rock

Fancy – Thank you

Sunburst – Thank you

Thank you with butterfly

Tips for printing these cards

These cards should print nicely onto a good quality printing paper and I suggest you use a good quality print setting such as “best” on most printers default settings. Using photopaper or thick card could be nice but may not be as economical.

Please let me know what you think of our Free Printable Thank You Cards and if you have any problems with the files.

I worked hard on these so I hope you like them. If there is enough demand I will make some more, maybe birthday cards or some other related subjects.

So if you have an idea for a new card (Thank you card or any type) then drop your ideas with a description in the comments below and when I get a few ideas I will add them to the post and build up a small library. Should be a fun project and would be great to have your input and ideas.

Forest.

One of the best ways to save when you go shopping is to find and use grocery coupons to print. You can often find them in local newspapers but did you know you can also find them online?

Sensible use of coupons can save you a lot of cash. In this article I will show you a few great online coupons sites that you can print from and some tips for using them.

Links in this post are Affiliate links and may earn me a small commission. However we only recommend services that we think are great!

Grocery Coupons To Print from Coupons dot com

I just found out about Coupons.com. This website is absolutely awesome for anybody in the US who needs food coupons to print to save tons of money at their local grocery store.

The layout is great, you just check off the savings coupons you want and then click print. They have hundreds of current offers and it looks like they regularily update.

Here are some example coupons (may not be available anymore).

They have so many known brands here that I am sure that you could save at least $10 per normal shop. I wish I could find something bad about them!!! Well I guess you still have to print them, it will be really cool when we can download things like this onto a card or something and then just swipe it at the supermarket.

Go take a look at Coupons.com now and let me know what you think?

Grocery Coupons To Print from Coupon Surfer

Now it is always great to have a back up source, you may find a better coupon or something for another product you need. Coupon Surfer is another online service for printing out coupons and although it’s not a snazzy looking at the Coupons.com website it has some great US offers and it doesn’t matter how pretty the site if it can save you money!

Check out Coupon Surfer Grocery Coupons and let us know if you find any great offers.

How to best use these grocery coupons to print?

You have to be careful with a coupon. Oddly they don’t always offer you the best deal and they can encourage you to buy stuff you really don’t need. That being said used properly coupons can save you a ton on your groceries but it’s best to follow some simple tips and routines to keep the savings worth while.

Here are my tips to use these printtable coupons correctly.

1. Always sit down and write yourself a list before you look at coupons.
2. Look on Coupons.com and Coupon Surfer for the items on your list by searching for each item or an adequate replacement. Don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked!
3. Only print the coupons you will use, printing costs money!
4. Just because you have a coupon does not mean that you should not cross check other brands and see what deals the Supermarket has on. Sometimes store brands are still much cheaper than a coupon discounted name brand product and they may taste identical!

It may also be worth you checking out the excellent article here by Dragon Sue: Avoiding Going To The Supermaket. If you can follow some of those tips and only visit the supermarket every 2 weeks or less then you can stack up coupons, bulk purchase and avoid silly purchases easier.

Thanks for reading and please do not hesitate to post a comment or any questions.

In the Bay area for September 30th (2010) then go along to the world’s largest ice cream social and grab a free ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery.

I have never had the pleasure of trying any Cold Stone Creamery ice cream but it looks yummy and if you are in the Bay area or near any Cold Stone Creamery tomorrow (3oth sept 2010) between 5-8pm then just pop in and grab a free 3oz sample of Kate’s Creation.

Kate is an 11 year old junior taste master behind this years Make a Wish creation which is caramel apple ice cream, graham crackers, chocolate shavings, pie crust and apple pie filling, yum!

Of course donations are to the Make a Wish cause are also appreciated.

Another way to get free ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery

if you miss tomorrow’s event you can still donate to Make a Wish and there is another way to grab a free ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery. If you go over to their site and sign up with their birthday club they will give you a free Stone Cold Creation every year for your birthday, not a lot but if you have a birthday coming up then why not do it? Ice Cream isn’t the best thing to eat but you deserve it on your special day .

Have you tried Cold Stone Creamery and what is your favorite ice cream? I love Ben & Jerry’s of course .

(PS… originally picked this story up as I thought it said free ice cream at Stone Cold Cemetery…. ooops)

For some reason the past week seems to have been a week for blog anniversaries and that brings us readers great competitions! It’s always worth entering comps and I have been lucky to win a few great books in the past and some Amazon vouchers. Fingers crossed for a big ticket prize at some point too.

Anyway these competitions are very easy to enter, don’t take long at all and the prizes are absolutely awesome. Here they are listed in order of finish date (soonest first).

Christian PF – iPod Touch Giveaway

ENDS: midnight CST 23rd Sept (2010)
Christian PF are giving away the latest version of Apple’s awesome iPod touch and there are 5 ways to enter including the easy routes of tweeting and linking on facebook. I’m linking to one of my fave posts here as part of my entry. I loved the Christian PF post on How I Escaped the Rat Rat.

Click here to enter the Christian PF iPod Touch Giveaway

Couple Money 1st Anniversary Laptop (and more) Giveaway

ENDS: midnight 26th Sept (no time zone specified) (2010)
Couple Money is doing amazing for a blog that is only 1 year old! Partly because of awesome giveaways like this (and of course awesome content!). This time around Elle is giving away a very nicely speced Toshiba Silver 15.6″ Satellite  Laptop PC with a Camera and a few other bits. You have to sign up to the newsletter but can also gain other point with ways such as tweeting and joining on Facebook.

Click here now to enter Couple Money’s 1st Anniversary Laptop Giveaway!

Out of Debt Again - 3 Year Blogoversary Celebration, Over $800 Dollars In Prizes and Cash to Giveaway

ENDS: midnight PST 27th Sept (2010)
Firstly congrats to Out of Debt again for 3 awesome years of blogging! This competition is quite the bonanza and entry is super simple through a form on the site, twitter and other options. Prizes include an Amazon Kindle, $100 of Amazon Vouchers, loads of books, cash and more! I sponsored a copy of Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover too!

Enter Out of Debt Again’s 3 Year Blogoversary contest here

Invest it Wisely – 6 Month Giveaway Contest, Close to $300 of Prizes

ENDS: midnight 29th Sept (no time zone specified) (2010)
Like Elle Kevin has produced an amazing blog in a very short time. Only 6 months!!! Anyway this competition is another awesome one to enter with simple form entry and other options including tweeting and signing up to updates. Prizes include Amazon and Target Vouchers, cash via Paypal and a variety of awesome books. I have sponsored a $25 Amazon gift card!

Enter Invest it Wisely’s 6 Month Giveaway by clicking here

Ongoing Yakezie Book Giveaways

If you like reading then you ought to get yourself over to Yakezie.com where book giveaways are being hosted almost weekly right now. The lastest giveaway can be found here: How Rich People Think Book Review.

All of these giveaways are stupidly easy to enter and with such a massive pool of prizes you have fantastic chances of picking something up.

Good luck….

(Ps, If I missed any giveaways for this coming week in this round up please let me know).

With the advancement of technology reading is taking on new forms and e-books are now extremely popular. Buying e-books can get as expensive as buying real printed books so knowing how to find free e-books is a good thing to keep your digital reading on a budget.

This isn’t going to be a post about stealing digital copies of the newest New York Times Bestseller’s but that does not mean that the e-books that you can fully legally obtain for free are of poor quality in the slightest. I’m going to share some of the best resources for picking up ebooks of many types for free.

How To Find Free e-Books, My Resources

There are a few formats of ebook but the most common is PDF or Kindle. Most mobile devices (phones, ipads, laptops and digital ebook readers) can be equipped to read pretty much every format of ebook so there is no worries there. if you need any help with formats and reading just ask in the comments and I will help you out.

Best overall resource, Project Gutenberg – No matter what kind of ebook you are trying to download Project Gutenberg is a great place to start. They supply the ebooks as download for most major ebook formats, no registration is required and it’s just an awesome resource. They say they have over 330k ebooks so you are unlikely to run out of books to read!

The classics – Most classic books are out of copyright. That means that pretty much every classic you can remember from the works of Shakespeare to Bronte are available to download  from around the web. Planet ebook has a great range and currenly have 84 classics including Wuthering Heights and 1984.

Self published books - The internet has basically opened up publishing for everyone. No longer do you need to get a book deal or be hired as a journalist to write. Aspiring authors are offering some of their finest work up for your scrutiny for free in the hope of eventually getting a deal. In the meantime you can find a star author in the making. How cool is that? Smashwords has a great selection of free and low priced self published books for download in many genres from fiction to self help.

Car Manuals – Who knew it! You can find a manual for many cars online as an ebook for free! OnlineFreeBooks.net has links to many manuals for many models.

Internet Marketing - I won’t provide a link here. All I can say is that if you visit any known (and many unknown) marketers websites they are giving away free material on all aspects of internet marketing and earning money online. Of course the fill the books with affiliate links and sometimes just provide teasers of full services but heay if you are aware of this you can find some priceless free content.

I would love to know what tips you have for how to find free e-books and if you have any other comments.

As always, thanks for reading.