Real Ways to Free Money

Save for winning the lottery – and even then you’ll still have to buy your lottery ticket – there is pretty much no such thing as free money, because you always have to invest time into earning your reward. And time, as we all know, is money. But if you are willing to invest a little bit of time, there are indeed some ways that you can get free money. Many of these tactics are the kinds of things that people often take for granted or don’t want to deal with, but in this economy you can’t afford to overlook these options:

Mail in that rebate.

People purchase electronics everyday, and many of these items come with rebates. All you have to do is mail in the form, and you can get some of the money back that you spent on your purchase. Can you believe that most of these rebates are never redeemed? In an era where people are using email and social networking sites everyday, they’ve become so lazy that they can’t mail in a simple piece of paper with a stamp on it!

Coupons.

Now I’m not suggesting that you cut out a billion different coupons, walk into a grocery store, try to find those specific items and then stand at the counter for an hour trying to match each coupon to its corresponding item. But there are websites online where you can print out discounts and other offers for the stores and online retailers where you’re already doing your shopping. You could find a code for free shipping, or a code for taking 15% off of your total purchase. Whatever the case may be, it’s just good sense to see if you can apply one of these codes next time you buy something online from your favorite website.

Tax Returns.

Even if you didn’t spend a lot of time working this year for whatever reason, you should still file your tax return. Keep in mind that, even though you may not technically have to pay taxes, you could still receive some money back from the government – and that makes filing your returns worthwhile. This free money from the government is money that you have already parted with and essentially kissed goodbye. Well, now you can say hello again, and use it for anything you see fit!

Focus Groups.

Focus groups are a great way to periodically grab a little extra cash in exchange for an hour or two of your time. They usually pay around 100 dollars for a half hour to an hour. How do you find a focus group? There are plenty of consumer testing websites looking for people to plug into their database and find focus groups for. They’ll call you occasionally, ask you a couple of questions to see if you qualify, and then send you off.

You might be surprised at how quickly free money can accumulate once you start paying attention to opportunities and details!