Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Cash, free, helps, Holidays, Items, Online, Wealth
In uncertain economic times like these, it’s comforting to know you can still find items that are free. And one way to avoid going into debt this holiday season is to find free items to fulfill your own needs, thus freeing up your cash for holiday purchases.
The Internet reigns supreme when it comes to finding no-cost stuff. Sure, you might have to provide your email address and sometimes a bit more information, and you might be put on a mailing list, but the end result is plenty of free goods and services.
Financials
Want to control your holiday shopping? FinancialRecovery.com offers a free holiday planner. This spreadsheet will help you track spending so you don’t bust your budget. See the site.
Mint.com helps track everyday spending. It also categorizes trends and searches the Web for deals based on where you spend your money. See the site.
Meanwhile, Rudder.com is another free personal finance site that helps you take control of your spending. It tracks credit cards and bank accounts, and even offers free software aimed at helping people dig themselves out of debt. See the site.
Entertainment?
After Napster, free downloads died — but not for long. There are a number of ad-supported sites where you can download songs by musicians from Adam Ant to ZZ Top. One is SpiralFrog.com, offering more than one million songs and 4,000 music videos, all free. See the site.
Another music site, Pandora.com, bills itself as an online radio station that builds play-lists from your preferences. For example, entering “Bob Dylan” brings up “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” followed by Neil Young’s “Ohio (Live at Massey Hall)” and then “Imagine” by John Lennon. See the site.
If you’re willing to watch television on your computer, you might be able to lower or eliminate your cable bill. For instance, you can watch everything from “My Favorite Martian” to “30 Rock,” “Ugly Betty” and “Sons of Anarchy” for free at TV.Blinkx.com, a site in beta currently. See the site.
Hulu.com is another Web site offering free television shows and movies. See the site.
Also, don’t forget the networks offer many of their shows for free on their Web sites. Another online freebie: Comedy Central shows including “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” See the site.
Books and guides
If you’d rather read than watch TV, save money by checking out Free-eBooks.net. The site offers popular works, how-to guides, recipe books and more, including Adam Smith’s 1776 tome, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” which might be pertinent today. See the site.
At MrExcel.com you can download a free copy of “Learn Excel” by Bill Jelen, the self-proclaimed “Mr. Excel!” This is a book of more than 900 pages with 377 Excel tips. Jelen does caution: His book is designed for people who already use Excel 20 to 40 hours a week. See the site.
The Sutter Lake Hospital in Lincoln, Neb., offers a free wellness book, titled “The 5 Keys to Wellness.” This is a hardcover children’s book — not a download — teaching whole body wellness. See the site.
If you have always wanted to write a book, April Hamilton offers free, downloadable copies of her book, “The IndieAuthor Guide.” See the site.
From clothes to video games to art – and more
Almost everyone these days knows Craigslist.org, which offers free and barter listings online. For an alternative, try Freecycle.org, a rapidly growing online community where people post stuff for others to take. Or ask for items you want. One user, Robin Bectel of Alexandria, Va., said she’s amazed at the items she’s found there. See the site.
“I got a brand-new, tags still on them, pair of snow pants for my toddler, and a few months ago, I got a whole snowsuit for myself, also with tags still on them. I have gotten hundreds of dollars worth of garden plants, landscaping pavers and winter clothing. And, I’ve given away a lot of stuff that I would have just left piled in my basement or thrown in the trash,” Bectel said.
There are a number of blogs that direct readers to free offerings, including Gayle Bu’s AffluentPauper.com. See the site.
Bu, from Grayson, Ga., said she started her blog out of a frustration many middle-income American families share. “I’m not rich enough to reap the benefits of the wealthy,” she said, “and not poor enough to qualify for government assistance programs that provide free food, education and services.” Bu has received free meals at Zaxby’s just by signing up on the restaurant’s site. See the site.
She’s received free tacos at Taco Bell, a free cappuccino from Barnes & Noble, and free ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s. Some recent offers:
Free sample products from Wal-Mart
Free sample products from Procter & Gamble
Instant coupons for free meals at Captain D’s
Free museum visits sponsored by Target
Special offers for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus
Leah Ingram writes a blog called “The Lean Green Family,” which offers a wealth of free items and resources. See the site.
C&T Publishing produces how-to arts-and-crafts books — dozens of free projects are available on their site. See the site.
Some people create a blog with the specific goal of receiving free items. Mike Essex, Birmingham, England-based writer of Blagman, said he’s received over 250 freebies worth more than $8,000. He encourages others to do the same.
“The trick is finding a unique offer about yourself that makes you viable for a company,” he said. “Whether it’s starting an online book club, becoming a product tester, offering to show products to others at work or emailing all your online friends, everyone has something they can offer.” See the site.
Gamers have a lot of options if they want to play without paying. Free online gaming sites include GamesCampus.com, TrueGamesInteractive.com, WickedInteractiveLtd.com, and G4box.com. They’re great for folks who don’t want to pay $40 to $60 for a new game CD.
Meanwhile, Troy Lilly, of Cross Lanes, W.Va., offers his photographs free to anyone who wants to download them on ForestWander.com. He said that while he was hiking on mountains and through forests with his sons, he was inspired to share nature’s beauty with others. See the site.
If Lilly’s work inspires you to take your own hike in the woods — another free activity — check out the Automobile Association of America’s free map site, AAAmaps.com. You can find a map of just about anywhere in the country. See the site.
Want to make free 411 directory information calls? Call Google’s 1-800-GOOG-411. Troy Corley, editor at FreeFunGuides.com, said that’s just one of the freebies you’ll find at the site. See the site.
Another freebie Corley noted: A free education online from MIT through its OpenCourseWare which offers about 1,800 courses. See the site.
Sweepstakes and company promotions are an almost $2 billion a year business, according to Carolyn Wilman, of Oshawa, Canada. Wilman is that country’s self-proclaimed “contest queen.” She lives by her motto: You can’t win if you don’t enter. She fills out about 50,000 contest ballots a year, and said she has won more than $100,000 worth of prizes over the past five years, including trips to Los Angeles, New York, London and Venice. See her site.
If you’re stressed from searching for freebies or just have the holiday blues, you can get help cheering up — for free. Susan Gayle is a certified hypnotist, author and teacher in New York. She offers free, downloadable classes on how to let go of stress at NewBehaviorInstitute.net. See the site.
If you just want to laugh out loud, check out Humoru.com. See the site.
Ann Fry is a humorist and chief executive of Humoru.com, and just in time for the holiday season she is offering free holiday stress management teleconferences. “I’m committed to helping people at work or in life,” she said, “have more lightness and fun.”
Marty Orgel is a freelance writer in San Francisco.
Copyright 2008 MarketWatch, Inc. (more…)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Guru, HEALTH, helps, keep, Priority, Vitamin
MALIBU, Calif. — When I decided to interview Gene Arnold, known as the Vitamin Guru to the Stars, I was expecting some version of those fast-talking guys who try to sell you things in infomercials.
That is nothing like Gene Arnold. In fact, the owner of The Vitamin Barn in Malibu does his best selling by virtue of living a philosophy of wellness and pouring his passion for that into his business.
“You either catch my philosophy or you don’t,” Arnold said. “We provide an opportunity for wellness a day at a time.”
While wellness has become a catch phrase for so many things these days, underneath the marketing hype is a real way of being that just makes sense. Right now, when so many Americans are trying to figure out ways to cut their budgets, I tell my life-coaching clients to keep the gym membership and the vitamins in there as a priority. A debt counselor once told me that’s good advice, especially if a person is potentially going to lose their health insurance or doesn’t have any to begin with.
At age 46, Arnold is more than happy to contribute to the wellness of his clientele, because it’s been his way of life since he was a child whose parents worked in vitamin stores. He helped out and became the front guy answering questions for customers when he was in his early 20s.
“It became known that I could find the answer to anything,” said Arnold, a.k.a. Vitamin Gene.
In 1993 he decided to open his store in California, he started an intensive search for a good location. Since he naturally gravitates to the beach, when he got to Malibu and saw prime space for lease, he went for it.
“It was out of fear, into faith,” Arnold said.
Success in one store prompted him to eventually grow to six, but he found his service-oriented personality didn’t line up well with that sort of growth.
“I’m not that kind of guy,” Arnold said. “I’m a community guy. I’d rather be in my store.”
Just ask the celebrities who frequent his vitamin and juice bar, which is located in the famed Malibu Colony Plaza, a place where a lot of celebs do their day-to-day shopping. On my recent visit, as I waited for a scrumptious shake made with dates and bananas, Fran Drescher — looking fabulous in sweats — was making a purchase. While Arnold is not the type to get star-struck, one of his favorite moments was when Ozzie Osbourne came in asking, “Anything for the liver, mate?”
Arnold takes particular pride in helping someone who has a specific issue — like losing weight or getting off sleeping pills — and seeks his advice for a remedy. He has had a lot of requests for energy and immune support and so he created what he calls wellness shots.
“Every winter for the last six or seven years, we’ve served about 300 hand-blended shots a day,” he said.
Arnold and his staff prefer to juice through a press to retain the pulp, so he began pressing ginger and then adding Echinacea, oregano and ginseng to those shots. Now, through the magic of mass market retail, that potion — called ImmuGo — is available all over the country. It’s in tiny, ready-to-drink tubes.
“I was with my daughter in Wal-Mart, getting her ready to go back to school,” Arnold said. “She’s six. She saw [the ImmuGo on the shelf] first. She said, ‘Daddy, Daddy. Look.’ She was excited.”
What excites Arnold about that scenario is how he’s managed to integrate his family and his business. His daughter is sometimes behind the juice bar with him. His wife — in addition to regularly joining him in Thai yoga — has been doing some of the promotional travel for the new product with him.
“It’s important,” he said. “It makes for a more fluid life.”
His ultimate vision, since Malibu has a lot of high-end rehabilitation centers, is to open a spa and cater to the rehab community.
“I love beautiful places,” he said. “I envision a place where people can grow.”
And speaking of visions, I asked Vitamin Gene if his life is what he envisioned it would be.
“It’s not what I thought it would be,” he said. “It’s better.”
You either get it or you don’t. No infomercial needed.
Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.
