While there may not be many legitimate offers our there for you to get something (worthwhile) for nothing, there are a few places where you can earn money with very little effort—and, as this post from RedeemingRiches.com points out, you may be missing out on more “free” money than you realized.

Here’s a look at some common sources of extra income that you should take advantage of (if you’re not already):

• Employer matches: If your company has a retirement savings program, your employer may offer to match a certain percentage of your income. If you put in, say four percent of your pay each month, your employer may do the same. This is money your employer is giving you in addition to your salary, so not taking advantage of it would be silly—sock away at least that much to get the full benefit!
• Product rebates: Sometimes, we’re swayed to buy a certain product because of the promise of a mail-in money rebate—but then fail to follow up. The National Consumer League apparently estimates that a scant two or three percent of people actually take advantage of cash rebates.
• Rewards or loyalty programs: Many grocery stores, gas stations, airlines and credit card companies offer rewards programs to incentivize purchases. While credit card debt can lead be problematic if mishandled, many of these options are excellent ways to earn something extra at places you’re already spending money. Make sure you’re signed up for points programs at your local haunts.
• Storing money incorrectly: If you keep money in a jar on top of the refrigerator, you’re not earning any interest—and the same goes if you keep your funds in a checking account. Consider opening high-interest CDs or linking a checking and savings account so you can easily transfer direct deposits into an interest-earning place.
• Ignoring charitable deductions: The government allows you to deduct charitable donations on your taxes, so why not take advantage of that? If it’s merely a matter of poor record-keeping on your part, take the initiative to put together a filing system that will help you save some green at tax time.

Bottom line: None of these “free” money options requires a lot of legwork, but all of them require a little. Challenge yourself to make the small changes necessary to introduce big savings into your finances.

Additional Resources

Charitable Contribution Deductions (2009) (PDF)

While we all like to be comfortable (warm in the winter, cool in the summer), altering the temperature of our houses can be a costly enterprise. Here’s a look at how you can save money and not melt away this summer by flipping off your air conditioner.

Of course, if you have any medical conditions that require you to remain cool or if you’re among groups who are especially sensitive to heat (the elderly, the very young, those with asthma, etc.), check with your doctor about what kinds of temperatures you should aim for.

A Hotter State of Mind

This post from WiseBread.com suggests some techniques for coping with the hotter temperatures that come with nixing the AC, which include:

• Accepting the heat: Summer weather is hot weather. Once you accept that you may be warmer than is pleasant, the rest is relatively easy. When you’re around the house, you can adapt by wearing temperature-appropriate clothing—and going without artificial cooling has some advantages.
• Enjoying storms and wind: Summer rainstorms are never so wonderful as when you’re not using air conditioning. And the temporary coolness of an overcast day might be lost on those who strictly regulate their house temperature. Going without AC is a great way to get in touch with (and appreciate) the fluctuations in summer weather.

Alternative Ways to Stay Cool

Once you’ve committed to cutting out AC (and receiving much lower bills from your power company!), you’ll want to adopt a few strategies to keep yourself from wilting away:

• Leave the heat: During the hottest hours of the day, try finding an air-conditioned or otherwise cool place to chill out (office buildings, libraries, cafés, movie theatres and water bodies are all excellent). This will help you feel fresh.
• Love water: Sip cold water or iced tea to stay cool. If you’re really struggling, try a chilly shower or a jaunt in the sprinkler.
• Work your windows: At night, open the windows wide for maximum airflow during the cool hours. In the morning, you can close the windows and lower shades to trap cool air inside.
• Move the air, not your body: A ceiling fan can do wonders for making a hot room feel bearable, but engaging in serious exercise or strenuous activity is a bad idea during the heat of the day. If possible, reserve all significant activity for early morning or late evening hours.
• Think ahead: If you’re planning to move soon, be sure to investigate your future home’s track record with keeping cool (and keeping warm).

The upside here (as this post) is that we can all learn something from the unfortunate mistakes these people made a few years ago to protect ourselves financially in the years ahead.

Big Mistake: No Down Payment

One popular method for buying homes during the housing boom was to do so with no money down – in other words, by borrowing the house’s entire value. This often means one of two things:

• A second mortgage: Often, this loan would cover the 20 percent down payment and come with a high interest rate. Over time, second mortgages can cost borrowers enormous amounts in interest.
• Private mortgage insurance: This product requires borrowers to pay a certain amount per month per $100,000 borrowed to offset losses in case they default on their loans. Costs can be in the thousands of dollars per year.

Both of these options are expensive and illustrate the problem of no-down-payment home loans: they’re risky and are priced to compensate for that.

Nowadays, with credit much tighter than a few years ago, few lenders will agree to a mortgage without a down payment. Take a cue from them and save up – if you can’t afford the down payment, you can’t afford the house.

Big Mistake: Selling for Less than You Bought

Once upon a time, real estate was considered an almost magical investment whose value would consistently increase over time. But, as the bubble-bust cycle showed us, that’s not always true. To avoid losing serious money by selling at the wrong time, consider that:

• Panicking doesn’t help. When markets bottom out, many people sell their stocks or homes, despite the fact that they’re taking a loss. This irrational behavior is often prompted by a desire to get out before losing any more money, but that is often counterproductive.
• Patience will help. If you stick with your investments though tough times, there’s a good chance things will turn around and you’ll end up recovering some (if not all) of your losses.
• You have some control. While you may not be in charge of how the market behaves on any grand scale, you can take charge of certain factors. Upping your mortgage principal payments, for example, will help you eliminate your mortgage debt sooner and thus save money on interest.

Additional Resources

Home Buying Brochure

(PDF)

Looking for ways to trim your costs gets difficult after a certain point: once you’ve cut out the extras like fancy television channels and deluxe cell phone plans, you may think you’ve gone as far as you can go without freezing or starving.

But you may have an alternative to dropping considerable sums at the grocery checkout each week. Enter gleaning.

What is Gleaning?

If you’ve read the biblical book of Ruth, you may have heard of gleaning. In ancient times, it involved following harvesters in the field and picking up any produce that fell to the ground. By gleaning fields, many poor people were able to eat.

Today, though, gleaning works a little differently. According to one writer, gleaning in 2010 works more like this:

• You find a gleaning group: A little online research should help you figure out whether a gleaning group already exists in your area. If not, you may be able to print a notice in a local paper or online to see if anyone is interested in starting one.
• You pay a slight fee: Some groups may have a nominal fee (the writer mentioned above pays $30 per year) to help the group with costs associated with gleaning.
• You pitch in: Every day, one member of the group is responsible for visiting the grocers and bakers that agreed to participate in the gleaning. The group member picks up (for free) any food that can no longer be sold because of freshness requirements but is still perfectly edible.
• You divvy up: Once the food is collected, the members of the cooperative each take a share. In this way, everyone gets some food every day.

The Positives

The positives here are pretty obvious:

• You get free food.
• You prevent food from going to waste.
• You get to know members of your community.
• You get a chance to try things you may never have bought.

The Negatives

But gleaning isn’t right for everyone. Consider the drawbacks:

• You can’t choose what you get, so if you have people in your household with allergies or restrictive diets, it may not work.
• You may get lots of perishables, like fruits and vegetables. This isn’t a problem if you can, preserve or can share with neighbors, but could otherwise lead to waste.
• You need to commit some time. The writer noted above estimates that the endeavor consumes about three to five hours of time every week.

Done right, gleaning can be one opportunity for you to cut back on costs and make some spare room in your budget. Have you tried gleaning? What are your thoughts on the process? Leave a comment below and let me know!

1. Extend your printer’s ink. It’s no secret that ink is expensive (it costs more than human blood, according to this chart). Luckily, you can make it last longer: first download Ecofont to cut down on your ink usage by 25 percenmt. Then, when you “run out” of ink, take out the cartridge and loosen the drops in there with a hairdryer. This could add up to three months to your cartridge’s life.
2. Stretch your sponges. At a certain point, kitchen sponges get gross, but you can keep them chugging by wetting them and zapping them in the microwave for a minute or two to sterilize them. When they’ve really had it, shift them to bathroom or car-wash duty.
3. Take care of your vacuum cleaner. Save money by treating it like a vehicle (that is, maintaining it well). Check to make sure hair hasn’t clogged it (and remove any that has), replace the belt if necessary (check your manual) and clean the filter when you remove dirt buildup. Just soak it in soapy water, rinse it and let it air dry.
4. Cut your water usage. offers tips for how to seriously reduce your water usage (and thus lower your bills and your environmental impact). Check out the post for tips on showerheads, leaky faucets, thirsty lawns and more.
5. Keep your mattress young. Vacuum your mattress regularly to eliminate bacteria and mites, and flip it if you start to feel it sagging. If it’s getting really loose, consider putting some wooden planks on the frame to offer extra support.
6. Save on your shave. Be sure to dry your razor blades after using them, which prevents rusting and keeps your blades sharp longer.
7. Prolong your laptop battery’s life. Besides turning off and unplugging your computer at night (and other times you aren’t using it), you can save on electricity and keep your computer battery happy by running only programs you need, dimming the screen light, muting sounds when you’re not using them, and choosing sleep mode when you’ll be away for any significant period of time.

Here’s an overview of the ground covered in the sites.

• Retirement savings: How much should you save for retirement? Are you on the right track? What will your future expenses look like? Luckily, there are online tools to help you answer these difficult questions and an online write-up to help you navigate the site these tools are found.
• Stocks and investing: From questions of portfolio diversity to risk levels to choosing what stocks to buy, the web has options for you. No matter where you are in your investing career, you can likely find helpful strategies and pointers at some of the sites mentioned.
• Spending and credit: Looking to trim your costs? Trying to figure out which credit cards you should keep and which ones you could get rid of? Look no further than the CNN list. The sites provided cover a variety of topics, including understanding your credit card (and the laws regulating it) and how to shift your saving/spending balance.
• Questions of home ownership: Whether you’re looking for a neighborhood that suits you, trying to determine whether you should hire a contractor or otherwise streamline your homeownership, there are sites to help you along. These can save you legwork, as many of them have information from around the country.
• Your health: Not sure who to see for a particular ailment? Looking for the best nearby hospital for a specific procedure? The money-management sites have tools for you.
• Employment: In this economy, many of us are either looking for work, looking for extra work or trying to stay sharp so our employers don’t let us go. Luckily, you don’t need to bend over backwards to find ways to keep on your toes: online resources can help you find work or better prepare yourself for it.
• Major purchases: Whether you’re in the market for a car, a stereo or airfare, there are web sites devoted to helping you find the best price.
• Minor purchases: Looking for coupons and discounts for less significant, everyday purchases? You’re in luck. Online directories also have you covered on this front.
• Charitable giving: Ever worried that the money you mean to give to a good cause will end up in the hands of a rascally scammer? Worry no more. A site for navigating charities rounds out the list of online resources to help you spend and save smarter.

Bottom line: Check out the list and see what online tools you can start using today!

This post from GetRichSlowly.org tells the story that’s fairly common: a woman got a new job and a raise, thought she’d finally end her debt and… didn’t.

The reason? She succumbed to “lifestyle inflation.” Luckily, she fought back and offers some tips for other people looking to hang on to their hard-earned cash.

Ignore Your Raises

While it may be tempting to automatically adapt to the new, more luxurious lifestyle a raise allows you, bumping up your living standards right away can be a bad move financially. This doesn’t mean you should eat Ramen noodles your whole life, but consider living one pay raise behind:

• Use extra income to pay down debt
• Sock new money into a savings account (or a retirement plan)
• Put the money toward a specific future purchase (like a new car)

However you save your money, this strategy will keep you from spending your money as soon as you make it.

Focus on the Right Goals

In the post mentioned above, the writer notes that she accepted a higher-paying job but found herself missing her old one, which allowed her more creativity. Make sure you don’t get trapped into a higher-paying gig or a more expensive lifestyle simply because you can.

• Write down what you want. Having a concrete goal in mind for saving money (like paying off your credit cards, buying a house, etc.) will make the process easier and let you know whether you’re staying on track.
• Use money as a tool. Money alone isn’t much good to you—it’s what you can do with money that matters. So try to treat it like you would a hammer: only take it out when you really need it.
• Take time to reevaluate. If you feel out of control or too restricted financially, sit down and reevaluate your goals. Being willing to change the way you do things is key for adapting your finances.

Additional Resources

Savings Fitness: A Guide to Your Money and Your Financial Future (PDF)

Now, according to WalletPop.com, unscrupulous individuals are scamming struggling homeowners out of their money in a slightly different way.

Loan Modification Scams

Apparently, “forensic audits” are at the heart of this scam. Here’s how they work:

• You pay a mortgage loan auditor. Scammers of all sorts are notorious for upfront fees, and the loan modification scammers are apparently no different. If someone asks for fees before performing a service, be very wary.
• The auditor examines your loan for fraud. Theoretically, a loan auditor’s job is to review your mortgage documents and discover any illegal activity on the part of the lender.
• The auditor goes to your lender. Once evidence of fraud comes to light, an honest auditor can take it to the lender and use it as a bargaining chip to get you better terms on your loan.

But, naturally, the dishonest auditors out there won’t follow through. They may fail to thoroughly examine your loan papers, fail to actually visit and negotiate with your lender or simply walk away with your money.

Protect Yourself, Your Money and Your Home

If you are in danger of losing your home to foreclosure, you’ve probably considered applying for the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). To see if you qualify, start by taking this survey at the government’s HAMP website.

Once you know whether you can reasonably expect a modification from your bank, consider researching loan auditors in your area (honest ones may in fact be able to help you find fraud in your loan – and they won’t charge you fees until they’ve actually helped you).

To verify a company’s credibility, check out their standing with your state’s Better Business Bureau (BBB)

Other Options

If a loan modification isn’t in the cards based on your loan, you may be able to stave off foreclosure by filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy. A bankruptcy lawyer in your area may be able to help you determine whether this is the best path for you.

Make Double (or Triple) Portions

When you cook a basic, versatile ingredient (like chicken), make more than you or your family can eat in one night. That way, you have the basic ingredient for several more meals. Many people already do this on Thanksgiving with turkey soup or sandwiches the next day, and it’s fairly easy to apply it to regular life. Encore meals you might consider:

• Soups and stews: These are particularly great because you can toss them on the stove and leave them alone until you’re ready to eat.
• Anything wrapped: Dumplings, sandwiches, fajitas, ravioli—there’s a reason many cultures have wrapped up staples. They’re a great way to revamp leftovers.
• Anything with sauce: Never underestimate the power of spices and sauces to transform a basic food. A simple sauce and new sides can turn leftovers into a whole new meal.
• Anything from the freezer: Okay, this one’s a bit different. Consider freezing an extra portion of a main meal and pulling it out in a week or so, when it doesn’t remind you of yesterday’s meal.

Make a Tradition

Rather than treating leftovers like something you have to eat, make a game out of them. This is particularly useful if you have kids. Reserve one night a week to clean out the fridge and let everyone eat exactly what she wants—as long as it’s a leftover.

This may lead to some pretty creative meals.

Take Turns

If your children are old enough to participate in food planning or preparation, make them part of the process. Even if they’re too young to wield knives, they may be able to help put grapes into a fruit salad, say, or develop a menu.

For example, you might outline the food groups you’d like to include in each meal, then have them pick their favorites. Again, you could end up with some pretty interesting combinations—but at least you won’t be bored!