Four Things You Can Get Free — But Didn’t Know it

Here are four expensive things most of us use , which you can actually get for FREE:  College courses, first-run movies, streaming services, and audiobooks. Here's how to get them.

1.  College courses.  You can't get the degree for free, obviously.  But that's really what you're paying for, not the learning.  You can audit real college courses on Coursera.org, taught by professors at major universities.  And it's completely free.

You can also do it the old way, by showing up on campus and asking a professor if it's cool to sit in.  If there are available seats, often they'll be glad to let you stick around.

2.  First-run movies.  It's easy to find free screenings of upcoming movies if you know where to look.  Check out TxtMovieClub.com and Gofobo.com.

3.  Streaming services.  Like Hulu, Netflix, and Epix.  The big ones offer 30-day free trials.  Just use them for 30 days at a time, then switch to another one.  By the time you get through them, the earlier ones will be offering you another 30 days just to come back.

4.  Audiobooks.  There are hundreds or thousands of audiobooks of public domain works, available for free online through sites like LibriVox.  They're read by volunteers, so the quality might not be great.  But you get what you pay for.