Living a Lifestyle Thats Free and Easy

The clock is ticking, so get clicking to score your fair share of free stuff. A good start is Volition.com, one of the oldest websites showing where you can get free samples and other items. Offerings include Procter & Gamble Co. products, circus tickets, baby-care goods and even a free diet analysis.

The website also gives you a chance to be one of the first to see a movie -- for free -- by going to advance film screenings. If you want to do some comparison shopping, stop by TheFreeSite.com or FreeChannel.net.

Meanwhile, keep your driver's license handy, because FrugalLiving.tv lists free things that restaurants will serve birthday boys and girls -- of any age. If all this searching has your computer overloaded, go to OpenOffice.org for free open-source software.

Audio books are great. Getting them for free is even better. Let sonorous voices do your reading for you as you commute to work or pick up the kids. Download hundreds of great reads -- er, listens -- for free, courtesy of LibriVox.org, which, not surprising considering their prices, is a nonprofit organization.

Volunteers produce the audios from books in the public domain. You can go to the group's website, or the books can easily be searched for -- and accessed on -- iTunes. Besides classic novels, such as Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace," which obviously is an earful, there are podcasts of things such as William James' classic essay "The Moral Equivalent of War."

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